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A review by thaurisil
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
5.0
Lockwood, a new tenant at Thrushwood Grange, inquires of his housekeeper Ellen Dean about his mysterious introverted landlord, Heathcliff. Ellen's narration forms the bulk of the rest of the book. Heathcliff was an orphan found by Mr Earnshaw and brought to live with Earnshaw's family, including his son Hindley and daughter Catherine, at Wuthering Heights. Favoured and spoilt by Mr Earnshaw, Heathcliff was the subject of jealousy and bullying by Hindley, Joseph the supposedly religious servant, and Ellen herself, who was then a child. Heathcliff's only friend was Catherine. Both proud, stubborn and wild, Hindley and Catherine had a tempestuous but passionately devoted friendship. Their separation began when Catherine made friends with the Linton family, living at Thrushcross Grange, including the boy Edgar and the girl Isabella. Transformed by their influence from a wild savage girl into a lady, Catherine, though still loving Heathcliff as dearly as herself, married Edgar. Heathcliff, perceiving himself jilted, left for three years. He returned and married Isabella, bringing her to Wuthering Heights where he mistreated her, using her as a surrogate for his revenge on Edgar. He visited Thrushcross Grange a few time and quarrelled with Edgar, causing Isabella to fall sick. Her illness deepened from forced separation from Heathcliff, and she eventually died shortly after giving birth to a daughter, also named Catherine. While Heathcliff mourned, Isabella first taunted him, then escaped to the south of London, where she gave birth to Heathcliff's son, Linton. Hindley died of alcoholism, leaving behind his son Hareton, who, though smart, was brought up illiterate and doing manual labour. Over the next twelve years, Catherine was brought up by Edgar and Ellen Dean. Isabella died and Linton was brought to Thrushcross Grange and claimed by Heathcliff. Linton was effeminate and frail, but Heathcliff, intending to use his heir for vengeance against the Earnshaws and Lintons, gave him an education and forced the servants to treat him well. Catherine, who had been kept away from Wuthering Heights all her life, chanced upon it after turning sixteen. Linton was proud and scornful, but Catherine was triggered into sympathy for his frail condition. Eventually, manipulated by Heathcliff, Linton and Catherine married shortly before both Edgar and Linton died. Both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange became Heathcliff's, fulfilling his plan for vengeance against the Earnshaws and Lintons. This brings us to the present day, and Lockwood decides to leave for London. he returns to Wuthering Heights a year later, and finds that Catherine, who had previously been scornful of Hareton's illiteracy, has now formed a relationship with Hareton, who does his utmost to learn to read under Catherine's guidance. Heathcliff discovers their relationship, but has lost his will to oppress them. Haunted by visions of the first Catherine, whom he has never stopped thinking of since her death, he fasts for four days and dies.
This book was not what I was expecting. I’d heard of Heathcliff as a tortured mysterious romantic hero, and I expected a love story with a dark sexy male. But while this is a love story of sorts, it is nothing like a traditional love story, and nothing like what I’d expect out of a female author from the Victorian era. If it is a story of love, it is also a story of hate, and both love and hate are brought to wildly passionate, obsessive, almost superhuman levels that defy common moral codes.
None of the characters are likeable. Heathcliff is manipulative, driven by a creepy monomania for Catherine and an unrelenting desire for revenge. Both Catherines are snobbish and proud, Hindley is a bully, Linton is spoilt and selfish, and Joseph is a brute. Edgar, though kind, is weak and stubborn. Ellen seems to be a good-hearted person, but this is biased by the fact that she is the narrator, and she harbours deep prejudices and hatreds, in particular a hatred for Heathcliff, and is quick to defend her carelessness. Even Lockwood seems a fool, though we don’t know enough about him to judge. The most likeable character, to me, was Hareton. He shows signs of a brain and kindness even from the start of the novel, and in a book full of proud characters, he is the only humble one.
Yet the flaws of the characters don’t stop me from loving the book or sympathising with the characters. Almost every character is proud and selfish, but they are victims of the circumstances in which they are brought up. Mr Earnshaw is doting but neglectful of his children, resulting in Hindley’s cruelty and Catherine’s snobbishness. Heathcliff’s violent and twisted nature is a result of the torture he gained at the hands of Hindley, Joseph and Ellen, the scorn from the Lintons, and the torment of his only friend marrying another. In the next generation, the faults of Catherine and Linton can be attributed to an over-protected, sheltered childhood, while Hareton is given scarcely any parenting at all. In a recurring theme, the sins of the parents pass to the descendants. Those in Heathcliff's and Catherine's generation are spoiled by poor parenting, while those in Hareton and Cathy's generation are influenced by the feuds between their parents. All the characters suffer from seclusion from the outside world, and the standard morals and laws of justice that belong to it. In illustrating their lives from birth to tragic death, Brontë enables us to put ourselves into their shoes and to sympathise with their flaws.
The first half of the book focuses on the obsessive love between Heathcliff and Catherine. The two understand each other in a way nobody else can. In what is perhaps the greatest tragedies of the book, Catherine married Edgar because she believes that she and Heathcliff are one and the same person, declaring that “I am Heathcliff”, and nothing can separate them though she is married to another. Heathcliff, on the other hand, perceives himself to be betrayed and abandoned. Their relationship goes through terrifying heights of passion and depths of anger, and like a hurricane sweeps through all subsequent events creating a hailstorm of destruction. Though the older Heathcliff is hateful and destructive, I was moved by his never-ending obsessive love for Catherine and his torture by her marriage and death, and I rooted for him, hoping he would find his peace.
In contrast, the love between the younger Catherine and Hareton is a gentler and more natural. He is attracted to her first, and tries to learn to read to be like her, but she scorns him till one day she grows to take pity on him and then gradually to love him. The best I could hope for most of the characters was that they would find peace from inner and outer turmoil, and the book ends on a redeeming note with the hope that Catherine and Hareton ultimately find peace in their shared love.
Another big theme is hierarchy. The Lintons are gentry, while the Earnshaws have a more precarious place in the gentry. Catherine married Edgar partly to get a step up in society, with the aim of helping Heathcliff get rich. But Heathcliff, not understanding her motives, sees himself as being scorned. He, a dark-skinned orphan, is at the bottom of the social ladder, and as he rises to the status of a gentleman – in wealth but not in manners – he usurps the place of the Earnshaws and Lintons, gaining through the law the money and property that belonged to them.
Ellen is an interesting choice of narrator. As a household servant in both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, she best knows the affairs of both families. It is strange that many of the characters trust her with their secrets, as she is prejudiced against many of them, in particular Heathcliff, judgmental and careless. But perhaps as one of the few female presences in the novel, and a household domestic with a fixed place in the social hierarchy, she is the only person who doesn’t threaten any of the other characters and hence forms a natural confidante.
Why is this book so readable? Brontë has a style that is engaging and suspenseful. She drew me into her story and characters, so that I wanted to know what happened to them, and because of the framing structure, I wanted to know how it came about that Heathcliff, Hareton and Catherine were the only remaining people at Wuthering Heights. It's gothic, with the setting of two isolated families on a bleak moor troubled by thunderstorms and snow, the dark twisted characters, and Catherine's ghostly presence that haunts Heathcliff and, in a nightmare, Lockwood.
I wonder who Emily Brontë was. She died a year after writing this book and we don't have any other works to compare it to. What must a mind be like to create such a tale of such unrelenting emotional magnitude with such tormented and haunted characters, especially when bred in a Victorian society? I'm sorry she only had one book to give us, but I'm thankful that she gave us a book of such originality and addictiveness.
This book was not what I was expecting. I’d heard of Heathcliff as a tortured mysterious romantic hero, and I expected a love story with a dark sexy male. But while this is a love story of sorts, it is nothing like a traditional love story, and nothing like what I’d expect out of a female author from the Victorian era. If it is a story of love, it is also a story of hate, and both love and hate are brought to wildly passionate, obsessive, almost superhuman levels that defy common moral codes.
None of the characters are likeable. Heathcliff is manipulative, driven by a creepy monomania for Catherine and an unrelenting desire for revenge. Both Catherines are snobbish and proud, Hindley is a bully, Linton is spoilt and selfish, and Joseph is a brute. Edgar, though kind, is weak and stubborn. Ellen seems to be a good-hearted person, but this is biased by the fact that she is the narrator, and she harbours deep prejudices and hatreds, in particular a hatred for Heathcliff, and is quick to defend her carelessness. Even Lockwood seems a fool, though we don’t know enough about him to judge. The most likeable character, to me, was Hareton. He shows signs of a brain and kindness even from the start of the novel, and in a book full of proud characters, he is the only humble one.
Yet the flaws of the characters don’t stop me from loving the book or sympathising with the characters. Almost every character is proud and selfish, but they are victims of the circumstances in which they are brought up. Mr Earnshaw is doting but neglectful of his children, resulting in Hindley’s cruelty and Catherine’s snobbishness. Heathcliff’s violent and twisted nature is a result of the torture he gained at the hands of Hindley, Joseph and Ellen, the scorn from the Lintons, and the torment of his only friend marrying another. In the next generation, the faults of Catherine and Linton can be attributed to an over-protected, sheltered childhood, while Hareton is given scarcely any parenting at all. In a recurring theme, the sins of the parents pass to the descendants. Those in Heathcliff's and Catherine's generation are spoiled by poor parenting, while those in Hareton and Cathy's generation are influenced by the feuds between their parents. All the characters suffer from seclusion from the outside world, and the standard morals and laws of justice that belong to it. In illustrating their lives from birth to tragic death, Brontë enables us to put ourselves into their shoes and to sympathise with their flaws.
The first half of the book focuses on the obsessive love between Heathcliff and Catherine. The two understand each other in a way nobody else can. In what is perhaps the greatest tragedies of the book, Catherine married Edgar because she believes that she and Heathcliff are one and the same person, declaring that “I am Heathcliff”, and nothing can separate them though she is married to another. Heathcliff, on the other hand, perceives himself to be betrayed and abandoned. Their relationship goes through terrifying heights of passion and depths of anger, and like a hurricane sweeps through all subsequent events creating a hailstorm of destruction. Though the older Heathcliff is hateful and destructive, I was moved by his never-ending obsessive love for Catherine and his torture by her marriage and death, and I rooted for him, hoping he would find his peace.
In contrast, the love between the younger Catherine and Hareton is a gentler and more natural. He is attracted to her first, and tries to learn to read to be like her, but she scorns him till one day she grows to take pity on him and then gradually to love him. The best I could hope for most of the characters was that they would find peace from inner and outer turmoil, and the book ends on a redeeming note with the hope that Catherine and Hareton ultimately find peace in their shared love.
Another big theme is hierarchy. The Lintons are gentry, while the Earnshaws have a more precarious place in the gentry. Catherine married Edgar partly to get a step up in society, with the aim of helping Heathcliff get rich. But Heathcliff, not understanding her motives, sees himself as being scorned. He, a dark-skinned orphan, is at the bottom of the social ladder, and as he rises to the status of a gentleman – in wealth but not in manners – he usurps the place of the Earnshaws and Lintons, gaining through the law the money and property that belonged to them.
Ellen is an interesting choice of narrator. As a household servant in both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, she best knows the affairs of both families. It is strange that many of the characters trust her with their secrets, as she is prejudiced against many of them, in particular Heathcliff, judgmental and careless. But perhaps as one of the few female presences in the novel, and a household domestic with a fixed place in the social hierarchy, she is the only person who doesn’t threaten any of the other characters and hence forms a natural confidante.
Why is this book so readable? Brontë has a style that is engaging and suspenseful. She drew me into her story and characters, so that I wanted to know what happened to them, and because of the framing structure, I wanted to know how it came about that Heathcliff, Hareton and Catherine were the only remaining people at Wuthering Heights. It's gothic, with the setting of two isolated families on a bleak moor troubled by thunderstorms and snow, the dark twisted characters, and Catherine's ghostly presence that haunts Heathcliff and, in a nightmare, Lockwood.
I wonder who Emily Brontë was. She died a year after writing this book and we don't have any other works to compare it to. What must a mind be like to create such a tale of such unrelenting emotional magnitude with such tormented and haunted characters, especially when bred in a Victorian society? I'm sorry she only had one book to give us, but I'm thankful that she gave us a book of such originality and addictiveness.