Wuthering Heights in Around the World in 80 Books

Jan 09, 2012 SarahC rated it really liked it

Shelves: challenge2012

I have spent some fascinating hours reading Wuthering Heights these past few weeks. It has been a more thorough read than in my earlier days when I think honestly I was more eager to get on with reading Jane Eyre, sister Charlotte’s novel. It may be one of the most studied works of literature and I see why because commenting on it here has not been easy. It is a book so easy to love but hard to completely understand. It is a blunt, deep examination of humans, written in the 1840s when that sort I have spent some fascinating hours reading Wuthering Heights these past few weeks. It has been a more thorough read than in my earlier days when I think honestly I was more eager to get on with reading Jane Eyre, sister Charlotte’s novel. It may be one of the most studied works of literature and I see why because commenting on it here has not been easy. It is a book so easy to love but hard to completely understand. It is a blunt, deep examination of humans, written in the 1840s when that sort of thing was not plentiful. The writing is beautiful - Emily Bronte may have written in a “private language” - I believed Charlotte Bronte stated -- but she had full command of that language and is able to bring the reader in to this page-turning world.

The characters are isolated, wicked, puzzling, conflicted, and revengeful. This is an undying love story, but more impressive to me is there is a sense of honesty and realism -- almost politics-- between Heathcliff and the elder Catherine. This doesn’t sound very romantic, but it clinched the story to me more than the strong emotional scenes of Heathcliff. This realism is present as Catherine confesses to Nelly why she will marry Edgar and in the confrontational discussion between Catherine and Heathcliff at Thrushcross Grange. I agree that Emily Bronte was a visionary in transitioning fiction writing toward realism.

The famous character Heathcliff is enigmatic. We will never know his origin and we are largely told his story through narrators. The narrator describes the revenge he attempts to carry out on the small collection of people he is adopted into, but we also see how these people contribute to the cruelty and madness that become his life. He is a violent, ruthless, frightening man, but carries on rational conversation with his only semi-ally, life-long member/servant of the household, Ellen Dean.

The rest of the family in the story become a part of perpetuated pain and anger and also loss common of the times. Through illness, the young children Hareton, Cathy, and Linton lose their mothers, causing them to become further victims of the wrongdoings and dysfunction of the joined families in the story. Thus Heathcliff lives to see some of his revenge but not his satisfaction on the outcome of this next generation of the family. Heathcliff’s own heart and strong hints of the supernatural take over to bring this unsentimental romantic story to a close.

Throughout the book we only ever see clues rather than facts of the story through Nelly (Ellen) as a narrator and Lockwood who records her narration and details his own detached part in the happenings. So we are left with more that we want to know and that we only will know through our own interpretation and imaginings

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