Wuthering Heights by E. Brontë
Friday, October 27, 2006 - 4:54 PM
Wuthering Heights comes alive in the Gothic tradition. The wind and the rain, the rolling moor, are employed as leitmotifs. Dark and stormy characters brood in the shadows of their pasts, the very spectres of haunting tragedy. The popularity of the novel attests to its status as a true classic: students love it despite having read it for school purposes; obnoxious young people read it after the celluloid version or two with well coiffured leads - coming to the conclusion that the movie(s) did little justice to the book; curious individuals fascinated by the intensity of the Heathcliff-Cathy romance are confronted with an unexpected Romance and the remarkable truth that Cathy does not get her bodice ripped by a big brute.
The book came to my notice when I was 12. Sister mentioned it in passing to me. What struck me was the emphasis she placed on the word 'strange'. She didn't like its queerness and I didn't forgo the opportunity to indulge in a bit of 'dark' literature that enticed a typical melancholic little girl who aspired to pathos but succumbed to bathos.
Unfortunately, I managed so little. Heathcliff's tragic, brutish undercurrents were inscrutable to a foolish thing like me.
[...] I stood still, and was witness, involuntarily, to a piece of superstition on the part of my landlord, which belied, oddly, his apparent sense.
He got on to the bed, and wrenched open the lattice, bursting, as he pulled at it, into an uncontrollable passion of tears.
'Come in! come in!' he sobbed.
'Cathy, do come. Oh do - once more! Oh! My heart's darling, hear me this time - Catherine, at last!'
The spectre showed a spectre's ordinary caprice; it gave no sign of being; but the snow and wind whirled wildly through, even reaching my station, and blowing out the light.
The emotional outbursts of sad waif and vengeful, cruel lover I failed to grasp. Emily Brontë's obsessive delight in commas proved distracting.
In my commonplace book, I find my scribbled remarks: Heathcliff, strangely alluring man. I'm certain I grew up somewhere between 12 and 23.
Theirs is a protean relationship. It veers between extremes of love and hate, possession and freedom. The curious fact that it is an unconsummated affair evokes different attitudes to the veracity of their passion. Some readers dismiss the authenticity of the relationship because they find it hard to accept this queerly chaste love. Consequently, they dismiss the novel as another tiring case of teenage romance a la Romeo and Juliet.
Yet, the burgeoning love of virginal creatures is provokingly violent, at least in literature. Two young lovers share their first kiss and don't quite know what happens after that. Oh the frustrating pain they endure! Is this all there is to Love? It can't be! Which story was it? - does any one recall?
The introduction, forward and biographical notes are Charlotte's. If you know me, you will remember my animosity toward the eldest Brontë sister - her assumptions, to be precise.
'Emily was unaware of the tremendous, excessive emotions expressed in the novel. She couldn't have had an all consuming love affair. She didn't know what she was on about. It's not very English to gad about a desolate moor. The French are such a bad influence. Poor, dear, dead Emily. I know what I'm talking about... Don't you say a word, Anne! you have not an inkling idea what you're talking about. The Yorkshire moors aren't wild avenues of Northern barbarism. We're Londoners, through and through, at heart. We're quite civilised, thank you.'
Quite simply, Emily Brontë's only novel demands a reader's attention. I don't remember coming across any of Charlotte's books that screamed to be read. I usually succumbed to disgust (and fatigue - boy can she ramble) instead. Like her lovers, Emily did nothing by halves while Charlotte played the 'sensible older sister' to exasperating perfection.
