Is It Love?

After reading the novel Wuthering Heights,  the main thought and question that I pondered over was whether the characters in the novel really had or expressed love in any specific way. This questions comes from the questions eight and nine from the Wuthering Heights Socratic Seminar questions. The three main characters whose love is in question are Edgar, Heathcliff, and Catherine. Catherine in the novel has to chose between Edgar and Heathcliff, and choses social class, which is represented by Edgar, over passion, which is represented by Heathcliff. Catherine in my opinion did not really feel love for Edgar. I think he was a respectable, "safety net" for her in a way because he had financial stability, and was a safe choice as a husband. Catherine knew that Edgar could give her the luxuries that she wanted, and she knew that Heathcliff could not provide those luxuries for her. However, I feel that Edgar truly had strong feelings for Catherine. He became extremely jealous when he realizes that Catherine still might have feelings for Heathcliff, and forces her to choose between himself and Heathcliff. I also feel that Edgar had strong feelings of love for Catherine because he doted on her left and right, and they had a child, Cathy together. I dont necessarily believe that having a child together means that they love each other, but I overall got the feeling that Edgar had feelings os love for Catherine, which she was unable to reciprocate due to her feelings for Heathcliff. The question of whether Catherine and Heathcliff love each other is a question that I find harder to answer. In my opinion, there is a great amount of passion between the two, but I never really got the sense of love. I think they only felt strongly for each other because they knew that they could never be together from the beginning. So it was wanting something that you know you could never have, which raises curiosity from each person. In my opinion, Catherine and Heathcliff did not truly love each other, because if you really love someone, you could never imagine bringing or wishing harm or pain to them, or their family. Heathcliff brings harm and pain to Cathy and Edgar, because he felt such strong feelings for Catherine, and she ended up dying before they could ever really be together, although I dont think they ever would have truly been together anyways. Heathcliff causes pain to almost everyone by the end of the novel because of the pain that he feels inside. I think he believes he loves Catherine, but I think he just loved the idea of having someone who he could never truly have. Of course this all depends on how each individual views and values love. After really thinking it over, I believe that instead of a sense of love in this novel, there is a sense of wanting something that you can never have in Heathcliff's case, and the idea of settling for financial stability and other reasons instead of love.