Note: Oxford University Press version of Wuthering Heights used for this articleSay no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay In Bronte's novel Wuthering Heights, a person only has the capacity to achieve happiness if their external state of being is a true and accurate manifestation of their internal state of being. The "double persona" that Catherine "adopts" in order to simultaneously maintain her relationship with the Linton family and her lower-class friend, Heathcliff (66), also manifests itself in most of the novel's other main characters, although the separation is generally less obvious in other characters. This is less obvious because rather than being divided between two contrasting external states (only one of Catherine's states reflects her internal state), the characters are generally divided between their internal experiences of the world and their external facades. For all the characters, the possibility of happiness depends on a coherence between their internal and external ways of being. Catherine, in her inability to achieve happiness, is the clearest example of this in the novel, but the novel's three other crucial characters: Heathcliff, Cathy (II), and Hareton also demonstrate this. The relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff is a prime example. of a possible happiness handicapped by the inconsistency (internal vs external) of one of its participants, Catherine. Catherine puts up a facade of "naive cordiality" to win the love of the Linton children (Isabella and Edgar) in order to hide her true "unruly nature". She only lets this “unruly nature” appear when she is in the privacy of her home, Wuthering Heights, with Heathcliff (66 years old). Catherine splits into two personalities. She demonstrates her "unruly" character in the company of her true friend, Heathcliff, when she is in the comfortable environment of his home. This “personality” reflects the way she feels internally. The other one, which she puts on to impress the Lintons, is fake. Catherine herself admits this incongruity when she speaks with the narrator, her servant, Ellen Dean. She claims "I am Heathcliff", but, at the same time, she says that she does not want to marry him because then she would be a "beggar" (81-2). If she truly were Heathcliff, then being a beggar would not cause her discomfort because she would be acting as herself and as is appropriate to her nature. Catherine, however, chooses to live with inconsistency and thus deprives herself of the ability to achieve happiness by living as an “unruly” with Heathcliff. Her love interest, Heathcliff, is also incapacitated by her choice. In the first half of the novel, he attempts to be coherent, inside and out. While Catherine was divided, Heathcliff remained “inwardly and outwardly loathsome” (67). At that time, if Catherine joined him, they would have had the opportunity to become happy. But because she doesn't, she forces Heathcliff to give up his uniformity and become divided, as she is. Bronte shows Heathcliff's split in the second half of the book, when he returns to Wuthering Heights. Meanwhile, he has an underlying motive of revenge (against those who took him away from Catherine) and outward behavior that shows false "love". His false "love" is only partially maintained, but aims to deceive Isabella and Hareton. Heathcliff “deceives” Isabella, Edgar's sister, into believing that he loves her in order to “get revenge” on Edgar (113). Catherine chooses to marry Edgar because he is higher class than Heathcliff, and the choice given to herEdgar's presence pushes Heathcliff away from her. This is why Heathcliff desires revenge on him. Then, Heathcliff deceives Hareton, his enemy, Hindley's son, into believing that he is the only one who loves him in order to keep him "ignorant" and thus take revenge on Hindley (187). He wants revenge on Hindley because it was he who made Catherine realize that Heathcliff was "too beggar" for her. This divide, between an internal desire to remedy his past absence from Catherine through revenge, and his external posture which makes this revenge possible, remains with him until the end of the novel. And this prevents him from any experience of happiness. At the end of the novel, Heathcliff finally achieves a feeling of "mirth" and "joy", but only after making peace with the difference between his internal state and his external state. , and chooses to fully follow her inner state by following Catherine to the tomb (326-8). This capacity for happiness for Catherine and Heathcliff when they are together is present throughout the novel. When they were children, they enjoyed running together. And then, even after Catherine has been "civilized" by the Lintons, she claims that the music at a dinner they're all attending is "the softest at the top of the stairs?" where Heathcliff [is] confined” (59). Things are “sweeter” for her when she is near Heathcliff. Their last meeting before Catherine's death is also revealing of this possible happiness. Heathcliff shouts at Catherine: “Why have you betrayed your own heart? You broke it and in breaking it, you broke mine” (161). The implication of this cry is that they could have been happy if they had stayed together. Along the same lines, Catherine and Heathcliff express a feeling of “oneness” with each other. Catherine says that Heathcliff is “in her soul” (160) and that he is “more herself than she” (80). Similarly, Heathcliff laments after Catherine's death: "I cannot live without my life!" I can't live without my soul! (167). It is possible for them to be happy when they are together because they translate each other's true internal states into their external behavior. They do this naturally because, since they perceive themselves as “one” with the other, it is useless for them to try to hide anything (or put on a false appearance) in the presence of the other. In contrast, the two persevering characters of the second generation Cathy and Hareton achieve happiness. They do this by not betraying themselves as Catherine (and Heathcliff) do and by acting according to their nature. Hareton is unhappy growing up because he is raised brutally by Heathcliff. This harshness, which he was obliged to imitate, went against his natural inclination towards “softer feelings” (300). He is happy when he and Cathy establish their friendship because she encourages these softer feelings he kept inside to surface. Cathy also goes through a period of unhappiness between her happy life with her father at Thrushcross Grange and her happy life with Hareton at the end of the novel. She is happy with her father and Hareton because they nourish her “deep and tender love” (188) and do not ask her to deny this integral part of herself. Her unhappiness begins with an incongruity between how she acts and how she feels, brought on by her interactions with Linton and Heathcliff. Cathy's relationship with Linton initiates the split between her internal and external self. Ellen, Cathy's nurse, intercepts her secret relationship with Linton and forbids her from pursuing it. At this point, Cathy is required, in order to keep the relationship a secret from her father, to pretend to hide her sadness. Although she is crushed internally, she appears “wonderfully submissive on the outside” (228). Likewise, even after starting to.).