January Monthly Connection

Marriage for love or for reason?

This relates to a Socratic seminar question in Wuthering Heights. Is Catherine in some way bound to both Heathcliff and Edgar? Catherine is certainly bound to both Heathcliff and Edgar. Catherine loves Healthcliff, but he cannot provide her with the life she wants. While Edgar can provide her with the life and social standings that she desires, but their relationship does not contain the same type of passion and love. Edgar represents the logic and Heathcliff represents the passion in Catherine. Catherine chose to marry Edgar, for the social standings and the wealthy life. Ironically Heathcliff left for a while and came back with money. Catherine is never satisfied with her decision throughout the whole book even all the way up until her death. I do not believe that Catherine would have been satisfied, no matter what person she picked because she needed them both to be happy.

Today in society people tend to marry more for love than in the older years because social standing is not as big of a deal as it once was. Almost everyone wants to find love. There is still a small group of people who marry the person that will make their life easier or someone that has a lot of money, but those people usually don’t have a loving, successful, and rewarding marriage. Most people today are successful and independent in that they don’t need a spouse to take care of them; they want a spouse that they love. I believe that you should marry someone because you love them, not because they will help you get ahead in life. Marrying someone for a reason like money is not acceptable. Marriage is a sacred bond between two people that should only be between two people that absolutely love each other. I believe that if you love each other that you can make it through anything. If you love each other you can work around problems. If you love someone than no matter what obstacles life throws at you, together you can get through them.