The Theme of Destructive Love in ‘Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Brontë and ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ by Oscar Wilde
Wuthering
Heights and The Picture of Dorian Gray are two books that have achieved great
success. In my opinion the reason of that is their main theme: love. In the
first case – extreme tension between a man and a woman, in the second – selfish
love towards oneself.
This
emotion is present in every human’s life or at least willingness to feel love.
Lack of love is perceived by modern psychologists as the reason of mental
disorders and the determiner of making life decisions. One thing is sure – love
is close to humankind no matter about which epoch we are talking about. That
can be a reason why ‘Wuthering Heights’ and ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ are
such a popular books.
One might say that love is never destructive. This feeling is connected
to good emotions, nice, pleasant and those that make man -human. But
destructive love is really close to us – it is enough to open any newspaper and
read about the lovers who either hurts themselves or another people. Another proof that the theme of destructive love is so important is a
frequency of using it in the arts. ‘Wuthering Heights’ as a story about strange but intense love affairs has been
adapted to movies over 7 times, and inspired singers such as Kate Bush to write
a song about this romance. Also The Picture of Dorian Gray has been inspiring
directors, painters and poets since its publishing in 1890. For me, those two books are the best
descriptions of human’s actions under the influence of love and that is why I
decided to write an essay about the theme of love.
To begin
with, on more thing has to be explain. I chose a topic concerning destructive
love – in order to show that the emotion perceived in everyday life as
wonderful, positive and fascinating – can lead to the darkest and the worst
deeds. Love to another person, as well as self-love are necessary and
indispensable to every human being but they are bordered from hatred and
selfishness are with the line of width as thin as "a thread from a
spider's web” . What is even more important, self-love and love between the
lovers are always strongly connected. Love of Dorian Gray and Sibyl Vane as
well as relationship between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff are proof in
support of this thesis. Love to another person is an effect of self-love
because it is the fulfillment of the needs of human’s own soul and body.
Destructive
love of Heathcliff and Catherine
It is simple to say, that only love of Heathcliff was
destructive because he has ruined his, Catherine’s, Cate’s, Isabella’s and both
Lintons’ lives. But in my opinion it would be overgeneralization and
commonplace. For me also Catherine Earnshaw’s love was destructive. Let me
explain this point of view.
Heathcliff has overheard the following part of the
conversation between Catherine and Nelly:
“That will do to explain my secret, as well as the
other. I’ve no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in
heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I
shouldn’t have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff
now;(…)”[1].
These words naturally makes him angry. But it is
really important what he has not heard – and it came just in next sentence that
Catherine said:
“(…)so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not
because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am.
Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton’s is as
different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.”[2]
Not only describes it that she does love Heathcliff
but also that she does not love Edgar. At that moment Catherine decided to use
Edgar. She knows that her love will change. She knows that her attacks of fury,
which Edgar was a witness that day – will occur again and that some day Edgar
will find out the truth and he will have live with this knowledge. Her real
reason- why does she want to marry Edgar is because she knows it is only way to help Heathcliff
and her to put them on higher social status. Love to Heathcliff – justifies deceiving Edgar. In
that point of view this love is destructive – it will badly hurt Edgar Linton
so it is destructive for him.
Edgar Linton feels deep , true love to Catherine but
he is blind to Catherine’s true behavior. He is trying not to acknowledge worse
side of Miss Earnshaw. That is why he would suffer after marriage from
loneliness . That means also love between Catherine and Edgar (because she
speaks about some kind of love – this feeling is weak but it is present) is
destructive.
As well as her brother – Isabella will also be a
victim of Heathcliff love to Catherine. Thinking that he is not loved by Miss
Earnshaw he run away. When he came back, Catherine is married for 6 months to
Linton. Heathcliff coming to the Thrushcross Grange
at first pretends that he wants to keep friendship with Catherine. At the same
time he claims that he does not really want to act revengefully towards
Catherine, which I found not true according to his words:
‘I seek no revenge on you,’ replied Heathcliff, less vehemently.
‘That’s not the plan(…) You are welcome to torture me to death for your
amusement, only allow me to amuse myself a little in the same style, and
refrain from insult as much as you are able. Having levelled my palace,
don’t erect a hovel and complacently admire your own charity in giving me that
for a home. If I imagined you really wished me to marry Isabel, I’d cut
my throat!’[3]
But he does marry her because Catherine
reveals Isabella’s secret – that the 18 years old girl felt in love with him.
It was Catherine who first suggested Heathcliff’s marriage with Miss Linton.
According to Heathcliff’s words we can assume he is kind of masochist. He loves
to suffer and he himself is the one who causes his sufferings.
In
this view we can perceive also Catherine and Edgar as masochists. Edgar because
as I have said he does not want to see his beloved true face, which is visible
in the scene in following quotation of Nelly, that also shows Linton’s great
and pure love:
“The soft thing looked askance through the window: he
possessed the power to depart as much as a cat possesses the power to leave a
mouse half killed, or a bird half eaten. Ah, I thought, there will be no saving
him: he's doomed, and flies to his fate! . . . I saw the quarrel had merely
effected a closer intimacy – had broken the outworks of youthful timidity, and
enabled them to forsake the disguise of friendship, and confess themselves
lovers.”[4]
With
Edgar and Catherine – as with most relationships in Wuthering Heights – violence and desire go hand and hand.
Edgar is so taken with Catherine that he refuses to heed the warnings of her
troubled behavior. In this sense, he shares one thing with Heathcliff: a
masochistic attraction to drama.
Heathcliff’s revenge will hit not only
Edgar but especially Catherine. That would cause Catherine deadly illness. She
is depressed, feels guilty and her mental state is reflected by her body state.
All that symptoms are multiplied – due to her pregnancy. Finally Catherine died.
Her love to Heathcliff was overwhelming
her and for sure she felt guilty because of Linton to whom she also felt some
affection. Love to both men was shown in
the book when Catherine is telling to Nelly:
‘My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change
it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff
resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but
necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a
pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.
So don't talk of our separation again: it is impracticable. ‘[5]
To Catherine, she and Heathcliff are one
and the same; thus marriage to Edgar does not mean leaving the man she really
loves. That Heathcliff sees her marriage as a betrayal is what ultimately
divides them. That is why she dyes – because she cannot live without him, and
while he is married to Isabella, even though he treats her like a rubbish,
Catherine cannot stand it. The same speech proves also that within Catherine
there is no selfishness on the contrary to Dorian Gray. One might say that she
married Edgar because she was egoistic and wanted to achieve social status. It
is not true according to her words:
‘Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a
pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.
So don't talk of our separation again: it is impracticable.’[6]
She gave birth to her daughter but she
died. Also Isabella died after giving birth to her child – her son. We may
assume they both died because of they love to Heathcliff and that is why in both cases it was destructive
affection. Also their children will be hurt by result of Heathcliff’s love
which afflicted his mind. Cheated Caty
married Heathcliff’s son. This forced marriage brought no good. Caty soon
became a widow and lives unhappily on Wuthering Heights.
After death, Catherine cursed by
Heathcliff could not find peace. Neither could he. She seek him and he seek her
but they could not find each other until
Heathcliff’s death. Fortunately, this
strange, tense love bring some good to young Catherine and Hareton (whose life
resembled Heathcliff’s) they fall in love and in fact were only ones who were
not destruct by Catherine and Heathcliff love.
Although whole book is a story about
sadness and misfortunes of all characters – its ending is optimistic and
paradoxically –happy. The ending of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” is
unfortunately not.
Destructive Love in ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’
In one of his letters Oscar Wilde wrote:
“Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”[7]
This quotation fits the main character of his
most popular novel – Dorian Gray. Influenced by sir Henry Wotton became a
person to whom value have only his own pleasures. Before it occurs Dorian was a
nice and handsome boy.
Dorian strongly attached to his portrait
made by Basil Hallward (fascinated with Dorian’s look) is victim of Henry’s experiment.
Henry models Dorian as a sculpture.
Unfortunately, he is forming a hedonist who does not care about anybody but
himself.
We can assume that Henry in some way loves
Dorian. He praises his look and he is strongly attached to him. Some even
claims that he might feel kind of homoerotic love to him, because even though
he is married – women are not very important to him, as well as love. In this
point of view there could be element of destructive love in the relationship,
or let’s call it friendship, between Wotton and Gray.
In “The Picture of Dorian Gray” women are objects, a “decorative
sex” as Lord Henry said, and haven’t an important role in the story. Men have
relationships with women in the novel—Dorian falls in love with Sibyl and Lord
Henry is married—but in the novel, relationships with women are superficial and
short. Lady Wotton, like most of the
women in the novel, is depicted with no real importance: she is briefly
introduced, and never heard again after the dialogue with Dorian. The most
important female character in the novel is Sibyl. There is little substance to
Sibyl’s character: she is only very beautiful and very good in acting, and this
features confirm what Lord Henry thinks: “women
are a decorative sex”. Women in
Victorian era were seen as temples of love and purity, innocent creatures who
need protection and so, could not be used for physical exertion or pleasurable sex.
The only role of women, who were named the “angels
of the house” after a poem of Coventry Patmore, Sir Henry Walton is talking
about love while, innocent yet, Dorian is describing his pure, first love (to
an actress – Sibyl Vane):
‘(...)the people who love only once in their lives are really the
shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either
the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the
emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect--simply a
confession of failure. Faithfulness! I must analyze it some day. The passion
for property is in it. There are many things that we would throw away if we
were not afraid that others might pick them up.’[8]
This kind of description, Gray at first
has rejected but during the story readers can see that he perceive love exactly
in the way Walton had directed him. In Lord Walton words there is a
misogynist’s philosophy. He treats women as material thinks. He even says that
:
„Women represent the triumph of matter over mid ”
Dorian seems to think the same. He does not
love Sibyl but her theatric creations. He loves himself. His love to Sibyl is
destructive. He shows it by saying to her, while she told that his love have
for her better importance that theatre:
‘You
have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination. Now you don't even stir
my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you were
marvelous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the
dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. You
have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupid.'[9]
The fact is that Dorian is the one who is
shallow and stupidly understands love.
He brutally dumps her. Back home, he noticed something different in his portrait – it
looks crueler. In the meanwhile, the
distraught Sybil commits suicide, just as Dorian decides to return to her and
take back his terrible words.
Sybil's suicide changes everything. At first, Dorian feels horrible –
but he rather quickly changes his tune. On Lord Henry's suggestion, Dorian
reads a mysterious "yellow book," a decadent French novel that makes
him reevaluate his whole belief system. The protagonist of the book lives his
life in pursuit of sensual pleasures, which intrigues Dorian. From this moment
on, Dorian is a changed man. This love was destructive for both – it killed
Sibyl but it also turned Dorian to immoralities.
There is a great difference between ‘real love’ and destructive love. To
show this difference I will present a quotation about somebody that also died
because of love but true love. Not as shallow as love of Dorian. It is his
mother - Margaret:
‘'She was an
extraordinarily beautiful girl, Margaret Devereux, and made all the men frantic
by running away with a penniless young fellow--a mere nobody, sir, a subaltern
in a foot regiment, or something of that kind. Certainly. I remember the whole
thing as if it happened yesterday. The poor chap was killed in a duel at Spa a
few months after the marriage. (...)The girl died, too, died within a year.’
This death is on contrary unlike death of Sybil. Even though it is similar to Catherine’s – it is not
caused by her beloved one.
Sybil is a victim. She is also a proof that Henry Wotton is not right
when he said:
‘Women love us for our defects. If we have enough of them, they will
forgive us everything, even our intellects.[10]
Because Sybil was not aware of any defects
of Dorian. For her – to the end he was her Prince Charming. He is also not
right when he says:
‘A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.’
[11] Because he does not look happy within his marriage.
[11] Because he does not look happy within his marriage.
Love of Dorian is specially destructive
for himself. His self-love and pride caused the damage of his soul. What is more it caused the ruin of Basil.
Basil is true friend of Dorian. It is more likely that in the case of Wotton –
that he is attracted to Dorian sexually – so another theme of destructive love
is coming. He claims:
‘I worshipped you too much. I am punished for this You worshipped
yourself too much. We are both punished.”[12]
He is punished indeed – he is killed by
the one he love. This is the most visible proof of the destructive love
occurrence in this book, in my opinion. What is important I found a prove that
Basil was erotically affected to Dorian in following passages:
“(Basil about Dorian) He
has stood as Paris in dainty armor, and as Adonis with huntsman's cloak and
polished boar-spear. Crowned with heavy lotus-blossoms, he has sat on the prow
of Adrian's barge, looking into the green, turbid Nile. He has leaned over the
still pool of some Greek woodland, and seen in the water's silent silver the
wonder of his own beauty.
(…)(Describing
Basil Hallward) Rugged and straightforward as he was, there
was something in his nature that was purely feminine in its tenderness.” [13]
This passages turns up in
Basil's speech to Dorian in the 1891 version.
Finally Dorian commits suicide. He is a
last victim of his selfish love. He destroys himself. In this point of view, in
a way he is similar to Heathcliff. They are
both destroyed by a feelings. They both went through life that wasn’t
happy. Neither for Heathcliff – revenge did not bring any purification nor to
Dorian hedonistic life brought happiness. They both dies in solitude with conscience
filled with sins. They both brought women
who they loved- to death.
Summary
Love – something that should be identified
with happiness, security to both in pair in the “Wuthering Heights” as well as
in “The Picture of Dorian Gray” means suffering to all characters. The thin
border was passed. Heathcliff changes his love into hate and Dorian normal love
to oneself into selfishness. They hurt people that surrounded them. They
destruct all that they loved. Other characters also took part in destructive
feeling. Catherine in some way betrayed Edgar. Isabelle and Sibyl fell in love
with people that only seemed to love them. To some extent they made mistake –
they have chosen men they did not know exactly. Edgar was blind to Catherine’s
real behavior. Caty was betrayed.
Destructive love caused the death of
beloved once (Catherine, Isabelle) and suffering during whole lives of their
lovers.
Love is good but only when people think of this love in
right way. Sometimes desire to being together is egoistic. Revenge does not
bring any good. Beauty which provides no real values also brings only
destruction.
To sum up I can say only that those book
provide me with clear conclusion – our wishes are not always this what is good
for us.
Bibliography
1.Bronte Emily, Wuthering Heights, Penguin Books, 1994, ISBN
0-14-062012-5
2.Wilde Oscar , The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oxford University Press,
1992, ISBN 0-19-281553-9
3.Murray Isobel, Introduction to The Picture of
Dorian Gray, Oxford English Novels
4.”Differences between the 1890 and 1891 editions of "Dorian
Gray"”. Home.arcor.de. Retrieved 2012-05-03
[1] In Bronte Emily, ‘Wuthering
Heights’, chapter IX
[2] As above
[3] As
above, chapter XI
[4] As
above, chapter VIII
[5] As
above, chapter IX
[6] As
above, ch. IX
[8] Wilde Oscar , The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oxford
University Press, chapter 4
[9] As
above, chapter 7
[10]The Picture of Dorian Gray, Lord Henry, Chapter 15.
[11]The Picture of Dorian Gray, Chapter 15.
[13]According to "Differences between the 1890 and 1891
editions of "Dorian Gray"”
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