clearly represents the God of Spring and Light. Heathcliff, penniless, wanders to faraway lands and acquires great wealth, thus identifies even more with the Roman Pluto, the Underworld God of Riches. When Heathcliff returns, Kathy dies, as if he brought her death with him. But a dead woman usually becomes herself the Goddess of Death, and she takes him also to his grave. Thus they unite, in the way they had always been meant for each other as dwellers of the Underworld, when Kathy is no longer young and pretty. She is, however, all along the story, the one who holds in her hands the rule and motivation of love and power.
Strangely enough, in the same year that Emily’s book Wuthering Heights was published (1847), Charlotte had her Jane Eire published as well – a book, which is clearly based on the same theme. In it, Rochester is the parallel of Heathcliff, the dark and wild man in whom the heroine falls in love, although Rochester is highborn and much more cultured than Heathcliff. His rival in pursuing Jane’s hand is the vicar Rivers, who parallels Linton both in appearance and in his cool and logical nature. Jane Eire, though, differs from Kathy in her much more decisive character. She does not hesitate to choose Rochester, particularly because of his warm heart; she even disregards his later disfigurement, having rejected the highly moralistic Rivers. She is much more the figure of the Great Goddess than the poorly muddled Kathy, though less pretty in her appearance. In both books there is a very strong sense of the woman’s right to choose her lover with no predejuice.
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A variation of that myth appears in ancient Egyptian mythology. Osiris, who was a counterpart of Baal’s as