Catherine is the passionate, wild and headstrong protagonist from Emily Brontë’s famous novel, Wuthering Heights. And yes, also the song of the same name by Kate Bush. It is a novel (and song come to that) which Graham loves and Catherine is one of his favourite characters... so much so that he has formed a parasocial relationship with her. If you want to know what a parasocial relationship is or find out more about our relationships with fictional characters, then be sure to check out OpenLearn’s free, open access courses ‘What happens to you when you read?’ and ‘Introducing the psychology of our relationships with fictional villains’.

Catherine Earnshaw
Wuthering Heights
Haworth Moor
West Yorkshire
BD22 9QS

My dearest Cathy,

I write, as usual, as I sit by the fireside, your book open in front of me. As I read the pages that make you come alive, I can almost feel your eyes staring at me from between the words, as if you are looking out through a window. These same words make my mind take flight to a wily, windy moor where I walk alone through a night that is dark and lonely. Although I am alone, I feel like I am just on the other side from you, that if I did look through the window, I would see your face. Pining for you, I lose myself in our book. Desperate to find more of you in the pages, I read faster until your jealousy, your terrifying, selfish and utterly magnificent passion rises from every word. Then, and only then, do I know that I have truly come home and that my lot falls through without you.

Today, reading your book has additional meaning because it is Valentine’s once again. Who would have thought that only a year has passed! I find myself not wanting a Valentine of flowers, instead I want a day with you that resembles the eternal rocks beneath, always unseen, but necessary. Heaven can remain the dream of the angels, let us wake sobbing with joy on our moor. I know our fickle hearts are one and in this last year our relationship has grown in so many ways, upon so many reads. Indeed, I really believe that now I am Cathy.

I know I said I would write no more to you, that I would keep my love for you in the oak panelling of my mind, but I find myself wanting to open the window, despite the cold, dangerous air outside. I have been given strength by the kindness of strangers and in the most remarkable way now realise that my fantasy of you is not a ghost at the window, but a light in the darkness. A course, a free, open access, online course has shown me that our relationship, indeed any relationship like ours, is healthy, is natural. My love for you can be a placeholder until I find my own Wuthering Heights, that reading you can and does genuinely fill the loneliness, that you do not haunt me but rather comfort me and give flight to feelings and connections that would otherwise fester within.

Cathy, sweet Cathy, I will return now to our book, born up by the wisdom I have gained from ‘What happens to you when you read?’, in the knowledge that our parasocial relationship is what happens to me when it is you, my love, whose words I read.

Yours throughout both the frost and the fire,

G

See more of our Valentine's content in our OpenLearn Valentine's collection.