The characters of Catherine and Heathcliff in Wuthering HeightsEmily Brontë's Wuthering Heights can be considered a gothic romance or an essay on human relationships. The reader can view the novel as a serious study of human problems such as love and hate, or revenge and jealousy. We can even consider Brontë's personal interpretation of the universe in the novel. However, ultimately, Heathcliff and Catherine are the story. Their powerful presence permeates the entire novel, as do their complex personalities. Their climatic feelings toward each other and their often selfish behavior often exaggerate or possibly encapsulate certain universal psychological truths that humans are too afraid to express. Heathcliff and Catherine's difficult backgrounds evolve into dark personalities and misguided life paths, respectively, but ultimately their actions determine the course of their own relationships and lives. Their misfortunes, their carelessness, their will and their destructive passion are incapable of penetrating the eternal love they share. Heathcliff's multifaceted existence is marked by wickedness, love, and strength. His dark actions are produced by the distortion of his natural personality. Although Heathcliff had once been subjected to vicious racism because of his dark skin color and had endured tiring orphan years in Liverpool, this distortion had already begun when Mr. Earnshaw brought him to the Heights of Stormwind, a “dirty child, in rags and with black hair” (45; ch.7). He was already accustomed to hardships and accepted suffering without complaint. Heathcliff shows strength and steadfastness when he had the measles and when Hindley treated him cruelly if he got what he wanted. From the start, he demonstrated great mastery of the paper...of the novel? Or is revenge the central and recurring idea? Is Bronte proposing that as humans we have the right to meddle with the dark, questioning cosmic universe, just as Catherine and Heathcliff manipulated their own lovers and family? Maybe it's just a book about characters, each in their own way, meandering through puddles, with troubled morals and misguided ideals. With darkness within and beauty without, they stumble across a two-mile stretch of land in search of something they've always had. Maybe it’s a book about reality. Works Cited Damrosch, David, et al., ed. The Longman Anthology of British Literature: Vol. B. Ed. compact. New York: Longman - Addison Wesley Longman, 2000. Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights. Norton ed. critical. 3rd ed. Ed. William M. Sale, Jr. and Richard J. Dunn. New York: W. W. Norton, 1990.