SOURCE: “Incest, Demonism, and Death in Wuthering Heights,” in Literature and Psychology, Vol. 23, No. 1, 1973, pp. 27-36.

In the following essay, Mitchell theorizes that there is no compelling moral or social reason for Heathcliff and Cathy not to marry each other, but they abstain from a sexual or marital relationship because they are already tightly bound by other ties, including a brother-sister relationship.

It is clear to most readers of Wuthering Heights, and it is equally clear to Catherine Earnshaw, that she is betraying herself when she decides to marry Edgar Linton.¹ She says that she loves Edgar “entirely and altogether” (p. 71) and a few lines later that she loves Heathcliff far more (p. 72). She knows that she is being inconsistent because she says that she has “no business to marry Edgar Linton” (p. 71). Cathy justifies the marriage by saying that as Edgar's wife she can raise Heathcliff out...