I was not prepared for how bleak this book was. I had seen movie versions of Wuthering Heights, but this was my first time reading the novel, and it was much darker than I expected.

So many of the characters are utterly unlikable! Cathy is selfish and foolish and obstinate; Heathcliff is brutal and vengeful and psychotic; Hindley is spiteful and venomous and a drunkard. And when Edgar and Isabella Linton enter the story, everything goes to hell in a handbasket.

Why, oh why, did Cathy marry Edgar when she admitted she loved Heathcliff? As a reader, I wanted to shake her and scream at her that she was making a disastrous choice. Let's hear it from Cathy herself:

I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heatchliff 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 lightning, or frost from fire.

Yes, I know Cathy felt she couldn't marry Heathcliff because of his low birth and lack of education, but considering how isolated they were in Yorkshire, did it really matter that much? Was that Bronte's point -- that disobeying one's heart by following the courtship rules of one's social class caused suicidal and homicidal ravings?

I agreed with Heathcliff when he later scolded Cathy for her decision:

You teach me now how cruel you've been -- cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they'll blight you -- they'll damn you. You loved me -- then what right had you to leave me? What right -- answer me -- for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart -- you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.

There was such violence in this book! Women are beaten and locked up; children are bullied and abused; punches are thrown, shots are fired, and even dogs are kicked and hung. Egad. I can imagine how shocking it must have been to the good folks of England when it was published in 1847, learning that not only did a woman write it, but that she was a clergyman's daughter, and the story involved a married woman having a tryst with another man. Wowsers.

Despite not liking the darkness of the novel, I thought the writing was good and the structure was interesting: the servant Nelly Dean relates the history of the doomed love affair to an outsider. The servant was an interloper and kept informed on events in both houses. I can't imagine a more effective way to tell the story of the love triangle. I wouldn't trust either Heathcliff or Cathy or one of the children as a narrator, they might only tell their parent's side of things. Of course, it's also interesting that Nelly Dean may not be a reliable narrator either. She often edits and omits what she tells the master; why should we believe she'd tell an outsider the whole truth?

It took me twice as long to get through this novel as it should have -- it was so bleak that I was hesitant to pick it up. The only other Bronte sister book I've read was Jane Eyre, which I liked very much, but that love story at least has some warmth in it. In contrast, Wuthering Heights left me feeling cold and bitter. I'm glad I've read it, but I don't think it's one I'll be rereading anytime soon.

Believe it or not, not a fan.

The story itself is unique & very original, a precursor for many Victorian thrillers & haunted house spectaculars. But there was no engine in my brain to ease down the process; reading this is like reading something that is altogether mandatory. I guess its a classic because enough people have read it to distinguish it from better books.

The character of Heathcliff is a vampire who sucks the life out of everyone in the household at Wuthering Heights & its neighbors. No doubt a good actor could play the hell out of him & get the Oscar.

The work is labyrinthine & sometimes just too difficult to understand. It has incredibly unbeautiful sentences (really!) & is altogether irregular, shapeless-- not a pleasure at all.

This, "Catcher in the Rye" and "On the Road" need to vacate the canon!

TL;DR

It's not romance if he doesn't dig up your grave and sleep with your corpse when you're dead

:(

“wuthering heights is a masterpiece. it’s incredibly unpleasant to read.” -vox.com

upon finishing, i immediately researched more into this achingly beautiful book because i am OBSESSED and i feel the above quote summarizes it well. this was my first classic and i’m happy it was. was it a romance? a gothic novel? a tragedy? i’d say all of the above.

everything in this novel is so subjective, but heathcliff is the most prominent character in my opinion. his love for catherine, a strong female character, leads to an absolute rollercoaster of events and emotions. alice hoffman stated, “Read “Wuthering Heights” when you’re 18 and you think Heathcliff is a romantic hero; when you’re 30, he’s a monster; at 50 you see he’s just human,”. as of now i see him as all three; although mainly a monster for reasons i won’t say to avoid spoilers. catherine may have been the reason he was so awful although i’m unsure. there are many other important characters but i feel the story revolves around those two. if you want to say “aww” one second and “i can’t believe someone would say that” the next…this book is for you. so many emotions! so much symbolism! stay tuned for more classic reviews because i’m officially hooked! can you tell i’m excited!

this was a fun buddy read with rex, glad to have br my first classic since it was a bit confusing at first.

*Trigger warnings for mental/physical abuse, sickness, mental health issues, and multiple deaths*

Emily wrote one incandescent novel, little knowing that one day it would be considered literary genius. Any ranking of the world's greatest novels include this one. To think that Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall came from three sister's is astounding.

Τί να μπορέσω να γράψω ειλικρινά για να αποδώσω
την αγάπη μου γι’ αυτό το μυθιστόρημα φαινόμενο;
Ό,τι και να γράψω, δεν μπορεί να περιγράψει
το πόσο με είχε συνεπάρει όταν το διάβασα για πρώτη φορά πριν αρκετά χρονια, μα και πόσο με επηρέασε τώρα, στη δεύτερη ανάγνωση.
Τώρα ναι. Το κατάλαβα καλύτερα.
Το έζησα.
Πέρασε μέσα μου αργά και σταθερά η πολυεπίπεδη γραφή και η ποίηση του λόγου και με βύθισαν σε ένα αριστούργημα της φύσης, βαθύτερο, πολύ βαθύτερο απο την πραγματικότητα.

Σε καμία περίπτωση δεν είναι μια απλή ρομαντική ιστορία αγάπης.
Η Έμιλυ Μπροντέ με την λαμπρή ιδιοφυΐα της, την ποιητική πεζογραφία που δημιουργεί και την προσωπική της εμπειρία συνθέτει μια «εξημερωμένη» αρχαία ελληνική τραγωδία.
Είναι ένα βίαιο διαχρονικό κομμάτι άγριας ομορφιάς. Είναι μια θεραπεία της αγάπης που κινείται στα σκοτεινά της ψυχής και καταναλώνει πάθη και λάθη.

Υπάρχει πολλή σκληρότητα σε τούτο το έργο μα σίγουρα η κύρια έμπνευση και η ουσία στηρίζονται βασικά σε μια καταθλιπτική διαβάθμιση.

Η ποιήτρια Έμιλυ Μπροντέ γράφει με όραμα, συναίσθημα και μαρτυρία. Ήταν μάρτυρας των ίδιων των συναισθημάτων της. Η υπόσταση και η γραφή της δεν προοριζόταν για την πραγματική ζωή,
φυσικά ούτε για την Αγγλία του 19ου αιώνα.
Ήξερε πως οι άνθρωποι δεν πεθαίνουν για την αγάπη και έτσι έγραψε για το βάρβαρο και άγριο είδος φυσικής αγάπης.
Θριάμβευσαν δυο ψυχές που χωρίστηκαν απο προπαγανδιστικές περιστάσεις και στοιχειώθηκαν ώσπου να ενωθούν σε μία.

Το σκηνικό εξημερωμένο άγρια, η ατμόσφαιρα γκρίζα, σκοτεινή, γοτθική, το ύφος που διαχέεται σε κάθε ανθρώπινη σχέση είναι σχεδον ψυχωτικό, με έναν τρόπο που ξεπερνάει το θάνατο.

Έργο γεμάτο αγάπη, πάθος, εκδίκηση, βία.
Δεν σταματάει εκεί, καλύπτει ιδέες και καταστάσεις εποχής, σχετικά με τη φύση, τη θρησκεία, τη δεισιδαιμονία, τις κοινωνικές αξίες.
Η ρεαλιστική μορφή του κειμένου είναι απομονωμένη, κοινωνικά ανάρμοστη, παρθενική, προβληματική και έντονα δυαδική. Η επιτομή της αντίθεσης σε όλο το μεγαλείο της φύσης.

Σε κάποια σημεία αγγίζει την απόλυτη γυναικεία φαντασία και απο την άλλη, ανατρέπει όλες τις συμβάσεις του ρομαντισμού με παραβατικό τρόπο.

Θυελλώδες και συγκλονιστικό, με μυρωδιές και εικόνες, με θλίψη και απομόνωση, με χαρακτήρες κατά κύριο λόγο αντιπαθητικούς ( προσωπικά εξαιρώ τον Χήθκλιφ).

Τοπία ανατριχιαστικής γοητείας, σκηνικά πέρα απο κάθε φαντασία, η ανάπτυξη της γραφής αφήνει
τη φαντασία μας να ευδοκιμήσει. Να τα ζήσει όλα.
Ναι, είναι μια φρικτή ιστορία, ακραία και διπολική, μα έτσι όπως ξετυλίγεται δημιουργεί αρμονία χαρακτήρων και γοτθικών προσλήψεων καταλήγοντας σε μια μακάβρια λυτρωτική αποδόμηση που επιδοκιμάζει την αναγνωστική εμπειρία αυτού του μεγαλείου.

Όλοι οι ήρωες και ο καθένας ξεχωριστά θα μπορούσαν να αποτελούν ομάδες καθημερινών σημερινών ανθρώπων.
Τα ανεμοδαρμένα ύψη εισάγουν θέματα πολλαπλών διαστάσεων.
Βλέπουμε έντονα τα αποτελέσματα του αλκοολισμού, την άξεστη συμπεριφορά του αναλαφαβητισμού, γενικά θέματα εξουσίας, πλούτου, κοινωνικών τάξεων, φεμινιστικές ιδέες, καρικατούρες θρησκείας, οικογενειακά και κληρονομικά πλούτη
-υλικά και πνευματικά-
θεσμοί δικαιοσύνης, δικαιώματα έγγαμης τυραννίας και πολλά άλλα, που αναφέρονται πολύ μπροστά απο την συγκεκριμένη εποχή.
Προσβλητικά για το βικτοριανό κοινό, υποσχόμενα προοπτικές σε πιο σύγχρονο αναγνωστικό πολιτισμό.

Η μοναδική πένα της Έμιλυ Μπροντέ γράφει ξεκάθαρα με μία προοπτική, αρνείται να δώσει στον αναγνώστη το τέλος που ίσως θα επιθυμούσε.
Αντιθέτως, ρεαλιστικά μπορεί ο καθένας να συνδεθεί με το δικό του συμπέρασμα.
Ταξιδεύει μέσα σε δυο σύνολα αφήγησης, σε μία ταλαντευόμενη χρονολογική σειρά, που μεταφέρει με επιτυχία πάνω απο δυο γενιές χαρακτήρων.
Ο κάθε χαρακτήρας με διαφορετική προσωπικότητα, υποκειμενικες ιδέες, αντικειμενικές συμπεριφορές.

Αυτοί οι παράγοντες ρυθμίζονται απο τη συγγραφέα με θαυμάσιο τρόπο. Διαφορετικά, ασυνήθιστα,
όλα όμως, πραγματοποιούνται με κάποιο τρόπο και για συγκεκριμένο λόγο που δεν είναι ποτέ σαφής και τελειωτικός. Άσκοπη αναζήτηση αιτίας και αποτελέσματος. Επιτυχές κάθε συμπέρασμα εξαγόμενο απο συλλογισμούς σε γενικό πλαίσιο δεδομένων.

Ευρύ φάσμα αμφισβητούμενων ιδεών, άψογα δομημένοι χαρακτήρες, με μια φρικτή τελειότητα και ισχυρούς δεσμούς, που πολλαπλασιάζονται όσο διαιρούνται, καθιστούν αυτό το έργο ένα πολιτικό αριστούργημα της αγγλικής λογοτεχνίας.

Εν κατακλείδι, ας μου επιτραπεί μία υπερβολική δήλωση που προέρχεται απο την μεγάλη μου αγάπη Γι αυτό το βιβλίο.
Αν αποτύχει να αγγίξει τα βάθη της ψυχής ή να κάνει υποβλητικά ξεχωριστή εντύπωση, πρέπει ο αναγνώστης είτε να είναι νεκρός ή να διαβάζει λανθασμένη ιστορία.
Καμία σχέση δεν έχει το βιβλίο με οποιαδήποτε μεταφορά στην μικρή και μεγάλη οθόνη.

Αν έχετε αγαπήσει ή δεν έχετε αγαπήσει ποτέ,
διαβάστε το.
Θα κλονιστείτε, θα λατρέψετε!!!



Καλή ανάγνωση.
Πολλούς ασπασμούς.

n  n    “People feel with their hearts, Ellen, and since he has destroyed mine, I have not power to feel for him.”n  n

Okay, I know that Wuthering Heights is so many people’s favorite book of all-time, and so many people’s least favorite book of all-time, so I went into this not really knowing what to expect. I will be honest, I didn’t really love it, but I was for sure not expecting the wild ride that this story took me on. I just truly found all of the characters (Except for Ellen/Nelly) to be so damn insufferable.

But this is a story set in 1801, about a man named Mr. Lockwood, staying the night at Wuthering Heights. He meets a man named Heathcliff, who seems absolutely miserable, and he meets a housekeeper named Ellen Dean who will eventually help us figure out why Heathcliff is so miserable. Oh, and when Lockwood goes to sleep that night, he is awoken by a ghost! He then tells Ellen this, and she promptly throws us back into a flashback, where she becomes the new narrator, and we get to see what went down at Wuthering Heights many years ago.

Wuthering Heights, at its black heart, is a story all about abuse, and cycles of abuse, and how abuse can impact so many hearts and so many generations repeatedly. Abuse and cruelty truly breed violence, and Heathcliff and everyone he has been forced to interact with just showcase that theme over and over. Heathcliff was orphaned and taken in, but everyone reminds him that he constantly is an outsider. But this story focuses on him and the three young people he grew up alongside of, and they are all shitty in their own ways.

➽ Heathcliff is shitty because he only cares for Catherine.
➽ Isabelle is shitty because she only cares about Heathcliff.
➽ Edgar is shitty because he doesn’t care about his sister.
➽ Catherine is shitty because she only cares about herself.

n  n    “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”n  n

And friends, it is a truly wild ride seeing these characters interact with one another. And we eventually get to see their children who (you guessed it) are shitty, too! Again, cycles of abandonment and abuse is truly heartbreaking in every aspect.

I don’t want to say too much more without spoiling, because I really do think the twists are pretty decent in this and figuring out more about the ghost was a big highlight for me. Also, the atmosphere was phenomenal, and the Yorkshire moors truly set a beautiful stage for this dark tale. And I feel like this is a little bit of an unpopular opinion; but I actually really liked Emily’s prose, too.

I do want to say that upon finishing this story, I immediately started to look up things about the entire Brontë family, and my heart just broke. The things that those sister, and their entire family, had to go through. I know 2019 is kind of a dumpster fire, but I am so thankful that I wasn’t born in the 1800s, good Lord. Also, reading about how closely tuberculosis impacted this story and Emily’s life truly fucked me up, especially because I’m close to Emily’s age when she died. Seriously, I have so much love and respect in my heart for these three sisters, originally writing their dark tales under male pseudonyms, who will now never be forgotten.

Overall, even though I didn’t love this story, this book was enjoyable enough to read. But you’re never going to find me romanticism anything that Heathcliff did. But I truly couldn’t wait to find out what happened next to all these insufferable characters. And I still firmly believe that Ellen/Nelly deserves the entire world. Also, I had the biggest giggle while reading about someone throwing hot applesauce at someone else, because like, just imagine that.

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Content and trigger warnings for use of the word g*psies, death, loss of a loved one, a lot of physical and emotional abuse, alcohol abuse, child abuse, animal abuse, humiliation, self-harm, and abandonment.

If you've been following my status updates as I read this book, you can probably guess what kind of review this is going to be. (answer: the best kind!) So let's get the good stuff out of the way first, and then I can start the ranting.

Good stuff: I liked some of the characters. Ellen was sweet, and seemed to be the only sensible person in the story. And lord, does she get put through a lot of shit. Girlfriend needs a hug and a spa weekend after all she's been through. I also liked Catherine II and Hareton - unlike their romantic predecessors (and believe me, we'll get to those two soon), they were likeable most of the time. Sure, they had their jackass moments, but considering their respective upbringings, can you really blame them? Also, they reminded me of Bender and Claire from The Breakfast Club. Like I said, kind of irritating and stupid, but sweet.
I also appreciated the incredible passion of the story (and the passionate emotions it raised in me) Sure, I hated Heathcliff, but even I swooned a little during his final scene with Cathy. Sure, Emily Bronte has written the most terrifying portrayal of a love story I've ever seen (Fatal Attraction? Pfft.), but she did it really, really well. Terrifying as it is. Which brings me to the next section of this review...

Bad Stuff: I cannot, for the life of me, understand why anyone thinks this is a love story. It's a horror story of love and passion gone horribly, horribly wrong, and Heathcliff is one of the greatest villains ever created in literature.
Notice I said "villain" and not "antihero." Heathcliff is not an antihero. He is a sociopath, and for the last fifty pages of the story I wanted to violently murder him so badly that my hands were shaking as I held the book. He is evil.
Cathy doesn't get my sympathy, either. She was a spoiled, unfeeling bitch during every moment she was present in the story, and it's only because she was dead by page 200 that she didn't make me as angry as Heathcliff did - she simply didn't have enough time.
But let's get back to Heathcliff - I cannot outline here all of the evil things he did over the course of the story, and to do so would probably be to give away spoilers. Let me just say this: I now understand completely why Wuthering Heights is being advertised in bookstores as "Bella and Edwards Favorite Book!". It should be. As I said in a comment on one of my statuses: Edward Cullen is good, but Heathcliff wrote the fucking book on Domestic Abuse Thinly Disguised As Love.
I don't know why so many readers get all fangirly over Heathcliff. He's an asshole, a sociopath, and even he knows how evil he is. As he says of Isabella, a girl he marries and then treats so horribly I can't even talk about it right now: "She abandoned them under a delusion...picturing in me a hero of romance, and expecting unlimited indulgences from my chivalrous devotion. I can hardly regard her in the light of a rational creature, so obstinately has she persisted in forming a fabulous notion of my character, and acting on the false impression she has cherished."

Hear that, Heathcliff fangirls? Even he thinks you're all morons for liking him.

And, just to end this on a good note: I've shared this webcomic before, but it fits here too because, let's face it, the Bronte sisters had terrible taste in men.

Wuthering Heights takes us to a world that is somehow outside of all social and moral norms. It's closer to the realm of dreams or Greek myth than the rational everyday life of civilised habit. As if the characters are dramatizing the psyche or the unconscious in the midst of everyday life. Bronte demands we extend our sympathies beyond their brightly-lit habitual moral parameters - rather like Nabokov does in Lolita. Except where Nabokov does it directly through his narrator Bronte is arguably cleverer by providing us with a rather commonplace and reasonable narrator who much more mirrors our own sensibility. Nelly is like a comfortable armchair. You might say the norm in this novel is sociopathic behaviour and yet Nelly with her commonplace emotional economies provides the illusion that everything she recounts is firmly attached to a normal social reality. It's a super clever sleight of hand on Bronte's part. Thus this is a conventional secular narrative we experience in Nelly's armchair about a violent amoral world in which almost everything is outside the realm of civilised etiquette.

Structurally this book is a brilliant enigma. It feels like a series of unconscious decisions on Emily's part which for a novel that spends a lot of time dramatizing the darker realms of the human psyche is another masterstroke. Our narrator is almost immediately shoved aside by a first-hand witness of all events, Nelly, the housekeeper. Bronte uses this technique of doubling up throughout the novel - eventually Catherine and Heathcliff's children will replace Catherine and Heathcliff. Virtually every character in this novel has a twin. At times it's confusing trying to recall who is whose offspring or relative but this only adds to the novel's atmosphere of some kind of elemental drama unfolding in which individuals are no less cyclical, no less driven by primitive energies than the surrounding moors. Wuthering Heights is an adventure into the heart of darkness, anticipating Conrad by more than fifty years. It's also a novel that feels spookily intimate with death.

To anyone who thinks this a dated novel which belongs fixedly to its time I'd say there are thousands and thousands of modern day Heathcliffs doing time in our prisons and wreaking havoc on our streets, deprived, racially abused, unloved kids who have made it their mission to exact revenge on a cruel pitiless world. This is a way more subtle and far reaching portrait of the plight of the abused child than anything her sister came up with. Jane Eyre is corporate American cinema compared to Heathcliff. Bronte does more than give a voice to the emotionally crippled, the inarticulate, the vindictive outcasts of society; she creates the world they would like to live in, the destruction of virtually everything we associate with civilised society. And shows us too, by eventually civilising Catherine and Heathcliff's respective children, that we all have elements of Heathcliff and Catherine buried down in our psyches which occasionally make an unsettling appearance in our daily life.

It is a testament to the overabundance of cliches clogging the realms of literature featuring romance, that readers widely associate the middle Brontë sister's tour de force with vindictive fury, abuse and emotional excesses rather than love. Because bestowing approval on an unnatural, obsessive love that devoured everything in its vicinity out of pure malice somehow throws our moral compass into a tizzy.

Last time I read this, Emily Brontë had cruelly crushed a child's enjoyment of a book much like Heathcliff remorselessly causes the universe stretching between the extremities of Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights to implode violently. She had sucked me into a vortex of dark, inchoate feelings for a week or so from which I found difficult to extricate myself.
But this time? The pages flew by. My spirit soared every time Brontë breached a boundary of what the voices in favor of the status quo label propriety, demolished a stereotype, let her heroine roam the outdoors as freely as she could with the one person who never sought to reduce her individuality to a compilation of 'feminine' attributes. And the romance? It made me swoon. So pardon me if I shun those patriarchy-approved alpha males who infantilize their lovers, their false sheen of dignity and restraint, the promise of domesticated happily-ever-afters, and righteous, unidimensional do-gooders. I crave for Emily's brutal candour instead, her courageous glorification of this earth-shattering, all-consuming desire to melt, to unite with the one you covet, with nary a care for what it may entail. The love that heats up your blood and is food for your soul and percolates every fibre of your being.
n  

But, Heathcliff, if I dare you now, will you venture? If you do, I'll keep you. I'll not lie there by myself: they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me, but I won't rest till you are with me. I never will!

n
Heathcliff and Catherine's relationship was beyond their own control and comprehension, a storm which wreaked havoc in the lives of those who sought to throttle it, a force of nature which subsided only when both its initiators were reconciled in death free to resume their wild, unchecked peregrinations across the stretch of earth which they claimed as their very own - the moors, which divorced from worldly considerations of wars, Empire and inequality, became the only utopia which could accommodate their calamitous passion for each other.

n  I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped in the flags! In every cloud, in every tree-filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object by day-I am surrounded with her image!n

Sartre in his preface (passionate endorsement) to Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth says -

n  "...he shows perfectly clearly that this irrepressible violence is neither a storm in a teacup nor the reemergence of savage instincts nor even a consequence of resentment: it is man restructuring himself."n

And that's as concise and succinct a defense I can provide for Heathcliff, his rage that won't be quelled and its devastating manifestations. The Heathcliff without a second name, the perpetual outsider in a white-washed society breeding manifold evils, the other, the 'thing' which Nelly Dean, Mrs Earnshaw, Hindley and even the infant Catherine see as nothing other than a dirty, smelly, baseborn creature deserving of contempt. A person of color stranded in a world increasingly being cleaved into virulent polarities of light and dark, Occident and Orient, powerful and powerless, colonizer and colonized, white master and black slave, abuser and abused. Violence is the language of the oppressed after all, especially because the oppressor teaches him no better.
n  

I wish I had light hair and a fair skin, and was dressed and behaved as well, and had a chance of being as rich as he will be!

n
And Catherine? I disagree with Simone de Beauvoir when she asserts -
n  

"She uses his words, she repeats his gestures, adopts his manias and tics. "I am Heathcliff," says Catherine in Wuthering Heights; this is the cry of all women in love; she is another incarnation of the beloved, his reflection, his double: she is he. She lets her own world flounder in contingence: she lives in his universe."

n
This certainly typifies heroines populating the wide spectrum of conventional romance novels in general. But I consider Catherine exempt from this pigeonholing. A few moments from her death she contemplates reverting to her sexless girlhood to be reunited with a childhood companion only with whom she had savoured true liberty, to travel back to a time when societal mores hadn't impressed upon her a catastrophic urge for conformity. And if Catherine finds herself to be interchangeable from her other half, then Heathcliff, too, wills himself to dissolve with her into the embrace of the earth which does not discriminate between the baptized and the heathen.
n  

'...I dreamt I was sleeping the last sleep by that sleeper, with my heart stopped and my cheek frozen against hers.
'And if she had been dissolved into earth, or worse, what would you have dreamt of then?' I said.
'Of dissolving with her, and being more happy still!' he answered.

n
There. If Catherine is Heathcliff, then Heathcliff, too, is Catherine. Beings seeking to overturn the societal injunction against their individuation and find their salvation in each other. A salvation they could attain only when Emily ushers in the element of the paranormal, the much vilified, belittled 'gothic'.

So take away your insidious Rochesters and sanctimonious Jane Eyres and gentrified romances put on a pedestal. Give me Heathcliff and Catherine instead. Give me their petulant anger, their restlessness and their feral love.

Have you ever read a book years later with a completely different opinion? This was my peculiar experience, having picked up Wuthering Heights. I created an ideal of the passionate, brooding man, but alas!

How damn insufferable are Heathcliff and Catherine. RUTHLESS. Locked in a poisonous, passionate love that destroyed the lives of everyone that came near... but the pain of Wuthering Heights is the unrequited love. Had he stood a minute longer, he would have known how Catherine really felt.

n  He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the samen

n  Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! n

The last time I read this book was as a teenager—my Mom and I read it together, immersed in the man who defied everything for his one true love—but as an adult, I think the poor guy needs grief therapy. There were a multitude of unhealthy behaviors. Let me destroy every single person who’s ever crossed my path because the love of my life is gone, BUT don't they deserve it? Everyone made Healthcliff's life hell, treating him no less than an animal in a cage. It was only Catherine who saw his true self, his worth.

But wait, I’m still obsessed with their passionate, death-defying words. Is that weird?

n  If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger n

I was intrigued by the side characters and how trauma, rage, jealousy, and loss can destroy and ruin souls. Before and after Catherine’s death, nothing is okay. Each character, dripping with flaws, is constantly stuck in looping chaos.

n   Treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends; they wound those who resort to them worse than their enemies n

Yet, Emily Brontë writes like a poet. An author who can make you feel all kinds of things has done her job. The narrator, Nelly, a servant, retells the story in a way that we all retell stories about troubled people. It’s not like Nelly likes these characters; she’s reiterating their flaws and is shocked by imperfect characters.

Heathcliff tells Nelly:

n  My old enemies have not beaten me; now would be the precise time to revenge myself on their representatives: I could do it; and none could hinder men

The world we live in today is riddled with terms like toxic, codependent, obsessive, and bipolar. These words echoed in my thinking throughout the reading. It was a bit of a shock that Heathcliff, like a criminal, raged against so many. The first time I read Wuthering Heights, I viewed Heathcliff as an actual victim, now more an angry man, stopping at nothing to get his revenge (and every time I have a BUT)...This book is so well done because the victim is also a criminal. It's the dichotomy that continually persisted.

The strange juxtaposition of my youth and adulthood still brings me back to Wuthering Heights. A classic novel that defies logic.

It is a well-executed read of psychologically dynamic characters brought to life by one of the greatest authors.

5/5 stars