How many have reread, Wuthering Heights, one of the finest English novels published two centuries ago? I’m glad I did. I can now claim that I understand the famed author Emily Bronte and her philosophies behind the pain and trauma in this romantic fiction better. Decades ago, when I read it first time, I skipped pages to avoid the dread and dreariness (of the characters) seeping into me.
This novel is not for the weakhearted. It is made unputdownable only because it feeds on uncertainty. In the moorlands of Yorkshire in England, a foundling brought home by a well-to-do gentleman messes up the lives of two generations of not one but two families for more than three decades. Reason? Rejection by his ladylove, triggering vengeance and harming everyone in its path.
Thank God the author decides to take the lives of all those sufferers at a young age; otherwise, the misery would have gone on much longer.
Most of the characters in this classic book die young making one wonder who will the next be. That doesnβt mean one puts the book down in disgust. At that point, curiosity gets the better of you and makes you turn the pages at a quicker pace. One saddening and surprising reality is that just like her characters in the book, Emily Bronte and all her equally talented siblings died at a young age.
The entire story takes place in two neighboring home estates – Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange; the former symbolizing the stormy and decadent nature of life and the latter representing the calm, moralistic side of human nature.
Hindley and Catherine Earnshaw (Cathy), the children of Mr. Earnshaw Senior now have an adopted brother, Heathcliff, thanks to their father’s humane nature. Hindley hates and ill-treats the foundling brought home from day one where as pretty Cathy makes a great playmate of him and later falls in love with him. If they hadnβt wandered into the neighboring Thrushcross Grange and met a young and debonair Edgar Linton, Cathy would have ‘lived happily ever after,’ with Heathcliff, and language lovers would have been cheated of the ‘Greatest Love Story of All Time – Wuthering Heights.
In most great love stories, there is a villain or a vamp who would disapprove of a budding, passionate relationship between two young lovers. Wuthering Heights has no such gun-trotting father or emotionally blackmailing mother. As if on a whim or fascinated by the upwardly mobile lifestyle of Edgar, our protagonist, Cathy, decides to distance herself from Heathcliff to marry Edgar and move to Thrushcross Grange. This unexpected rejection hurts young Heathcliff deeply and irrevocably. Scorned lover Heathcliff disappears angry and dejected only to return a rich man burning with vengeance.
Passionate love, I suppose, has to remain unfulfilled in order to kindle through a lifetime.
The ripple effect of Heathcliff’s comeback is felt by two generations, destroying the lives all around. With single-minded pursuit, he ruins the lives of Edgar Linton and Cathy, Edgar’s sister Isabelle whom he marries as a part of his ploy, and that of the now pathetic widower, Hindley. He doesn’t spare the next generation children who too scorch and scald in his flame of retribution. Cathy and Edgar Linton’s daughter Catherine Linton, Isabelle and Heathcliff’s own son – the weakling – Linton Heathcliff, and Hindley Earnshaw’s son, Hareton Earnshaw – none is spared.
All through this turmoil, Heathcliff’s love for Cathy is intact though he wouldn’t hesitate before hurting his own son and his lover’s daughter. After Cathy passes away, he cries out in the dead of the night pleading her to visit him, at least trouble him as a ghost. He never stops loving Cathy – a typical obsessed lover who can see nothing beyond. For him, the means is the end in itself.
Heathcliff’s plotting and planning is total misery for Catherine Linton (now the young widow of Linton Heathcliff) and Hareton Earnshaw (an uneducated ruffian growing up under the shadows of Heathcliff). The two youngsters – sophisticated, literate, extrovert Catherine and rough-tough, illiterate, shy Hareton – can’t stand each other but are now sharing the haunted, crumbling Wuthering Heights with the craziest of all – Heathcliff himself.
In almost three-fourth part of this romantic/psychological fiction, love resonates as a revengeful obsession resulting in tragedies, and the last one-third part comes as a redemption indicating that the author, after all, does believe in love that can be calming, caring, and devoted to the wellbeing of one another.
Life for women during early 19th Century wasn’t much different from today. Women played second fiddle to men then as is today. Still, Emily Bronte’s female characters are powerful and feminine; the author, in the book, lets the women choose their men and not the other way round though they may end up being hurt by the same men.
Psychological issues and all-consuming desire for self-destruction in unfulfilled love is not uncommon. Lovelorn couple would rather punish themselves than lead a happy life. Heathcliff, on the other hand, goes far beyond and wrecks the lives of everyone around along with his own life – the reason why he or Cathy do not evoke the sympathy of readers.
Two characters that touch a sensitive chord in readers’ mind are Hareton and Catherine, living in Wuthering Heights with an abusive, mentally messed-up Heathcliff and at the same time trying to find a semblance of normalcy in that dilapidated home of theirs. Wild, passionate, unfulfilled love of Cathy and Heathcliff is in stark contrast to the budding romance that keep Catherine and Hareton alive.
One must read this romantic saga once (if not twice) without skipping pages at least to reinforce the undeniable truth that there is no enemy worse than a scorned lover.
Sudhas_Musings 