Title：
Catherine's dilemma between love and marriage in Wuthering Heights
——The Psychoanalysis of love triangle relationship with Freud’s theory of personality
Abstract：
Wuthering Heights tells a story of superhuman love and revenge enacted on the English moors. In this thesis, an attempt is made to analyze the love triangle relationship which leads to Catherine's dilemma between love and marriage in Wuthering Heights by virtue of Freud’s theory of personality.
Key words：
Wuthering Heights Freud’s theory of personality love triangle relationship
In Catherine's heart she knows what is right, but chooses what is wrong. It is her wrong decision that pushes her into the inextricable [LunWenJia.Com]dilemma between her love and marriage; it is her wrong choice that plunges the two families into chaos. In the mind, she is truly out of her way.
According to Sigmund Freud(1856—1939), the structure of the mind or personality consists three portions: the id, the ego, and the superego.“The id, which is the reservoir of biological impulses, constitutes the entire personality of the infant at birth. Its principle of operation, to guard the person from painful tension, is termed the pleasure principle. Inevitable frustrations of the id, together with what the child learns from his encounters with external reality, generate the ego, which is essentially a mechanism to minimize frustrations of the biological drives in the long run. It operates according to the reality principle … [LunWenNet.Com]The superego comprises the conscience, a partly conscious system of introjected moral inhibitions, and the ego-ideal, the source of the individual's standards for his own behavior. Like external reality, from which it derives, the superego often presents obstacles to the satisfaction of biological drives.”“In the mentally healthy person, these three systems form a unified and harmon
ious organization. Conversely, when the three systems of personality are at odds with one another the person is said to be maladjusted.” Here Catherine's tragic psychological process may be well illustrated by Freudian psychoanalysis.
“I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is, or should be, an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here？” Catherine's strange words reflect that the intelligent Emily Bronte had been earlier pondering over a same question in her work. What on earth is“the existence of Catherine's beyond Catherine”？
Here we may believe that Heathcliff stands for Catherine's instinctual nature and the strongest desire—her “id” in the depths of her soul; Edgar, her ideal “superego”, represents another part of her personality: the well-bred gracefulness and the superiority of a wealthy family; and she, herself is the “ego” tortured by the friction between the two in the disharmonious situation.
In the light of Freud's theory of personality, “the superego is the representation in the personality of the traditional values and ideals of society as they are handed down from parents to children.” Catherine's choice of Edgar as her husband is to satisfy her ideal “superego” to get wealth and high social position, which are the symbol of her class, on the basis of the education by her family and reality from her early childhood. She is a Miss of a noble family with a long history of about three hundred years. Only the marriage well-matched in social and economic status could be a satisfaction for all: her family, the society and even her practical self. “It would degrade me to many Heathcliff now ... if Heathcliff and I married, we should be beggars？” This is her actual worry for her future. Catherine yields to the pressure from her brother, and alike, in truth, she is yielding to the moral rules of society, without the approval and identification of which, she could not live a better life or even exist i
n it at all.
However, Catherine underestimates what her other more intrinsic self would have effect on her. The most remarkable claim by Catherine herself may be the best convincing evidence to distinguish the different roles of Heathcliff and Edgar—her “id” and her “superego”:
“My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else perished, and he was annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like foliage in the woods: time will change it. I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I'm Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure and more than I am always a pleasure to me, but as my own being. So don't talk of our separation again: it is impracticable.”
