Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights

Because I consider this column to be more about recommending books to the Guyanese reading (and non-reading) populace than actually analyzing literature, it is often very important for me to highlight books that are both entertaining and important but, for one reason or the other, is not really known by the average Guyanese reader.

(Simon and Schuster, 2014)
(Simon and Schuster, 2014)

As an example, in recent times there seems to have been a re-emergence of those cheap and badly-written romance novels – the ones with a buxom white girl swooning in the arms of some gallant, muscular man on the cover. Lately, I’m always coming across girls and women who are reading these books and the first thing that comes into my head when I see this is the thought that they should be reading Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights instead.
Wuthering Heights is the only novel by Emily Bronte and was published in 1847. It is, first and foremost, a love story, a romance, filled with all the ingredients that can only make a love story worth reading: a wealthy girl and a poor boy, forbidden love, revenge, death, etc. While that may sound like the recipe for a clichéd love story, Bronte ensures that this doesn’t happen and the resulting novel is one of the most powerful, most beautiful, most haunting love stories ever published in the history of writing.
Catherine Earnshaw is a wealthy girl living in the moors of Southern England. Her father adopts a dark “gypsy” boy named Heathcliff and brings him to live in their household. As Catherine and Heathcliff grow up together, they grow closer and eventually fall in love. However, due to his status as an outsider and the fact that he belongs to a lower class, Catherine eventually marries another man. This is the fuel for the inferno of emotions – rage, hate, love, sorrow – that sweep across the rest of the novel. Bronte’s prose is rich in imagery and she has the remarkable ability to convey much in a single phrase or sentence. For example, when Catherine says, “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” the reader is immediately made aware, from that small group of words, of the total sum of Catherine’s love for Heathcliff.
However, if that quote makes you think that the novel is some sappy love story, then you are entirely mistaken. Bronte’s version of love does not have the typical kind of happy ending, with Catherine and Heathcliff riding off into the sunset. Her presentation of love is more realistic than idealistic. It is raw and unflinching – the kind of love that borders on madness, the kind of love that upends the upright image of Victorian characters and turns them into savages. Bronte’s idea of love is as wild and untamed as the characters in the book. In this way, it differs from and becomes more important than the flat, empty romance novels young people read these days. Furthermore, Wuthering Heights, while remaining a love story at its core, is also a novel rich with commentary on Victorian society, social class, and gender. It is indeed a thousand times better, and more valuable, than any contemporary romance. It is definitely a must read for anyone who claims to love love-stories.

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