You may recall I was trying to reread Wuthering Heights a few weeks ago when I was laid low with a bad reaction to my Covid jab and a brain fog descended. So the fog has now lifted but then I was stricken with severe back pain and have been staggering around like Quasimodo. As I lay prone I decided I would return to WH and finish it.
Now I am making a solemn promise and it is one I will be able to keep with no problem. I am NEVER going to read this book again. NEVER.
Way back in my teens I discovered the Brontes, ok well it was Jane Eyre, but that fascinated me and set me off on an interest that has never waned. Over the years I have read practically every biog, crit or article I could find re this family. I have visited Haworth several times, I have walked on the moors and the love of all things Bronte has never left me.
But there is an exception and this exception is called Emily. Charlotte seemed to hold her in awe and admiration and reverence and I could never understand why. This sister seemed to dominate and hold a position in the family that was all encompassing. She and Anne seemed to be very close (but bear in mind that against all opposition Anne went out to work and stayed at work for years, more than any of the others managed to do. Getting away? Just a thought). It always struck me that the sisters were afraid of her and after reading Wuthering I can understand why.
Pretty sure that other scholars with finer minds than mine (not hard) have come to the conclusion that Catherine Earnshaw is Emily. She has all the characteristics: wanting her own way in everything, seemingly terrorising weaker characters than herself, selfish, yes selfish, and caring for nobody. This sister has been portrayed as this wonderfully strong character, the heart of the family who stayed at home looking after her father and sistsers. My feeling is that this is precisely what she always wanted. Safe and powerful in her own domain. She ventured forth to Brussels with Charlotte where she disliked and was disliked and soon came home again. In the school run by the Hegers she was relatively unimportant.
People have queried where did Wuthering Heights come from? A spinster virgin living in a remote Yorkshire village. If, as I do, you view Catherine as Emily as I have already mentioned above, then it seems she is consumed all the time by anger and fury and wishes to hurt as many people as she can. And boy does she do it in spades in WH. Heathcliff may arrive as a surly boy but the reason he grows into this brutal vicious man is down to the way he is treated, not just by Hindley but by Catherine who rejects him "it would degrade me to marry Heathcliff". The heart of all the troubles and anger and brutality emanates from Catherine and trying to fathom out just how and why she does it remains an eternal mystery.
My first reading of this was when I was a teenager and probably did not understand it and so I re-read it some years later. I still found it repulsive. So I left it for a long long time and then tried again, feeling perhaps I could bring a more mature focus to a work that is regarded as a masterpiece. No well I still loathe it. Every single character is venal, brutal (sorry to keep using this word cannot think of another) weak, stupid and deeply unpleasant.
And yet there are those who view Wuthering Heights as a towering love story. Why? The film with Olivier and Merle Oberon is of its time and Olivier speaking incredibly posh English is clearly totally wrong, but this vision of the running across moors calling "Cathy" "Heathcliff" seems to have given their love a charm that is singularly lacking.
I went online to find out what others thought of WH and was quite astonished at the various comments but the one that made me laugh and with which I totally agree came from the author Anne Tyler in an interview with the Guardian:
"I somehow made it to adulthood without reading Wuthering Heights but then I found out that several of my women friends considered Heathcliff their all time favourite romantic hero. So I read about three quarters of it as a grown-up and immediately developed some serious concerns about the mental health of my friends"
I could not have put it better.
And I didn't...
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