Reviews

I often wonder what differences make some of us more bitter or melancholy towards life than others. One of my favorite theories is from Fyodor Dostoevsky. To paraphrase a part of Aloysha’s speech in the last pages of Brothers Karamazov, one must always remember at least one good memory of one’s childhood, if there are more the better – but even one is enough, a memory of time when one was good and happy, to keep from growing wicked and bitter. (Something similar was called ‘core memories’ in movie 'Inside Out') It is perhaps this core memory that kept Alyosha standing while his brothers fell.

Heathcliff’s childhood memories were all associated with Catherine, and so they all get corrupted when he thought she has betrayed him. Given that he was always an arrogant narcissist, it sounds possible he should become what he became. “Terror made me cruel . . .”

Catherine’s problem is that she often forgets that other people might have thoughts and feelings of their own. She too is a narcissist - having a tendency of saying and doing things that hurt people around her and then being shocked when they show their sentiments; taking decisions for others without caring to ask them etc. Her love for H. is very much same as her love for servants or her husband - a habit “She had a wondrous constancy to old attachments.”

Now imagine a love story between two such lovely people! Some people don't think that it is a love-story, but the thing is we have a fancy-dressed idea of the way how 'love' or people in love look like or that love somehow makes people better whereas love is nothing more than an emotional attachment - and all sorts of people including psychopaths like Elizabeth and Heathcliff are capable of it. Emily seems to be trying to say a love-story is only as good as people in love are and no one is perfect.

Though more importantly, it seems to me a study of how the bitterness of life passes from one generation to next. Not all parents or guardians try to ruin the lives of children in as organized a manner as H. but, children often suffer where their caretakers can't get over their own pasts.

Aso, although highly exaggerated, the characters are not as eccentric as they give the impression of. As Nally points out "here we are the same as anywhere else, when you get to know us.” I guess she herself is to be blamed partially for creating the wrong impression. There is hardly a scene in her description in which at least one of the characters isn’t too emotionally excited. Nally seems to show no desire to describe soft scenes

Spoiler

(except for a scene towards the end, where characters of new generation are flirting)

– like scenes of H. and Catherine playing when they were children, or their walks (which made Isabella fall in love with him) but I guess this might be intentional – to justify the title, by showing characters only in wuthering heights of their emotions.