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earnest 's review for:
Wuthering Heights
by Emily Brontë
From it's inclusion as one of the seminal romance of literature one would think differently of the contents of Wuthering Heights. It is not a rom-com like Pride and Prejudice but rather a force its own. You will never read anything like it. If you have then it is probably one of its descendants trying to imitate it.
It works on so many levels that it is impossible to make sense of it all. There is first and foremost is the epic passion between Heatchcliff and Catherine that presents love in all its destructive glory. A love that is selfish, cruel, jealous and how after ending, still, it and its pain can fester and traverse lifetimes. Talk of Wuthering Heights often revolve around this love but for me it is the romance of the next generation, Hareton and the second Catherine's, that is the more attractive. Their stories are in direct opposite with each other. We see how the forces of savagery and civilization interact and in the end results in a love of forgiveness and understanding that set the characters free from the curse that haunts them.
The novel often produces dualities like this. WH and Thrushcros Grange, the two Catherines, Edgar and Linton. I think, that this is pivotal in how the entire structure works. A structure whose mechanism is buried deep between poetry, landscape and loves that we do not get to see working. We only reel from the effect that it has given us.
Lastly there is the fairy tale like quality of the novel. The moors replace the woods as the setting. Danger lurks in the cliffs and crevices rather than behind trees. The mansions are Gothic castles deep within. Claustrophobia abounds. There are no villagers or a scene stealing extra. Only characters deep set in their ways, as unchanging as their landscape. The two framing stories also adds to this aspect. We will never know how truthful the stories are or how much of it are the exaggeration of two gossips bored in the howling nights.
It works on so many levels that it is impossible to make sense of it all. There is first and foremost is the epic passion between Heatchcliff and Catherine that presents love in all its destructive glory. A love that is selfish, cruel, jealous and how after ending, still, it and its pain can fester and traverse lifetimes. Talk of Wuthering Heights often revolve around this love but for me it is the romance of the next generation, Hareton and the second Catherine's, that is the more attractive. Their stories are in direct opposite with each other. We see how the forces of savagery and civilization interact and in the end results in a love of forgiveness and understanding that set the characters free from the curse that haunts them.
The novel often produces dualities like this. WH and Thrushcros Grange, the two Catherines, Edgar and Linton. I think, that this is pivotal in how the entire structure works. A structure whose mechanism is buried deep between poetry, landscape and loves that we do not get to see working. We only reel from the effect that it has given us.
Lastly there is the fairy tale like quality of the novel. The moors replace the woods as the setting. Danger lurks in the cliffs and crevices rather than behind trees. The mansions are Gothic castles deep within. Claustrophobia abounds. There are no villagers or a scene stealing extra. Only characters deep set in their ways, as unchanging as their landscape. The two framing stories also adds to this aspect. We will never know how truthful the stories are or how much of it are the exaggeration of two gossips bored in the howling nights.