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 Love Among The Damned February 25, 2005
Gary F. Taylor (Biloxi, MS USA)
221 out of 226 found this review helpful
Published in 1847, WUTHERING HEIGHTS was not well received by the reading public, many of whom condemned it as sordid, vulgar, and unnatural--and author Emily Bronte went to her grave in 1848 believing that her only novel was a failure. It was not until 1850, when WUTHERING HEIGHTS received a second printing with an introduction by Emily's sister Charlotte, that it attracted a wide readership. And from that point the reputation of the book has never looked back. Today it is widely recognized as one of the great novels of English literature.
Even so, WUTHERING HEIGHTS continues to divide readers. It is not a pretty love story; rather, it is swirling tale of largely unlikeable people caught up in obsessive love that turns to dark madness. It is cruel, violent, dark and brooding, and many people find it extremely unpleasant. And yet--it possesses a grandeur of language and design, a sense of tremendous pity and great loss that sets it apart from virtually every other novel written.
The novel is told in the form of an extended flashback. After a visit to his strange landlord, a newcomer to the area desires to know the history of the family--which he receives from Nelly Deans, a servant who introduces us to the Earnshaw family who once resided in the house known as Wuthering Heights. It was once a cheerful place, but Old Earnshaw adopted a "Gipsy" child who he named Heathcliff. And Catherine, daughter of the house, found in him the perfect companion: wild, rude, and as proud and cruel as she. But although Catherine loves him, even recognizes him as her soulmate, she cannot lower herself to marry so far below her social station. She instead marries another, and in so doing sets in motion an obsession that will destroy them all.
WUTHERING HEIGHTS is a bit difficult to "get into;" the opening chapters are so dark in their portrait of the end result of this obsessive love that they are somewhat off-putting. But they feed into the flow of the work in a remarkable way, setting the stage for one of the most remarkable structures in all of literature, a story that circles upon itself in a series of repetitions as it plays out across two generations. Catherine and Heathcliff are equally remarkable, both vicious and cruel, and yet never able to shed their impossible love no matter how brutally one may wound the other.
As the novel coils further into alcoholism, seduction, and one of the most elaborately imagined plans of revenge it gathers into a ghostly tone: Heathcliff, driven to madness by a woman who is not there but who seems reflected in every part of his world--dragging her corpse from the grave, hearing her calling to him from the moors, escalating his brutality not for the sake of brutality but so that her memory will never fade, so that she may never leave his mind until death itself. Yes, this is madness, insanity, and there is no peace this side of the grave or even beyond.
It is a stunning novel, frightening, inexorable, unsettling, filled with unbridled passion that makes one cringe. Even if you do not like it, you should read it at least once--and those who do like it will return to it again and again.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
A Dark Romantic Classic Which Epitomizes Great Gothic Literature August 4, 2005
Jana L. Perskie (New York, NY USA)
69 out of 76 found this review helpful
"Wuthering Heights," Emily Bronte's only published novel, is a saga of two Yorkshire families who live in the remote Pennine Hills of England's North Country. To me the book has always epitomized the best of gothic fiction. The narrative is filled with intensity of feeling, especially Heathcliff's passionate love for his Cathy and hers for him - a love which endures beyond the grave. More than would be lovers, however, the two are soul mates and have been since their childhood. Cathy once told Nelly, her servant and friend: "My greatest thought in living is Heathcliff. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be... Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure... but as my own being."
Yet, the novel is more than a love story. "Wuthering Heights" is about hatred, cruelty, delusion, frustrated yearning, obsession, deep despair and vengeance. At times its very darkness is depressing and painful. Yet love and faithfulness, which endure beyond death, bring hope and much needed light to this tale; as does a second love story, born from the seeds of the first. The author also addresses the issues of social class here. Both Linton and Earnshaw families are considered gentry. However, the Linton's are a more educated, cultured group and appear to be of a higher class than those who reside at Wuthering Heights. Some of Catherine's most crucial decisions involve moving up in society.
The story is told in a series of narratives, none of which are entirely reliable. During the winter of 1801, a gentleman named Mr. Lockwood rents a manor house called Thrushcross Grange in Yorkshire. He has a natural curiosity, and in time visits his neighbor and wealthy landlord, Heathcliff, a grim, forbidding man who lives at Wuthering Heights, a few miles from the Grange. Lockwood also makes the acquaintance of Heathcliff's housekeeper Ellen Dean, called Nelly, and asks her to tell him about her employer and the history of those who reside at Wuthering Heights. He documents her narrative in his journal, and his written recollections make up the main portion of the novel. Much of Nellie's tale consists of memories from years before, her observations of life with the Earnshaw family, her recollections of the Lintons, and her own conclusions, which are subjective. Lockwood, gets his information second hand, from Nellie's perspective. He continually interprets, and misinterprets the relationships and actions of the characters who play such major roles here. So, it is up to the reader to make sense of it all - which is what the author intended.
As a young girl Nelly worked as a servant at Wuthering Heights for Mr. Earnshaw, the owner, his wife, and their two children, Hindley, and Catherine. Earnshaw returned from a business trip to Liverpool with a gypsy-like urchin, a dark-haired, handsome orphan boy. He had taken quite a fancy to the lad, a quiet, stoic child, and names him Heathcliff, after a son who died. Earnshaw decides to raise him with his own children. Catherine befriends Heathcliff almost instantly. They share a love of nature, and an emotional intensity unknown to most people. They are able to communicate with each other easily, even as young children, and both possess tremendously creative imaginations. The two roam the moorland wilderness, where they're most at home, like wild creatures of nature, and become inseparable friends. Hindley detests Heathcliff from the first. He is jealous and goads the boy constantly. Eventually, after the death of his wife, Mr. Earnshaw begins to show preference for Heathcliff over his own son, which exacerbates the hostility. Finally, Hindley is sent away to school and Heathcliff is kept at home, at Earnshaw's side.
Hindley comes into his inheritance some years later, at age twenty, when his father dies. Cathy is eleven years-old, and Heathcliff about twelve, when the heir returns to Wuthering Heights, and seeks vicious revenge for having his rights usurped by a wretched boy from the slums with no means of his own. Obviously Heathcliff cannot defend himself and is totally dependent on Hindley. He is forced to work as a laborer in the fields, and is treated harshly, as less worthy than an animal. He and Cathy maintain their closeness. They still wander the wild North country and she shares her studies with him. One night they pay a clandestine visit to Thrushcross Grange, home of the Linton family. Cultured, spoiled and very well behaved, young Edgar and Isabella live there. When a dog savagely bites Cathy, it is discovered that she and Heathcliff have been hiding in the brush spying. The girl is seriously injured and is forced to stay at the Grange for several weeks to recover. During her time with the Linton family, Mrs. Linton becomes intent on turning wild, mischievous Cathy into a young lady. She encourages her to become a young woman with manners and actions appropriate to her social standing in society, rather than the wild, headstrong creature she is while roaming the moors with Heathcliff. By the time Catherine returns home, in elegant new clothes, she has become infatuated with Edgar Linton. Needless to say, her relationship with Heathcliff deteriorates significantly, as he feels he is losing the only person he ever loved.
Edgar pursues Catherine relentlessly, and eventually, the young woman's desire for social advancement, and an inexplicable fey, self destructive quality about her, prompt her to accept his proposal. However, she really does not love her fiance. She may care for him, but her feelings are much less than what her passionate nature requires. On the other hand genteel women of this period were supposed to have neither "passionate" nor intense feelings. "'Here and here!' replied Catherine, striking one hand on her forehead and the other on her breast: 'in which ever place the soul lives. In my soul and in my heart, I'm convinced I'm wrong!'" Thus Catherine acknowledges to Nelly that her marriage to Edgar cannot be one of love. Although she knows that Heathcliff is her true love, however, she cannot marry him because he has been so debased by Hindley. "It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightening, or frost from fire". Her powerful connection to Heathcliff is always present, no matter how annoyed she becomes with him. Heathcliff leaves Wuthering Heights a bitter man. He knows that if he had come from a better social class, or had wealth, Cathy would have married him. When he finally returns, years later, a self-possessed, successful, wealthy man, he is obsessed with revenge, and is more adept at exacting it than Hindley ever was.
Nelly continues her increasingly complex tale, (which I won't spoil for you), of three generations: of births, marriages, deaths, traumas, complications, a second more hopeful love story and redemption. The most recurring theme is the great love and friendship, the everlasting connection, between Cathy and her Heathcliff, whose difficult nature is almost impossible to understand and to accept - unless, of course, one thinks about his unknown origins and early childhood as a homeless waif in Liverpool. One can only imagine the horrors he experienced wandering the streets of the rough port town, with neither protection nor kindness. What cruelty and meanness of spirit did he learn there? His terrible, inhuman treatment at Hindley's hands certainly played a part in Heathcliff's lust for revenge and lack of mercy, as did Catherine's decision to marry Linton, which must have been devastating for him. Heathcliff remains a dark, brooding, cruel man throughout his adult years and never reforms. He is an anti-hero, at least in my eyes, as he also possesses good qualities, along with a terrible sadness, an emptiness and longing which he shows to Cathy alone.
Emily Bronte's extraordinary prose is filled with powerful imagery. Miss Brontë spent most of her short life at home, in Thornton, Yorkshire, where she was happiest. She loved the surrounding moors - the wide, wild expanses, unsuitable for cultivation, and full of danger. There are bogs and wetlands on the moors, which can go virtually unseen, and where one can drown. It is also a place of great beauty. The author spent much time walking there with her dogs and was terribly unhappy when she was away. The similarities between the author's natural environment and that of the area around Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange are obvious. Ms Bronte drew inspiration from the regional Yorkshire architecture also, as well as her own personal experiences and her amazing imagination, a gift Charlotte, Emily, Anne and Branwell Bronte shared - with each other and with us. I have read a few Bronte biographies and always felt that the character of Catherine Earnshaw, certainly her intensity and love of nature, was based on Emily Bronte.
Keep a box of tissues handy throughout your reading of "Wuthering Heights." I wonder if this is the first tearjerker?
JANA
My favorite novel of all time March 3, 2006
B. McEwan (Brooklyn, NY USA)
30 out of 31 found this review helpful
There is a thin line between love and hate, and once Heathcliff crosses it, we see a grand, passionate and absorbingly interesting man turn into a fearsome thug. Thwarted in his love for his childhood soulmate, Catherine Earnshaw, Heathcliff turns his devastation outward, becoming a hateful -- and hated -- person all across the bleak moors that surround his Yorkshire village.
Heathcliff courts and marries the sister of the man whom Catherine chose over Heathcliff, only to torture her emotionally as a way of getting even with her brother. Meanwhile, Catherine slowly wastes away pining for Heathcliff, for although she once rejected him, she eventually realizes that she has made an irredeemable error and can never be happy. Heathcliff sums up the tragedy of their lives in a single question near the end of the novel when he asks, "Why did you betray your heart, Cathy?"
Sound depressing? It's not. Wuthering Heights is a grand and glorious novel that dramatically illustrates the power of love, for good and ill. But more importantly, it teaches us that the only path to happiness is to be true to one's heart, rather than one's head. Had Catherine honored her bond with Heathcliff and refused to bow to the social mores of her day, not only would the two of them been much happier, but all of the many people whose lives they stumbled into would have been much better off.
Another reviewer said that those of us who love this novel probably have a strong identification with one of the characters, and for me that is quite true. That's the reason for reading a classic like Wuthering Heights, because when it speaks to you in the clear and true way that Bronte does, you know that you are not alone, and that some things transcend time and place.
Think about it -- a prim, Victorian preacher's daughter living on the moors of England before there was electricity can reach across 150 years of time and speak to the heart of a wired American in the 21st century. Pretty amazing, and highly recommended.
Best English Assignment January 14, 2000
28 out of 30 found this review helpful
I'm 16 and fall into the vast catogory of Wutehring Heights readers who had to finish it for a highschool english assignment. If I hadn't been, er, forced to read it, I never would've encountered this amazing book. The themes that it encompasses, love, hate, revenge, isolation, are so masterfully blended in this book that I found it extremely powerful. True, it is not a romance - it is so much more. I didn't find it confusing, although Joseph's lines had to be read allowed several times before they were actaully understood. The doubling-up of names just increases the sense of isolation within the book, something which I think is rather important to the story. I hardly find this book boring at all, it's passionate and full of action, something which took me completely off guard. Please, give it a chance. And even though he was a complete jerk, my favourite character is still Heathcliff. *G*
A novel unsurpassed in it's force of being. March 7, 2000
Daniel (USA)
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
Emily Jane Bronte wrote Wuthering Heights not to show what love IS. But what love can DO to those who are encompassed by desire. This novel is simply brilliant and by far the greatest novel of the Brontes and (in my opinion) the greatest novel ever written. I say this because Emily laid aside all the conventional types of victorian writing and imbued her novel with persons and events that are not ordinary, but utterly fascinating. Almost completely unrealistic at times, yet perfectly sound in their meanings. Some say to me that Wuthering Heights is impossible to enjoy. While others say they dislike the characters so much that they had to stop reading. I also hear that they cannot figure out all the plot twist and turns. But I say, is this not what REAL-LIFE is? There is no certainty of happiness in the lives of Catherine and Heathcliff. Certainly there is no certainty of happiness for ANYONE in the novel. (Which goes the same for all of us.) As wretched as this seems, Emily (in my opinion) did not write a full blown epic of true romance, despite what many say they love about this novel. She took humans and turned them into what is surprizingly MORE realistic. Emily filled them with faults and turned Cathy and Heathcliff into selfish and undeserving people who destroy each other, not out of love, but out of greed and their own unharnessable animal-like behaviour of what love was TO THEM. What they do and say isn't romantic, but a sign (or even a warning from Emily) of what self indulgence and obsession can do to people pushed beyond their limits of common sense. Cathy and Heathcliff brought themselves to believe that their love was REAL, when in fact their grasp of love was (as Charlotte said, PERVERTED.) Unrelenting in it's destructivness, thus leading to the various calamities their actions bestowed upon the (somewhat) innocent people surrounding them. As brilliant as this novel is, the greatness lies in the story telling of the many different characters we meet. The many different view points from Nellie to Edgar to Isabella and Hindley, spread across the pages and show you how they interact and react with one another as they expierence the situations which seem so very wild and incredible yet ring so very true. This (to me) is not exactly a novel about unbending love. But more of a study of the weaknesses that is stored in everyman. Emily gave us a written guide to show that following your instincts and passions is not always the best path to take. And Emily accomplished this with the most brilliant and unsurpassed written novel in history. It's pages burn with life and it's characters speak in tongues which, even now, I cannot always fully understand. Wuthering Heights can be looked upon as a fascinating study of a particular human race (at what could be any time frame) covering the ground of but a few persons, admist the many open miles... Thank you for your eyes...
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