What is love? Is it passion for another person? A willingness to do anything and everything to ensure they are with you? "Wuthering Heights," Emily Bronte's epic literary love story of Catherine and Heathcliff. Following themes of passion, despair, and manipulation, it has captivated the minds and hearts of countless readers for years. The novel follows main characters Catherine and Heathcliff through their childhood, eventual separation, Catherine's death, and Heathcliff's desperate plots of revenge. The story highlights the many relationships between two families: the Lintons, and the Earnshaws. Told mainly through narration by Nelly Dean, the story is narrated to Lockwood, a new tenant of the home Thrushcross Grange, starting when Heathcliff is brought to the Earnshaw home as a young orphan. She tells how he is quickly befriended by the youngest Earnshaw, Catherine, and makes a quick enemy of the elder Hindley Earnshaw. He establishes his place in the family as the "gypsy son" that doesn't quite fit in. .
The novel's turning point comes when Catherine marries Edgar Linton despite the all-consuming love she feels with Heathcliff. Catherine's decision, while it promised her stability, caused many of the devious actions Heathcliff took throughout the rest of the novel. Following Catherine's death, a younger generation, –Catherine, Heathcliff, and Hindley's children – and Heathcliff's abuse of them, becomes the focal point of the story line, as he forces Cathy Linton and Linton Heathcliff to marry, in order to obtain the Linton home, and abuses Hareton Earnshaw, to get revenge on Hindley. For years readers have commented on the heartless nature of Heathcliff as he destroys lives in order to achieve his own personal goals. However, could it be possible that the conniving nature of Heathcliff was not inborn and was in fact the result of a mental illness? Is it possible that Heathcliff is not in fact malicious and just sick? Could it be argued that Heathcliff is a sociopath?.
