Daily Cascade

Heathcliff & Catherine, and Afterlife

Prompt:
“And (I) wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers in that quiet earth,” says Emily Brontë in Wuthering Heights,
What do you think Bronte meant? Does the quote imply something different to you than its obvious meaning?

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I have to mull over the meaning of the quote, but I recall it was uttered by the narrator of the novel, after many years since the story took place. Maybe the narrator was really talking about his own sense of final peace after the stormy lives of Catherine, Heathcliff, and others, whose names now escape me. When I first read this novel in my teens, for some weird psychological reason, I fell for Heathcliff. Luckily for me, years later, when I married, my husband was as easy-going and well-adjusted as he could be.

As to the meaning of the quote, at first glance, it may refer to the peace in death, after the novel's wild emotional drama. I wonder if there was really peace in there, under the soil, since the villagers saw the ghosts of the story's characters. Yet, Heathcliff and Catherine were buried next to each other, and they are finally united after all that drama. So what about their ghosts? Were they imaginary? Were they restless?

All the same, Catherine and Heathcliff's bond was always unbroken since their childhood. It is tempting for me to think that, in this state, they might finally experience the peace and happiness that they missed in life. This could be because, in their new realm, they don't have to deal with family obligations and society's expectations. So they might roam the moors in spirit, discovering the happiness and freedom that was the real basis for their relationship.

Then, what about the question of whether peace awaits us all, after death? Can peace and love, in all their forms, transcend even the boundaries of mortality? I certainly hope so.

For that reason, I ask, why should peace and love belong to the afterlife only? After all, we can find it in the present, right here on earth, in the beauty and simplicity of our human connections.