Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Wuthering Heights

by Emily Brontë

4 stars

I really had a hard time rating (and reading) this book. It comprises an assortment of heavily disturbed characters, each more unlikeable than the next. It got so tedious, at one point, that I gave up reading it for several days. It was so absolutely frustrating while I was actually reading it that I seriously considered tossing it into a fire, except I couldn’t be bothered because it’s summer.

And yet I got literal chills when I finished it.

I don’t know what it is about this novel, but even tough I hated everything about it—primarily the characters and almost every single turn of events— my mind is still reeling a bit.

Heathcliff is man broken by loss, rendered petty and rancorous by this event, who winds up poisoning everything and everyone that surrounds him. Even though he behaves deplorably, literally embodying everything I could possibly hate about humankind, I couldn’t help but feel sympathetic towards him at the end; I was moved by his predicament and hoped he would finally find peace with Catherine. And what’s sad about his condition is that we can understand where is behaviour comes from: he has a miserable life, made bearable by the presence of a horribly selfish girl, that ends up leaving him as well.

And then there’s Catherine. She’s just... not okay for me. I get were she comes from, when she does what she does, and how circumstance pushes her to act a certain way, follow a certain road, but she truly is the product of her upbringing, and nothing more. She grew up behaving selfishly, and seeing as she was almost always indulged, she never changed, and the effects of such behaviour rubbed off in a myriad of negative ways in everyone that came into contact with her.

And yet, despite all of this, never has a love feel more desperately genuine as Heathcliff and Catherine’s.

Who I don’t know how to feel about is Nelly. Since it’s through her eyes that we experience this story, I feel very biased when assessing her character.

But the whole funereal atmosphere of the novel is somewhat redeemed by Hareton and Cathy’s endearing relationship. They are not desperately in love from the first moment they laid eyes on each other, they are simply two people that really wanted (and needed) to love and be loved, and it’s refreshing that after all they went through their dispositions were not tarnished by such dreary surroundings and that they were able to find what they looked for in each other.

This was a very... introspective read.