Wuthering Heights

“I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it. 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. 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.”

3.5 STARS

I'm conflicted. I'm very, very conflicted. One the one hand, I love and adore Romantic writing, with all the figurative language and beautiful descriptions galore. On the other, I despise all the petty drama that pretty much sums up Romantic era plots. However, I may make an exception for this book. This is my first Brontë novel, and though I wanted to read Jane Eyre first, this one just happened to come up beforehand. And man was it a trial. As I've read in many other Romantic works, the characters are strong, but their storylines are beyond confusing, so much so that I had to draw up a character chart just to keep everything straight in my head. And after reading it, my head was kind of swimming in brain soup, but I made it. I think the most interesting thing with this novel are the divisions of self. Catherine Earnshaw is split within herself between the person she wants to be and the person she really is, the socially accepted debutante and the wild wraith circling the moors. This conflict is found in many characters, but the schism within this character is the most defining of the novel. These foils and shadows are what make up Brontë's work. In Victorian society, many people were locked within themselves, forced to confine their ideas and motivations and ambitions within very strictly placed parameters, and this caused an inherent rebellion in youth. The nature versus society mentality was carried over well in this book, especially with Heathcliff representing a Byronic hero and so many characters following a similar path of their parents, but then splitting into a different direction. Unfortunately, I was somewhat unsatisfied with the conclusion on the novel. Perhaps that's because I wanted a complete tragedy, rather than a bittersweet morsel left on the last page with Cathy and Hareton, but then again, it wouldn't have been any better for everyone to have been miserable or everyone to have fulfilled their desires. My main interest of the novel remains with Catherine, but the devolution of Heathcliff was an interesting thing to watch. This boy who rose from nothing in the face of adversary, but let oppression rule him and degrade his very soul was gruesome and abhorrent, but one you couldn't turn away from. His division of self was less substantial, but there all the same with inherent goodness versus inherent evil and what the environment forces on us. All in all, the plot was rather petty and severely drawn out, but the metaphorical writing and analysis of the novel won me over.

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