4.5ish <3

5 tormenting and passionate stars for a reading experience like no other, because never have I read a book that altered my emotions so many times in one book. My feelings moved in waves between compassion and despair, admiration and loathing, pity but always regret. Victims or tormentors – that’s for you to decide.

For me, Wuthering Heights is an epic and timeless classic that has everything; obsession, greed, revenge, grief, emotional abuse, inequality, and even light horror. Everything except the thing most associated with this story. In my opinion, this is not a love story – it is the most beautiful love story that never happened, and in that lies the tragedy and the power of this book.

It is a sobering waste of life and love, as the cruelty and selfishness of the characters shape their own story against the rigidity of an intolerant class system that pretty much predestined their fate anyway. Yet the unbreakable bond that existed between the two main characters sees them pursue each other – but always when it was too late, with the haunting realisation that this self-destruction is set to continue into the next generation as the sins of the parents threaten to live on through the children with the same cruelty and brutality they heaped on each other.

A brutal yet passionate story. A story about love, desire, and obsession but with ugly consequences, made all the more intense for its Victorian England setting.

In fact, Victorian realism at its best. Raw, rigid, unforgiving, and profoundly devastating.

The plot

Heathcliff becomes part of the family as Thrushcross Grange, when Mr Earnshaw takes the orphaned boy home to be part of the family. Accepted by Cathy, but bullied by Hindley, Heathcliff’s early start in life is sad and pitiful. Contrast that to the man who becomes obsessed with Cathy, and whose life is turned upside down when the teenage Cathy ultimately chooses wealth over love and marries Linton.

Overhearing a conversation where Cathy admits that Heathcliff will never be a man of means, he flees the Grange and only returning when he has acquired a fortune. What he didn’t hear from the last part of the conversation was Cathy professing her unwavering love for Heathcliff with the iconic words ‘I am Heathcliff’, and later ‘I cannot live without my life. I cannot love without my soul’, despite now being married to someone else. A haunting tale as the flawed decisions and their self-destructive nature dam the lives and outcomes of these soulmates.

However, in an act of revenge Heathcliff marries Cathy’s sister-in-law, Isabella, and fathers the son who is then to meet Cathy’s daughter in the second half of the book. Hope or hopelessness?

Review and Comments

Not all stories have to be cheerful with happy endings – after all that’s life, but it is how we respond to those that defines us. This brings me straight to the characterisation in the book, which is absolutely superb. Whether you like or loathe these characters, there is no doubt they were brilliantly cast. In fact, as a character study not one of the characters can elicit a single ounce of admiration from its readers, with the exception of the young Cathy and Hareton. Yet they all make tremendous book characters.

The writing style is perfect for the storyline and even the dull palette colours depicting the moors and weather reflects the mood of the book and sense of forlorn and hopelessness, as does Wuthering Heights itself. A place naked to the elements, with surroundings that are untamed and raw that mirror the characters central to the story.

A Love story? – Although romantism has a powerful influence on the story, this is not a love story. Instead, it is a powerful story of love and unity of two souls, in life and in death. The iconic words will resonate with many, "I am Heathcliff", as Cathy explains .. "because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same". Those words get me in the feelers every time. Powerful and heartbreaking.

From the outset and throughout, I was invested in this story, the writing and particularly with the characters as you feel this connected sense of cruelty, self-destruction, and mourning for the countless memories and happiness for the life and love that could have been - but never was. Yet as a reader we are left with guarded optimism for the future of the young Cathy and Heathcliff, or are they too caught in this perpetual cycle of self-destruction, like their parents.

The writing in these classics is not for everyone, and I confess to struggling with it at school. If you can embrace this writing style, then you will love it. In fact, I just finished a mainstream thriller and I turned to my husband and said 'now I really do need a fix from the classics'. If I had one niggle, I don’t like authors writing in local dialect that is too cryptic. For example “aut ne’ink” meaning “ought not think”. For me personally it disrupts the flow of the story, spoils the beautiful writing in these classics but brings little to it. Back to the book.

A painful drama and an unapologetic portrayal of the flawed and imperfect human mind and heart. Dark, chilling and so vividly depicted. Beautifully written but not a beautiful story. A book where love, grief, and betrayal fuel cruelty and revenge.

Heart-breaking, savage, and self-destructive. Nevertheless, a masterpiece, particularly in its characterisation and the character development.

Certain novels come to you with pre-packaged expectations. They just seem to be part of literature's collective unconscious, even if they are completely outside of your own cultural referents. I, for instance, who have no particular knowledge of--or great love for--romantic, Anglo-Gothic fiction, came to Wuthering Heights with the assumption that I was picking up a melancholy ghost story of thwarted, passionate love and eternal obsession. Obsession turned out to be only accurate part of this presumption.

Having an image of Heathcliff and Cathy embracing n  Gone with the Windn-style on a windy moor ironed in my mind, I was almost completely unprepared for the hermetic, moribund, bleak, vengeful, perverse, and yes--obsessive--novel that this really is. Don Quixote is not about windmills and Wuthering Heights is not really a love story. Heathcliff and Cathy's love affair (if it can be called that) is a narcissistic ("I am Heathcliff!" Cathy exclaims at one point), possessive, and imminently cruel relationship predicated on self-denial and an obsessiveness that relies not on passion, but rather borders on hatred. They are selfish, violent, and contriving people who have borne their fair share of abuses (mostly Heathcliff in this respect) and in turn, feel no compunction about raining similar abuses on those who they find beneath them.

Given this dynamic, it seems perhaps inevitable that these two characters would make not only themselves miserable, but everyone around them miserable--even after death. This is particularly easy to accomplish mainly because there are--with the exception of Mr. Lockwood, the tenant who rents a home from Heathcliff--no outside characters. Everyone in the novel (including the servants) is isolated, trapped between the same two homes, with the same two families, and have truly no chance of escaping any of the events and repercussions that occur.(One character makes a temporary escape, only to suffer all the more for it later.)

More important, however, is the fact that Heathcliff and Cathy don't even need be present (although they usually are in some fashion) for their influences to be felt by the other characters. The sins of the father, are literally, inherited and distributed among the next generation. The children of Wuthering Heights are not only physical doubles of their parents (At least 3 characters look like Cathy, and one resembles Heathcliff), but they are also spiritual stand-ins. They must suffer for past transgressions, and they must find a way to make amends for them. All, I might add, without the particular benefit of ever having the full story, the context that might be necessary to actually change their circumstances. Misery, it seems, is inevitable.

There is, of course, much more to be said about this novel. One could spend quite some time dissecting all the various repetitions and doublings, the narrative structure (the story is told by the housekeeper to the lodger who then writes it down as a diary entry), or the archetypal analogies and semi-biblical symbolism that seems to be implicit to every part of this story.

The point being, I suppose, that while Wuthering Heights may not be the wistful romance one (or maybe just I) expected to be, it is a particularly satisfying one for all of its dark and layered surprises.

"all i care about in this goddamn life are me, my drums, and you"...

if you don't know that quote, you're probably too young to be reading this and isn't it past your bedtime or shouldn't you be in school or something?

but that quote, hyper-earnest cheese - that is romance. wuthering heights is something more dangerous than romance. it's one long protracted retaliation masquerading as passion. and goddamn do i love it. i can't believe i haven't reviewed it before - i mention this book in more than half of my reviews, i have a whole shelf devoted to its retellings, so why the delay?? but better late than never.

no, it's not a perfect novel; it's a flawed structure revealing the actions of seriously flawed people. the framing device-within-a-framing-device? totally awkward. having nelly dean tell the story even though where was she for most of the action? totally wrong move, bronte; it makes the beginning such a slog to get through. but that's just stale loaf - the good stuff is all the meat in between.

and oh, the meat... the swarthy stranger of mysterious origins being raised in a family of sheltered overmoist english mushrooms, all pale and rain-bloated, the running wild, two-souls-against-the-world adolescence...childhood indiscretions... vows and tantrums, bonding, unspoken promises, yes i will yes i will yes i will. oh, but wait, what's this??...it's blond and it's rich and it's whats expected of me. very well then. see ya, heathcliff...

it's just textbook gothic from here on out: revenge-seduction, overheard conversations, mysterious disappearances, murdered puppies, swooning, vindictive child-rearing, death, ghosts, moors, phoar...

but this to me, is a perfect love story, even though it's more like torture. the unattainable is always more romantic than the storybook. i don't like an uncomplicated ending, and a story is more impactful with nuanced characters, preferably heavily unlikeable throughout. (this is where i plug head-on - one of my favorite movies ever. do it.)this story just makes me feel good. and i'm well over my teenage fascination with the "bad boy"; i realized pretty quick that "bad boys" are usually pretty dumb. so i moved on to "emotionally disturbed", which is the same thing, really; plenty of drama, and they will leave you drunken "presents" on your lawn (road signs, carousel ponies..), but not complete burnouts, at least. but my teenaged dating pool is neither here nor there, the point is that heathcliff can be romanticized as this victim/villain without having to correspond to the ideal. it's about the level of passion, the size of the grand romantic gesture. devoting your life to destroying the people who kept you from your true love is an amazingly grand gesture.

come to my blog!

The storytelling on this was spot on, almost like a bedtime story for adults. Couldn't put this down!

2025 Reading Schedule
JantA Town Like Alice
FebtBirdsong
MartCaptain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
AprtWar and Peace
MaytThe Woman in White
JuntAtonement
JultThe Shadow of the Wind
AugtJude the Obscure
SeptUlysses
OcttVanity Fair
NovtA Fine Balance
DectGerminal

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(Book 902 from 1001 books) -Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

Wuthering Heights is Emily Brontë's only novel. Written between October 1845 and June 1846.

Most of the novel is the story told by housekeeper Nelly Dean to Lockwood, though the novel "uses several narrators (in fact, five or six) to place the story in perspective, or in a variety of perspectives".

Emily Brontë uses this frame story technique to narrate most of the story. Thus, for example, Lockwood, the first narrator of the story, tells the story of Nelly, who herself tells the story of another character. The use of a character, like Nelly Dean is "a literary device, a well-known convention taken from the Gothic novel, the function of which is to portray the events in a more mysterious and exciting manner".

بلندیهای بادگیر (عشق هرگز نمیمیرد) - امیلی برونته (نگاه ، جامی) ادبیات این کتاب نخستین بار در سال 1847میلادی منتشر شد؛

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «تندباد حوادث یا ووترینگ هایتز»؛ «بلندیهای بادخیز»؛ «بلندیهای بادخیز (وودرینگ هایتز)»؛ «بلندیهای بادگیر»؛ «بلندیهای بادگیر (وادرینگ هایتز)»؛ «بلندیهای بادگیر (عشق هرگز نمیمیرد)»؛ «بلندیهای بادگیر (وادرینگ هایتس)»؛ «بلندیهای بادگیر یا عشق هرگز نمیمیرد»؛ «به رزاییه کانی به‌ربا»؛ «عشق هرگز نمیمیرد»؛ «عشق هرگز نمیمیرد (بلندیهای بادگیر)»؛ «واترینگ هایتز»؛ «بلندیهای بادگیر (تا انتهای پر رنج عشق)»؛ «عشق هرگز نمیمیرد (بلندیهای بادخیز)»؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: سال 1977میلادی؛ بار دوم: سال 1998میلادی؛ و بار سوم: ماه می سال 2007میلادی

هر یک از عنوانهای بالا، بارها به زیور طبع آراسته شده اند، البته که با کوشش مترجمین و دیگران؛ اثر «امیلی برونته»، شاعر و نویسنده ی «بریتانیا» که بارها توسط مترجمهای نام آشنا، خانمها و آقایان «عبدالعظیم صبوری - در 299ص، در سال 1334هجری خورشیدی»، «ولی الله ابراهیمی در سال 1348هجری خورشیدی»، «داریوش شاهین»؛ «علی اصغر بهرام بیگی»، «پرویز پژواک»؛ «رباب امام»، «تهمینه مهربانی»، «حمید اکبری» و «زهرا احمدیان»، «فرزانه قلیزاده»، «نعیمه ظاهری»، «مریم صادقی»؛ «اکرم مظفری»، «فاطمه امینی»، «شادی ابطحی»، «فریده قراچه داغی (صمیمی)»؛ «مهدی سجودی مقدم»، «رضا رضایی»، و «نوشین ابراهیمی»، «مهدی غبرائی»، «هادی ریاضی»، «سمیه امانی» و «شهرام قوامی»؛ ترجمه و منتشر شده اند

وادِرینگ هایتس، در این داستان، نام عمارت خانوادگی «ارنشاو» است؛ و به معنی خانه ای است، که روی تپه و در معرض باد، ساخته شده است؛ داستان عشق آتشین و مشکل‌دار، میان «هیث کلیف»، و «کترین (کاترین) ارنشاو»، و این‌که همین عشق نافرجام، چگونه سرانجام این دو عاشق، و بسیاری از اطرافیانشان را، به نابودی می‌کشاند؛ «هیث کلیف»، کولی‌زاده‌ ای است، که موفق به ازدواج با «کاترین» نمی‌شود، و پس از مرگ «کاترین» به انتقام‌جویی روی می‌آورد

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 02/06/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 12/05/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

(Book 902 from 1001 books) - Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë's only novel, was published in 1847 under the pseudonym "Ellis Bell". She died the following year, aged 30.

It was written between October 1845 and June 1846, Wuthering Heights and Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey were accepted by publisher Thomas Newby before the success of their sister Charlotte's novel Jane Eyre.

After Emily's death, Charlotte edited the manuscript of Wuthering Heights and arranged for the edited version to be published as a posthumous second edition in 1850.

Thirty years earlier, the Earnshaws live at Wuthering Heights with their children, Hindley and Catherine, and a servant — Nelly herself.

Returning from a trip to Liverpool, Earnshaw brings a young orphan whom he names Heathcliff and treats as his favourite.

His own children he neglects, especially after his wife dies. Hindley beats Heathcliff, who gradually becomes close friends with Catherine.

Hindley departs for university, returning as the new master of Wuthering Heights on the death of his father three years later. He and his new wife Frances allow Heathcliff to stay, but only as a servant.

Heathcliff and Catherine spy on Edgar Linton and his sister Isabella, children who live nearby at Thrushcross Grange.

Catherine is attacked by their dog, and the Lintons take her in, sending Heathcliff home.

When the Lintons visit, Hindley and Edgar make fun of Heathcliff and a fight ensues. Heathcliff is locked in the attic and vows revenge. ...

بلندیهای بادگیر (عشق هرگز نمیمیرد) - امیلی برونته (نگاه ، جامی) ادبیات این کتاب نخستین بار در سال 1847میلادی منتشر شد؛ تاریخ خوانش این نسخه سال 1998میلادی

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «تندباد حوادث یا ووترینگ هایتز»؛ «بلندیهای بادخیز»؛ «بلندیهای بادخیز (وودرینگ هایتز)»؛ «بلندیهای بادگیر»؛ «بلندیهای بادگیر (وادرینگ هایتز)»؛ «بلندیهای بادگیر (عشق هرگز نمیمیرد)»؛ «بلندیهای بادگیر (وادرینگ هایتس)»؛ «بلندیهای بادگیر یا عشق هرگز نمیمیرد»؛ «به رزاییه کانی به‌ربا»؛ «عشق هرگز نمیمیرد»؛ «عشق هرگز نمیمیرد (بلندیهای بادگیر)»؛ «واترینگ هایتز»؛ «بلندیهای بادگیر (تا انتهای پر رنج عشق)»؛ «عشق هرگز نمیمیرد (بلندیهای بادخیز)»؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: سال 1977میلادی؛ بار دوم: سال 1998میلادی؛ و بار سوم: ماه می سال 2007میلادی

هر یک از عنوانهای بالا بارها به زیور طبع آراسته شده اند، البته که با کوشش مترجمین و دیگران؛ اثر «امیلی برونته»، شاعر و نویسنده ی «انگلیسی» است که بارها توسط مترجمهای نام آشنا خانمها و آقایان: «عبدالعظیم صبوری - در 299ص، در سال 1334هجری خورشیدی»، «ولی الله ابراهیمی در سال 1348هجری خورشیدی»، «داریوش شاهین»؛ «علی اصغر بهرام بیگی»، «پرویز پژواک»؛ «رباب امام»، «تهمینه مهربانی»، «حمید اکبری و زهرا احمدیان»، «فرزانه قلیزاده»، «نعیمه ظاهری»، «مریم صادقی»؛ «اکرم مظفری»، «فاطمه امینی»، «شادی ابطحی»، «فریده قراچه داغی (صمیمی)»؛ «مهدی سجودی مقدم»، «رضا رضایی»، و «نوشین ابراهیمی»، «مهدی غبرائی»، «هادی ریاضی»، «سمیه امانی» و «شهرام قوامی»؛ ترجمه و منتشر شده است

خواهران برونته («شارلوت» و «امیلی جین»، و «آن») هر سه از چهره های ممتاز ادبیات سده ی نوزدهم میلادی «انگلستان» هستند؛ «بلندیهای بادخیز» تنها رمان «امیلی جین برونته»، از پرخوانشگرترین آثار ادبیات «انگلستان» و شاید جهان هستند؛ در این کتاب، متن کوتاه شده، و برای نوجوانان است؛ با این همه در مسافرتها، بارها و بارها آن را خوانده ام؛ «وادِرینگ هایتس» در این داستان، نام عمارت خانوادگی «ارنشاو» است؛ و به معنی خانه ای هست، که روی تپه، و در معرض باد، ساخته شده است؛ داستان عشق آتشین و مشکل‌دار، میان «هیث کلیف» و «کترین (کاترین) ارنشاو»، و این‌که همین عشق نافرجام، چگونه سرانجام این دو عاشق، و بسیاری از اطرافیانشان را به نابودی می‌کشاند؛ «هیث کلیف» کولی‌زاده‌ ای است که موفق به ازدواج با «کاترین» نمی‌شود، و پس از مرگ «کاترین» به انتقام‌ روی می‌آورد

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 06/09/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 14/06/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

Un libro de literatura clásica tal cual: historia de amor, largo y denso para leer.
Quiero destacar un punto en particular que me encantó de este libro y que, en mi opinión, lo hace distinto a los demás. Emily describe todo lo que el amor conlleva en sí a través de Mr. Heathcliff. Muchas veces se dice que el amor es lindo y todo eso, pero aquí, si bien él era un ser bastante malo, en todo sentido, lo hizo por amor. Y ahí viene la gran pregunta ¿Cómo se puede describir el amor? Pregunta difícil.
Mucha gente no entiende cuando alguien se obsesiona por amor, y ese amor no sólo se trata hacia una persona, sino que también se trata de lo que uno logra en la vida a partir de la meta que tiene cada uno, ya sea el amor de un hombre a una mujer, una mujer a un hombre, el amor a una mascota, a una casa, a sus tierras, al dinero, a lo que sea, pero amor al fin y al cabo.
En mi experiencia leyendo el libro, debo decir que hubo algunas parte que me costó entender y tuve que hacerlo más de una vez, pero lo volvía a hacer con placer, ya que no me aburría. Poco a poco la historia se vuelve más interesante... sobre todo en el final, en el cual se aclara todo y es mucho más fácil y liviano de entender, en mi opinión.

I read this over 20 years ago and since I can’t remember what people were telling my yesterday it was like I was reading this for the first time!

I couldn’t put the book down yesterday and read over 250 pages. I couldn’t believe how terrible and scheming Heathcliff was. Talking about taking revenge and having a bug up your ass. Whoo! But I guess Catherine, the person who he grew up with and then forsook him because another man had more status and money, was not blameless by a long shot.

The book I read from was an Everyman’s Library edition with an introduction by Katherine Frank. She had written a book about Emily Bronte (A Chainless Soul: A Life of Emily Bronte), putting forth the interesting notion that Emily Bronte had an eating disorder, anorexia. Certainly some of the protagonists in the novel refused to eat at times (Catherine, Heathcliff near the end).

I had a hard time keeping names straight at times during the novel. Doesn’t help when a daughter is married after the mother (two Catherines although they do not cross paths in the novel since Catherine #1 dies in childbirth giving birth to Catherine #2.

The story mostly was told by the maid/servant, Nelly, recollecting what happened in the past. There was another narrator. Mr. Lockwood, but he didn’t figure prominently in the novel.

One confession: when Joseph the old servant of Heathcliff spoke in the novel, I ignored what he said. I did that because I didn’t know what the hell he was saying. Here is an example. I didn’t have the time or patience to decipher/translate what he was saying.
•t“Thear!” he ejaculated, “Hareton, thah willn’t sup they porridge tuh neeght; they’ll be nowt bud lumps as big as maw nave. Thear, agean! Aw;d fling in bowl un all, if aw wer yah! Thear, pale t’ guilp off, un’ then yah’ll hae done wi’t. Bang, bang. It’s a marcy t’bothom isn’t deaved aht!”

Note: While I was reading the novel, I could not get Kate Bush’s song, Wuthering Heights, out of my head....

I'm just on fire with so much admiration for Emily Brontë right now. Having read this book, I now understand why it’s generated such fierce controversy since its first publication in 1847. Why early reviews dismissed it as an aberration (with one pearl-clutching reviewer wondering “how a human being could have attempted such a book as the present without committing suicide before he had finished a dozen chapters”) and why writers like Sylvia Plath and E.M. Forster, drawn to the complex and often contradictory open vein of the novel, went out of their way to reject such easy classifications.

This review is, in many ways, my attempt to understand how Wuthering Heights continues to enable many difficult and contradictory stances even today, entrenching its legacy as one of the most dynamic and generative novels of the 19th century.

The first element that makes Wuthering Heights so interesting is form. The novel is presented as a series of second—even third—hand accounts, a story rehearsed and sanitized by multiple re-enactors with the reader being the last in a succession of interpreters. In other words, the story changes hands multiple times, often between hostile and uncomprehending narrators, before it makes its way to the reader. This structure is nuanced in multiple ways; it is also very tricky, for it depends entirely on the reader’s willingness to turn to Nelly—the central narrator—for an authoritative interpretation of the story. Nelly, however, is not a very sympathetic narrator, and her thinly veiled bias against (or for) the characters brings into question the validity of her account. We are forced into awareness, again and again, of the flawed nature of Nelly's interpretations and of the uncrossable distances that lie between what we are reading and what the story is. It is precisely this awareness which challenges us to take nothing at face value and demands our active participation in the process of meaning-making.

To put it differently: faced with the possibility of the novel as the culmination of a flawed—even failed—interpretation, one can only read Wuthering Heights with a kind of longing, with the desire to get close to something inconsolable, just beyond reach. Therein lies, the novel says, the potential for true understanding: in the underground currents of emotion, the not-easily-reached places far beneath the surface of what the reader can see and understand. It is this frame of reference—however flawed, failed, or imperfect—that gives the characters a context in which we can begin to accept, understand, and grapple for their ultimate depths.

This brings us to the second element which makes Wuthering Heights such productive fodder for interpretation: the characters. In a story that is told at one, two, sometimes three removes, Brontë’s characters are not at all remote. Brontë brings a depth of anguish to the characters and engages our compassion no matter how unflattering and biased the gaze through which we see them. This is nowhere as gorgeously epitomized as in the characters of Heathcliff and Catherine, with whom lays the broken heart of Wuthering Heights.

Heathcliff’s vehemence, his grief and naked want, Catherine’s selfishness, her strain and struggle against the confines of her life—these things are rendered so honestly and so rawly in a way that appealed to me despite, sometimes because of, their deep abiding wrongness. Wuthering Heights is not just a story about a “toxic” romantic attachment between two deeply broken and detestable characters. In fact, to argue the degree to which Heathcliff and Catherine’s relationship was “toxic” or “problematic” seems less relevant to me than the incontrovertible fact that in a world that would not let them be whole, Catherine and Heathcliff lent meaning to each other. To me, this is where the simple truth of Wuthering Heights lies: in Catherine and Heathcliff's longing to be recognized by each other in a way that defies and transcends “separation,” and in the subsequent void and loss they suffer when one is intolerably deprived of the other.

Wuthering Heights returns over and over to this theme of identity through the other, the desire to be defined in terms of an “existence… beyond” our “contained” selves. For Catherine and Heathcliff, their very sense of “self” was sustained through the bond of devotion they forged between them in childhood, back when they were flashing with youth and magic and hunger, and their passion for each other has always illuminated the gap between who they longed to be, and who they actually were. Invoking Heathcliff, Catherine confesses to Nelly at one point that “He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” In this way, Wuthering Heights is so truthful about what it means to be human: to desire to be known by another as intimately, as completely, as one knows their own image in a mirror, to love and despise and long for and tire of each other because it is a much merciful fate than a lifetime of emptiness, silence, and absence.

Under this light, it is easy to understand Heathcliff’s and Catherine’s unraveling, and in understanding, to love and pity them. We understand that in losing Heathcliff, Catherine lost her life, and in losing her, Heathcliff lost himself. All the proofs of passion, all the crawling devotions that sustained him in youth have yielded to nothingness, and somewhere inside Heathcliff a dam has broken, with nothing in its stead to stave off the madness of being alone, or to ward off the unpurged ghosts of a brutal past.

Through Heathcliff’s unraveling, Brontë lays a carefully layered, generational look at the reverberating effects of trauma and what it costs to give others so much power over us. Raised with the stigma of illegitimacy and of deviancy (and potentially of race, but that’s an essay for another day), and subjected to a childhood of casual abuse, name-calling and cruelty, Heathcliff spends the years following Catherine’s death trying to methodically reproduce his traumatic past, his experiences of degradation and loss, in others. Heathcliff, ultimately, does not just preserve the memory of Catherine, which he feels bound to, but rather transform it into something else, into a display of his wound in full.

It is impossible not to feel at once entranced and horrified and rocked by the horror of what Heathcliff becomes, not to ache with sympathy for a younger version of Heathcliff. But I found myself hurting more for Cathy, Hareton, and Linton, and the complex, many-generationed hatreds that twisted between them. Wuthering Heights paints one of the clearest portraits of generational trauma that I’ve ever read. Brontë's use of intimate domestic spaces as prison, her disfiguring of family into a site for violence, evil, and struggle, and her deliberate re-creation of past trauma in the second generation—is masterful. The result is a novel that understands so thoroughly, so completely, and with bone-deep care that the scars inflicted by childhood abuse, by trauma, by the generational inheritance of atrocious memory, do not just fade away; they stay and linger and fester until we all become a casualty of each other.

That Wuthering Heights was conceived and published before the advent of psychology is absolutely wild to me. The novel is a profoundly haunting experience of a book, one that I am sure will dog my thoughts for a very, very long time.

SPOILERS

Behold the wild, dark side of love.

“I am Heathcliff – he’s always, always in my mind – not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself – but as my own being.”

Passion. Desire. Love. Are they the same thing? If we are so intoxicated by someone as ending up seeing them as a mirror to our own self, is this love? It is. Sometimes. But sometimes it is sign not of devotion, but of egotism so strong that it stops us from seeing the actual person and we imagine a likeness that isn’t there just in order to fulfill our needs. I believe that Catherine loves Heathcliff, but I don’t believe she understands him or desires to. By believing he would agree to her plan she shows how little she takes into account what he actually is. She is so lost in her passion that she isn’t willing to admit the difference between them. It is a dangerous thing to be so absorbed by passion for someone that you don’t even care to understand and accept them for who they are. You just want to own them. By making the choice of marrying another man and keeping Heathcliff by her side as a lover whom she would support with her husband’s money she gives up on the very thing that has connected them so far, on the very thing that has stood at the core of their love. Freedom. They both grow up as captives of society that does not understand and accept them for who they are. He is the only one in front of whom she can be herself and she is the only one in front of whom he can be himself. But by choosing to dissemble and submit, Catherine loses that spark that initially connects them. She believes it is for their own good. He is heartbroken. When he comes back, he spends so much time and energy trying to bring back a girl who no longer exists. He cannot stand the woman she has turned herself into. In this case, is he still in love with her or merely in the memory of her? When the person we have loved loses the part that has held our affections, when should we give up on them and when should we devote ourselves to restoring that part?

"He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same."

Their tragedy lies exactly in the fact that they are n  notn the same. He wants freedom, she wants security. Benjamin Franklin says 'Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one.' I neither agree, nor disagree. I believe it is a very subjective matter. It isn’t that simple. But in the case of Catherine it really does turn out this way. In the end she has neither comfort, nor freedom.

How much do we know those who we claim to love? We all risk to see something that isn’t actually there or miss something that is. Either blinded by passion or by our desire to recreate the objects of our passion. If we cannot truly accept our loved ones for who they are and we try to change them, then do we truly love n  themn or simply those we would like them to be? Can such a distinction be made? Or is it a little bit of both? Do we love only those parts of our partners that resemble ourselves or are we willing to love even those we cannot accept? Are love and acceptance the same thing? It isn’t uncommon for a person to try changing their loved one, but sometimes the good and the bad come from the same place and if we happen to succeed, we are at risk of destroying the good as well. Catherine tries to tame Heathcliff and in doing so, she destroys him. His passionate love turns into passionate hatred.

Feeling so close to someone as not to know where you end and they begin is either a sign of profound affinity or a profound delusion. Love is merciful and cruel, generous and selfish, sorrow and ecstasy. We all lose something and gain something by choosing to give into another person. Change is inevitable. Sometimes we get stronger, sometimes we are ruined. Sometimes it is a little bit of both. Some of us find their worthy partners, some, sadly, never do. But I believe that no matter on which side of the coin you turn out, staying faithful to yourself is always the right choice.

Read count: 2

(Book 902 from 1001 books) - Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

In 1801, Lockwood, a wealthy young man from the south of England, who is seeking peace and recuperation, rents Thrushcross Grange in Yorkshire.

He visits his landlord, Heathcliff, who lives in a remote moorland farmhouse, Wuthering Heights.

There Lockwood finds an odd assemblage: Heathcliff, who seems to be a gentleman, but whose manners are uncouth; the reserved mistress of the house, who is in her mid-teens; and a young man, who seems to be a member of the family, yet dresses and speaks as if he is a servant. ...

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «تندباد حوادث یا ووترینگ هایتز»؛ «بلندیهای بادگیر»؛ «بلندیهای بادخیز»؛ «عشق هرگز نمیمیرد»؛ نویسنده: امیلی برونته؛ انتشارتیها (نگاه ، جامی) ادبیات؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: ماه جولای سال 1977 میلادی؛ بار دوم: سال 1998 میلادی؛ سومین بار در ماه می سال 2007 میلادی

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «تندباد حوادث یا ووترینگ هایتز»؛ «بلندیهای بادخیز»؛ «بلندیهای بادخیز (وودرینگ هایتز)»؛ «بلندیهای بادگیر»؛ «بلندیهای بادگیر (وادرینگ هایتز)»؛ «بلندیهای بادگیر (عشق هرگز نمیمیرد)»؛ «بلندیهای بادگیر (وادرینگ هایتس)»؛ «بلندیهای بادگیر یا عشق هرگز نمیمیرد»؛ «به رزاییه کانی به‌ربا، کردی، سنندج»؛ «عشق هرگز نمیمیرد»؛ «عشق هرگز نمیمیرد (بلندیهای بادگیر)»؛ «واترینگ هایتز»؛ «بلندیهای بادگیر (تا انتهای پر رنج عشق)»؛ «عشق هرگز نمیمیرد (بلندیهای بادخیز)»؛

هر یک از عنوانهای بالا، بارها به زیور طبع آراسته شده اند، البته که با کوشش مترجمین، و دیگران از ارجمندان؛ اثری از «امیلی برونته»، شاعر و نویسنده ی «بریتانیایی» است، که بارها توسط مترجمهای نام آشنا، خانمها و آقایان: «عبدالعظیم صبوری - در 299ص، در سال 1334هجری خورشیدی»، «ولی الله ابراهیمی در سال 1348هجری خورشیدی»، «داریوش شاهین»؛ «علی اصغر بهرام بیگی»، «پرویز پژواک»؛ «رباب امام»، «تهمینه مهربانی»، «حمید اکبری و زهرا احمدیان»، «فرزانه قلیزاده»، «نعیمه ظاهری»، «مریم صادقی»؛ «اکرم مظفری»، «فاطمه امینی»، «شادی ابطحی»، «فریده قراچه داغی (صمیمی)»؛ «مهدی سجودی مقدم»، «رضا رضایی»، و «نوشین ابراهیمی»، «مهدی غبرائی»، «هادی ریاضی»، «سمیه امانی» و «شهرام
قوامی»؛ و ...؛ ترجمه و منتشر شده است

وادِرینگ هایتس در این داستان که عنوان آن، نام عمارت خانوادگی «ارنشاو»؛ و به معنی خانه ای است، که روی تپه و در معرض باد ساخته شده است؛ داستان عشق آتشین و مشکل‌دار، میان «هیث کلیف» و «کترین (کاترین) ارنشاو»، و این‌که همین عشق نافرجام، چگونه سرانجام این دو عاشق، و بسیاری از اطرافیانشان را، به نابودی می‌کشاند؛ «هیث کلیف»، کولی‌زاده‌ ای است، که موفق به ازدواج با «کاترین» نمی‌شود، و پس از مرگ «کاترین» به انتقام‌ روی می‌آورد.؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 30/05/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 14/05/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی