Wuthering Heights

Misery, duplicity, revenge, unhealthy family relationships - Wuthering Heights has it all!

Whenever I hear the name Brontë, I start thinking about classic books, with ladies and gentlemen courting each other . . . but, I guess I need to stop confusing Brontë with Austin.

This book is brutal. Every page is an argument, a dark plot, a deathly ill character, or an actual death. There is no joy in Wuthering Heights!

Writing wise, it was pretty good. Not my usual style, but I like to knock out a classic every now and then.

Having been unable to visit the Bronte Parsonage Museum recently, due to Covid-19, I thought a re-read of Wuthering Heights would be the next best thing, and it was - but oh how I long for a trip to Haworth, just to soak up that unique atmosphere!

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.

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.

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.

"Hello, everyone. Welcome to chaos." -Emily Brontë upon publishing this book, probably

Inside me, there are two wolves. (I am saying there are two wolves in order to reference the meme, but what would be more accurate is to say that inside of me there are two boring and nonviolent creatures. Like a pigeon. Or an accountant.)

One wolf, or whatever, has such a constant and undying need to share its opinion that it is currently ranked #1 on Goodreads for most annoying best reviewer. (Don't check if that's still true. I doubt it'll stick and it'll be awkward for all of us if it isn't.)

The other wolf (slash what have you) thinks every other wolf (or entity of your choosing) has a better grasp of every concept on earth than it does, and that it should shut up for one second and let the other wolves talk, like seriously, Jesus Christ, be quiet already, oh my god.

The latter wolf wants to let you know that there is a very interesting conversation on the topic of this book, its categorization as a love story, and its history in the comments of this review, and you should scroll down to read that instead.

But the first wolf is going to keep talking up here anyway.

Here is a list of facts about this book:
- it was published in 1848
- its author had a grand total of about 1 year of formal education
- it was said author's debut and written while she was in her 20s
- it contains barbaric characters, total disregard for etiquette, necrophilia (or intent to commit), the devil embodied in a man (who is also the main love interest), The Royal Tenenbaums-style incest, premarital friskiness by 19th century standards, violence, emotional abuse, cruelty, and enough gaslighting to maybe make TikTokers consider for one second how often they use that word.

Kind of surprising, no?

In spite of the fact that I was told one hundred thousand million times that this is not a love story, I was told TWO hundred thousand million times that it was. And honestly I went in expecting something like Agnes Grey: it's not a satisfying romance, but there's something there.

I was not prepared for this.

This is a very intense and stunning and beautifully written novel, and if I ever reread it I think I will like it more then.

But no matter how hard I tried on this first read, my brain will always lump the Brontë sisters and Jane Austen together.

And this wasn't even Jane Eyre-level. It would have given Austen war flashback style nightmares.

Bottom line: We'll get em next time!

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pre-review

well. that wasn't what i thought it would be.

review to come / 3 or 3.5 stars

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currently-reading updates

readathons are all about binge-reading books you haven't been able to make yourself pick up ever until you're in a reading slump.

this is my first time doing one but i'm pretty sure.

clear your shit prompt one: a book in which somebody dies (just guessing but seems like it)
follow my progress here

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tbr review

confession time: i have now amassed 3 copies of this book, in the hope that one of them will suddenly inspire me to read it

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

I've tried it three times. I know people are obsessed with it. I hate everyone in the book - and I just can't care about a book where I actually hate the characters.

And, sure, I get the interpretation that as terrible as Heathcliff and Cathy are, it's their love that redeems them, and isn't that romantic.

No.