You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Wuthering Heights has long been admired as a unique and powerful novel. The brooding atmosphere of Wuthering Heights, the intense characters, and the disturbing theme lure the reader into a world at once repelling and seductive. Who or what is the mysterious Heathcliff? Why does the mutual passion between Cathy Earnshaw and him remain unrequited when there is no apparent obstacle to their union? Why is their consuming physical attachment superseded by a morbid fascination with union after death? I propose that an unconscious incest taboo impeded the two lovers' expectations of normal sexual union and led them to spiritualize their attachment, eventually leading them to believe that they could find union only after death.
Criticism of Wuthering Heights has characteristically taken one of two approaches when the question of incest has been raised. Some critics have suggested that Heathcliff was the illegitimate son of Mr. Earnshaw, but no textual evidence exists to support the hypothesis that Heathcliff and Cathy were blood brother and sister.1 In any case, for an incest taboo to exist, it is irrelevant whether Cathy and Heathcliff are blood relatives. What is essential is that they were raised as brother and sister. Heathcliff entered the family when he was seven and Cathy was six. They shared all living arrangements as brother and sister, including sleeping together.
Other critics have viewed Heathcliff and Cathy's relationship as a search for the lost paradise of sibling unity, citing the nineteenth-century nostalgic regard for the family as a refuge from public life;2 but this perspective fails to account for the sexual tension in the novel, as well as the return of the ghosts of Heathcliff and Cathy as adults rather than children.
Central to a discussion of incest is an understanding of