Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.

The line is spoken by Catherine Earnshaw in Emily Brontë’s novel *Wuthering Heights* (1847), during her intimate conversation with the housekeeper Nelly Dean in which she tries to explain the nature of her bond with Heathcliff. Catherine is weighing her socially advantageous engagement to Edgar Linton against what she describes as her elemental, identity-deep connection to Heathcliff. The remark comes as she insists that her relationship with Heathcliff is not merely romantic preference but something intrinsic—formed before choice, class, or circumstance—reflecting the novel’s broader preoccupation with passion, social constraint, and the destructive force of absolute attachment.

Catherine’s claim that their souls are made of the same substance expresses a radical idea of likeness: Heathcliff is not simply someone she loves, but someone she experiences as continuous with herself. The metaphor collapses boundaries between self and other, suggesting a bond that is spiritual, instinctive, and prior to social identity. In *Wuthering Heights*, this intensity is both exalting and catastrophic: it underwrites Catherine’s sense of destiny while also making compromise—marriage, respectability, separation—feel like self-mutilation. The line has endured because it captures an extreme vision of intimacy, where love is framed as shared essence rather than shared experience.