Finally got round to tackle “Wuthering Heights” and I'm pleasantly surprised so far. Nothing precious about it but frankly Gothic and even funny: just about every character is a study in grotesque!
Themes uncovered so far:
isolation (stated wish of narrator / house) – family relationships (the fractured Earshaws past and present, the undefined and problematic nature of Heathcliff, and the ideal (?) nuclear model of the Lintons) – reported narrations (it's boxes within boxes here: the narrator – the old maid – Catherine's diary) – inside/outside (the wilderness of the moors, the refuge of the house, the cot-like bed, children messing about on their own) – repressed violence (physical threats, dogs not really attacking, curses a plenty, warnings of doom) - illness - dirt and cleanliness - predicted perdition, fate, and assorted maledictions (the mad religious servant)...
An initial 101 Pop Psychology analysis would probably suggest that the author was a passionate young woman of delicate health suffering from loneliness away from society, hungering for love freed of the yoke of religion, with mixed-up notions of close relationships.
The author sets up a series of problems that preclude any happy ending: if the heroine wishes to progress in society as she asserts, she cannot possibly continue to roam the wilderness with the proudly dirty gypsy boy; if Cathy "is" Heathcliff, how can she leave him?; if the predominent feelings are all-round hatred and anger, how can the story not end in tragedy?
Finally, what about the (not so) “blank page” outsider narrator who gets to grips with the tormented protagonists...”The Great Gatsby” anyone?
More notes about "Wuthering Heights".
What a shamble this book is! If you haven't actually read it, you may only be aware of the first main plot (Cathy n Heathcliff) as this is the one usually favoured by filum adaptations ...but this story only takes less than half of the book!
What a shamble this book is! If you haven't actually read it, you may only be aware of the first main plot (Cathy n Heathcliff) as this is the one usually favoured by filum adaptations ...but this story only takes less than half of the book!
Jumping a generation ahead, the book then moves on to the sons and daughters of the protagonists and this is where it goes rather confusing: most of them share the same traits (ie always at death's door) and same names (whose son is it again?).
(By the way, I had a weird back-to-front feeling as it reminded me of a recent movie: "The Place Beyond The Pines", which explores the relationship between the sons of two past adversaries.)
The novel also gets unintentionally funny: both sides of the family spend their time traveling to and fro between the two houses, only to get forbidden to do so by the two fathers -and then they carry on nonetheless so that they can get married and damn each other to hell. It's sheer panto time!
As noted above, the new protagonists spend the bulk of the second part pretty much all dying, marrying each other, and exchanging curses in rotation. All of them except the formidable devilish figure of Heathcliff who is NOT a nice guy / tormented romantic hero.
Then -to cut a long story short- Bronte suddenly springs a ghost motive upon us in the last ten pages (yes yes, I know: there had been -very fleeting- mentions at the start) and kills off the main character in about three pages straight. The narrator then goes for a stroll to look at the graves and that's that. The end. Unexplored deus ex machina device + no logical arc + no proper conclusion.
Phew. This sure is an overwrought, weird piece of work and no mistake... My main feeling throughout was that it deserves a proper Gothic adaptation far away from the usual lovey-dovey simplification. I mean, even Cathy is no angel; there is a whole subtext of ambiguities worth developing here... (To name but two: Didn't she try to have her cake and eat it after all? And at the end of the day, why does Heathcliff feel so hard done-by?)
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