About Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë
One-sentence summaries of the book:
This is a story of upper class people living on the Yorkshire moors who gaslight each other to death, as told through 3-4 narrators of unknown reliability.
The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, who are all named after previous characters, just to confuse the reader.
If left to their own devices, upper class people will be utterly horrible to each other, leading us to draw the conclusion that without the servant class we cannot have civilization.
This book is Lord of the Flies on the Yorkshire moors.
As we read this book, we feel better about ourselves for at least not being as contemptibly horrible to those around us as the characters in the book are.
The moral of the story is:
Revenge is a dish best served cold, but don’t be too long about getting revenge because you will lose interest in it.
If you are going to be awful to your relatives, make sure that the servants are not listening.
Check the weather forecast before going walking about on the Yorkshire moors.
Write your will early on in your life, so that your sister and not your brother-in-law inherits your estate.
My wuthering thoughts
I am worried that I have read an abridged version of this book - printed books say 280-380 pages, but my kindle version (which does not say “abridged” or “unabridged”) had only 119 pages. But maybe the printed versions are full of commentary and footnotes.
This is a book mainly about revenge. It is also about obsession, enmeshment, gaslighting, psychological abuse, physical abuse, and other utterly toxic relationship behaviors. It’s bizarre to me that anyone could think the novel is about romantic love. There is no healthy love portrayed here. It makes me wonder what kind of family the Brontes were, behind closed doors, outside of the public eye.
All the characters have such deep flaws that the reader is unable to sympathize with any of them. Usually I give up on such novels, but for some reason I was compelled to finish the book.
The novel might be about racism, but doesn’t treat it head on.
When I read this book in my youth, I did not like it. It seemed to just be full of a few people becoming ridiculously overwrought, with lots of sobbing, in a lonely place. It still is, but there is much more there - this time I noticed the revenge, class, and race themes. I also noticed the narrative technique.
What was Emily Bronte trying to say?
Taken at face value, Wuthering Heights seems to say that left to their own devices (on the Yorkshire moors), family members are bound to be nasty to each other. Given the abuse the characters dish out, the ending seems falsely optimistic. There is no way that people raised in such a toxic environment can end up having a healthy relationship unless they get a lot of psychological counseling.
Is it a book against the notion that different classes and races can get along? Against the notion of parental favoritism of one child to the detriment of the other children?
Heathcliff manages, over 20 years, to get revenge, but it is not any good to him. Maybe the point of the book is that you should not pursue revenge, as it won’t be satisfying and may backfire.
Christianity is totally bashed. The obvious Christian (servant Joseph) is a judgmental supercilious creep, and the rest of the characters pretty much reject Christianity. Is Bronte trying to say that if you reject Christianity, violence, despair, and death will result? Or that Christianity is useless in bringing about good relationships in families?
Was Bronte writing against traditional notions of masculinity?
Maybe W.H. is an allegory!
I have an inkling that Bronte may have intended the book as an allegory about human existence or human civilization. A novel is deemed an enduring classic if it makes useful commentary on the human condition. If W.H. is about human civilization, then what does it mean that Catherine and Heathcliff say that they exist one within the other, or that one cannot exist without the other? Perhaps the enmeshment of Cathy the Elder and Heathcliff is not a weird psychological derailment of the relationship, but is instead a statement about how our human passions are the same, regardless of skin color, and those passions always exist in humanity.
If it is such an allegory, does the reconciliation of the family - through Cathy the Younger and Hareton - imply that civilization can be reached through forgiveness of past wrongs? Is Bronte saying that yes, we humans can tame our monsters within? By offering forgiveness, ceasing to point out each other’s faults, and teaching one another how to read, can we learn how to live peacefully with each other?
Joyce Carol Oates seems to agree with the notion that W.H. is an allegory, in this essay.
Emily Brontë’s sense of the parable residing beneath her melodramatic tale guides us throughout: for we are allowed to know, despite the passionate and painfully convincing nostalgia for the Heights, the moors, and childhood, evinced by Catherine and Heathcliff, that their values, and hence their world (the Heights) are doomed. We acquiesce rather to the lyricism of the text, than to its actual claims: the triumph of the second Catherine and Hareton (the “second” Heathcliff), not only in their union but in their proposed move away from the ancient home of the Earnshaws, is a triumph that quite refutes traditional readings of the novel that dwell upon its dark, brooding, unconscious, and even savage energies.
There is little in Wuthering Heights about how difficult it was to make a living on the Yorkshire moors. As far as I can remember, the two families are fairly well off and never experience a crop failure, storms killing their livestock, or other economic setbacks. At the time the novel was being written (1840s) there were a series of crop failures, the industrial revolution was pulling workers from the countryside, and Charles Dickens was writing about poverty. In the 1780s to 1801, when the novel is set, what’s going on is revolutionary war in the American colonies, revolution in France, the industrial revolution. But Bronte sets the novel on the lonely moors, allowing the plot to ignore what is going on in the larger world. It’s sort of like Shakespeare’s The Tempest, with all the action confined to a small island, except Heathcliff/Prospero turns to the dark side.
The book leaves a lot of questions unanswered.
Many readers would view unanswered questions as another characteristic of a classic. It gives book clubs a lot to talk about.
Where did Heathcliff come from? Was he Earnshaw the Elder’s son through an affair?
Is Heathcliff mistreated because Earnshaw the Elder favors him, or because he is dark-skinned, or because he is a sudden intruder into the family?
Is Nelly telling the truth? Has Lockwood changed the story that Nelly told him? Why does Bronte use 2-3 layers of narrators?
2 comments:
Okay, we're on the same page, but the insights on Christianity are new to me.
I abhor how this novel is touted as "romantic love" when it's about a really obsessive, possessive relationship that is SO unhealthy. I wondered if Emily didn't know any better, growing up as she did so isolated and without a good example of a loving marriage in front of her. I've never read much about her life, but the way she writes seems to (in a way) idealize this crazy obsession that leads to terrible revenge.
My book club is kicking it old school soon with Rebecca--I've never read it.
@Melissa - I found Rebecca to be a terrifying tale well told.
Post a Comment