The reading
The bead. The reader is handed the fantasy of being wanted so totally that another soul is not merely fond of you but is you — a craving that outlasts marriage, sanity, and death itself.
Engines
- being-desired · content · spine · ~ — Catherine is held back by the worldly choice that unsees the bond ("It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now"), and the wish is paid out in the totality of being wanted: "he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." Heathcliff completes the slot from the other side, demanding to be chosen past the grave — "Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad!... I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!"
The bundle. Single-engine: the Gothic machinery, the revenge plot, and the second-generation reconciliation all orbit the one furnace — to be desired without limit or remainder.
Dual-use read. being-desired's counterfeit is possession that consumes the wanted one — being needed as proof of the wanter's appetite rather than chosen for your own sake. Wuthering Heights does not run the counterfeit clean; it stares straight at it, letting the want curdle into cruelty. The reader still buys the bright pole (to be irreplaceable) while the book shows the bill.
Verdict. The canonical engine of total desire, refusing to flatter it — you get the wish and the wreckage in the same breath.
Evidence. ~ reviewed — Project Gutenberg #768; slot quotes confirmed against the text.