Wuthering Heights has proven to be much more than just a silly love story about characters, who, in the end objectify no real thought or emotion from the reader. It appears to be better accepted as a window into the human soul, where one sees the loss, suffering, self discovery, and triumph of the characters in this novel. Both the Image of the Book by Robert McKibben, and Control of Sympathy in Wuthering Heights by John Hagan, strive to prove that neither Catherine nor Heathcliff are to blame for their wrong doings. Catherine and Heathcliff's passionate nature, intolerable frustration, and overwhelming loss have ruined them, and thus stripped them of their humanities.

McKibben and Hagan take different approaches to Wuthering Heights, but both approaches work together to form one unified concept. McKibben speaks of Wuthering Heights as a whole, while Hagan concentrates on only sympathies role in the novel. McKibben and Hagan both touch on the topic of Catherine and Heathcliff's passionate nature. To this, McKibben recalls the scene in the book when Catherine is "in the throes of her self-induced illness" (p38). When asking for her husband, she is told by Nelly Dean that Edgar is "among

Hagan and McKibben both end their analysis with the idea of Catherine's and Heathcliff's overwhelming loss. Catherine's self discovery of a wasted life leads her to her death. She faces at the end what she refused to see during her life. She and Heathcliff had always belonged together. Although Edgar was a good man, he could never share the blind passion that Catherine and Heathcliff had. Shortly after Catherine's death, Heathcliff is driven to madness by the thought that only "two yards of loose earth are the sole barrier between us" (p229). He opens her casket in the hopes of holding her in his arms once again, only to find that she is gone, and the only way to reunite with her is through death. By showing Heathcliff's misery, Bronte, Hagan comments, " uses symapthy to modify our hostile response to his cruel treatment of Isabella and his unjust scorn of Edgar" (p73).

Hagan, when commenting on Catherine's passionate nature, recalls the same scene when Catherine is near death. Hagan shows, like McKibben, that Catherine has an ability to love with fierce passion, something that only herself and Heathcliff share. "I'll not be there by myself; they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me, but I won't rest til you are with me. I never will" (p108). Hagan shows that by Emily Bronte's use of sympathy, the reader cannot pass moral judgment on the characters. Even though Catherine is committing adultery, and Heathcliff is planning a brutal career of revenge, the reader still carr

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Approximate Word count = 1019
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)