shipperx | Spikeylover vid and tangential musing

spikeylover has a new spuffy vid up: http://www.livejournal.com/users/spikeylover/75237.html

And I noticed all the quotes that she had used to introduce the vid. Reading them, I was struck by just how much ME was going for an almost Wuthering Heights relationship with Spuffy. . .well, except that unlike Catherine Earnshaw, they didn't want Buffy to see it as love. And, of course, Spike was actually a far, far better man than Heathcliff. Spike's love inspired him to change for the better whereas Heathcliff succumbed to darker instincts in reaction to Cathy's abuses, thereby becoming an angry, vengeful abuser himself. Spike chose to try to be a better man. Still, I do tend to see Buffy in a very Catherine Earnshaw light. I think Cathy and Buffy are very much the same woman.

Anyway, reading the Spuffy quotes of spikeylover, I was struck by how eerily similar they are to some Wuthering Heights quotes/ideas:

"It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire." Chapter 9, pg. 73
"Terror made me cruel; and finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes..." Chapter 3
"Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves."
"He had ceased to express his fondness for her in words, and recoiled with angry suspicion from her girlish caresses, as if conscious there could be no gratification in such marks of affection on him." Chapter 8, pg. 61
"Having levelled my palace, don't erect a hovel and complacently admire your own charity in giving me that for a home." Chapter 11, pg. 103
"I want to crawl to her feet, whimper to be forgiven, for loving me, for needing her more than my own life, for belonging to her more than my own soul."
"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." Chapter 9, pg. 74

"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."

How very Spuffy. And yet, even Spuffy wasn't as destructive as Heathcliff and Cathy. Then again, Spike was a better man than Heathcliff--even if ME didn't see it that way. (Although, I really don't think Buffy was any better than Cathy. Buffy pretty much WAS Cathy... at least IMHO.)

ETA: I know that Wuthering Heights is seen as a fucked up romance, and that Bronte intended it as a grand passion whereas ME... No. I'll never believe that ME meant to create any grand passion (other than twisted and hot) between Spuffy. They didn't see Spuffy as a romance... then again I don't see Wuthering Heights as a romance. But overlooking ME's intent to see what they actually put on screen. I see similarities (and differences. Spuffy are better than Cathy/Heathcliff because they didn't create anywhere near as much collateral damage, and because Spike chose to go get his soul rather than the Heathcliff choice which would have been to destroy the Scoobs. So, no, Spike isn't Heathcliff, IMO. But some of the dynamics of the Spuffy relationship seem close to WH... especially Buffy's mindset.