Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!

Heathcliff's cry "Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!" is the most concentrated expression of his consuming, posthumous love for Catherine Earnshaw. Uttered in the immediate aftermath of her death, the speech transforms grief into a curse, a prayer, and a binding contract that defines the remainder of his life. It marks the moment when his love, already fierce in life, becomes a haunting obsession that will shape his every action and ultimately lead to his own strange, willed death.

Context and Utterance

The words are spoken on the morning after Catherine's death, as Heathcliff confronts Nelly Dean in the park of Thrushcross Grange. He has already learned the news, and his reaction is one of violent, ungovernable passion. He stamps his foot, groans, and cries out with "frightful vehemence," rejecting any consolation. Nelly has just described Catherine's peaceful end, saying she "lies with a sweet smile on her face" and that "her life closed in a gentle dream." Heathcliff's response is a furious denial of this tranquil image. He calls her a "liar to the end" and immediately shifts from despair to a command: "Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you—haunt me, then!" This is the immediate prelude to the famous plea. He then declares his belief that "ghosts have wandered on earth" and, in a torrent of anguish, utters the full invocation: "Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!" The speech is not a lament but a demand, a refusal to let death sever their connection.

Thematic Significance: Love as Haunting

This expression is the novel's most powerful articulation of a love that is not merely romantic but ontological—a fusion of souls that death cannot dissolve. Heathcliff's earlier declaration, "I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!" immediately follows this plea, reinforcing the idea that Catherine is not a separate person he loved, but an essential part of his own being. His command for her to "take any form" and to "drive me mad" reveals a willingness to embrace suffering and insanity rather than endure the "abyss" of her absence. The speech transforms the conventional ghost story into a psychological and spiritual reality: Heathcliff does not fear being haunted; he actively courts it as the only remaining form of union. This inverts the typical horror of the supernatural, making the ghost a desired, even necessary, presence.

Consequences and Fulfillment

Heathcliff's plea is answered, but in a way that brings him neither peace nor the simple companionship he craves. For eighteen years, he is tormented by Catherine's presence, which he feels but cannot see. He tells Nelly that she has "disturbed me, night and day, through eighteen years—incessantly—remorselessly." He describes a state of perpetual, agonizing anticipation: "When I sat in the house with Hareton, it seemed that on going out I should meet her; when I walked on the moors I should meet her coming in." The haunting he demanded becomes an intolerable torture, a "sport" that keeps his nerves "at such a stretch" that only their catgut-like resilience prevents them from snapping. The fulfillment of his wish is not a comfort but a refined, prolonged punishment. Only after he opens Catherine's coffin and sees her face again does he feel a measure of "pacification," and even then, his final days are marked by a strange, ecstatic anticipation of death, when he believes he will finally join her. The plea, therefore, is both a curse he places on himself and the engine of the novel's final, eerie resolution, where the living see his and Catherine's ghosts roaming the moors together.