March 22

wuthering heights

…make the world stop right here. Make everything stop and stand still and never move again. Make the moors never change and you and I never change… No matter what I ever do or say, Heathcliff, this is me – now – standing on this hill with you. This is me, forever.

Cathy to Heathcliff, Wuthering Heights (1939)

The 1939 film that starred Laurence Olivier as the tortured Heathcliff and Merle Oberon as the spoiled and free-spirited Cathy Earnshaw is widely acclaimed as the greatest version in celluloid of Emily Bronte’s classic novel. Its focus on only half of the novel worked to its advantage, I believe. There’s enough torment enveloped in the tumultuous affair between the doomed lovers as it is without dwelling on the vengeful events that transpired after Cathy’s death.

As impossible love stories go, Cathy and Heathcliff are two very complex characters whose love, no matter how grand, was not able to prevail, much less get a chance. Cathy’s pronounciations, quoted above, meant nothing because she changes her attitude toward Heathcliff as soon as she changes from farm dresses to corsets. She realized he is her other half, but thought him beneath her in stature and therefore unworthy. Heathcliff, on the other hand, loved Cathy with all his soul but was far too consumed by his grudges. Even in death, he did not wish Cathy peace.

On a personal note, I’ve never hoped for the world to stop and stay the same. I still want change. Which is one way of saying I haven’t found that hill where I can stand on and declare that, “This is it! I have everything I could ever want, nothing else matters.” Its not even about material things but it will be too sappy to say that its about love. And what if I’ll never get to find that kind? Not Cathy and Heathcliff’s. Theirs is an obsession and the kind of love that destructs. I’ve always wanted a fairy tale. But when you’ve passed that age when you believe in princes and knights in shining armor, you’ll look into the mirror and see a girl in ordinary clothes looking back with her sad eyes.

Well, this is me now. It won’t last forever.

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