“If All Else Perished, and He Remained, I Should Still Continue to be; and If All Else Remained, and He Were Annihilated, the Universe Would Turn to a Mighty Stranger: I Should Not Seem a Part of It.”
What does she mean when she says the part “…the universe would turn into a mighty stranger..” ???
- 3 years ago
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If he were gone, she wouldn’t be able to find her place in the world anymore, because he is her home and her heart. It’s like when something really bad happens, someone you love dies, and you expect the sun to stop shining and the world to stop turning, but life goes on for other people. For Cathy, her world would stop if he died. The sun shining would seem wrong and foreign. Life would become a stranger to her because her reason for living was gone.
kronikoles 
Is she talking about Heathcliff here?
Here’s the whole context: With your husband’s money, Miss Catherine?’ I asked. ‘You’ll find him not so pliable as you calculate upon: and, though I’m hardly a judge, I think that’s the worst motive you’ve given yet for being the wife of young Linton.’
‘It is not,’ retorted she; ‘it is the best! The others were the satisfaction of my whims: and for Edgar’s sake, too, to satisfy him. This is for the sake of one who comprehends in his person my feelings to Edgar and myself. 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? 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 remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it. – My love for Linton is like the 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 AM Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don’t talk of our separation again: it is impracticable; and – ‘
She paused, and hid her face in the folds of my gown; but I jerked it forcibly away. I was out of patience with her folly!
‘If I can make any sense of your nonsense, Miss,’ I said, ‘it only goes to convince me that you are ignorant of the duties you undertake in marrying; or else that you are a wicked, unprincipled girl. But trouble me with no more secrets: I’ll not promise to keep them.’
‘You’ll keep that?’ she asked, eagerly.
‘No, I’ll not promise,’ I repeated.
Reblogged this on kronikoles and commented:
Don’t know why I, of all people, didn’t get this! I know the feeling of “the universe…a mighty stranger”, when you lose someone you love.