Wuthering Heights
It’s been a long time since I’ve posted, I know. Things have been not great for a while, and I’m ever more aware and anxious about posting thoughts on the internet.
But the book has shook me to the core. I’m fortunate to have read it as an adult--and I’m kind of shocked that this is assigned reading for younger kids, as it exposes the intricacies and horror and anguish that can be love between two people.
I went to see the movie Emily in theaters when it came out, knowing virtually nothing about the Brönte sisters, and was struck when Emily was coded as autistic. I watched her so closely, and it was all there: social awkwardness, special interest, weird ways of being, always searching and always restless... and since I clocked this (although it wasn’t mentioned--as it never is in movies, only implied), I remembered my box set of Brönte sister books my (ex) father-in-law had bought me for Christmas.
Once I polished off Pride and Prejudice for the millionth time, I figured it was time to turn to another author before going through all of my Jane Austen set. Wuthering Heights was much less intimidating looking than Jane Eyer.
I started reading the introduction, got impatient with spoilers, and skipped over to begin consuming the book. It took me a couple of days, and I found once I was deep into the book, it was difficult to put down. At first I was put off by this unreliable male narrator that we are introduced to, especially with his lack of social cue reading and haughty ego.
I never really liked or felt attraction to Heathcliff as a character, but I did feel attraction instead, to the core of the story. When I find a book like this, I have to read it more than once: once for structure and story (and even then, little details and lines lift out of the book, making me run for a highlighter, the poetry of the story hitting me hard), and the next time for detail, for art, for full consumption of a new favored book onto my actual soul.
People have written about this book over and over, but I couldn’t help but feel like the book was written by someone just like me. An out of place blight in the middle of a wild worldly scene, just trying to make a connection--any connection--with those who share the existence. The way the moors are discussed and described reminds me of the agonizing detail I used to take to describe my own home town. Places where others saw poverty and ugly, I saw safety and homage.
Cathy, as a character, is complicated ... I have been her. The mask that we put on in order to climb in the world is very real--her transformation from wild and beastly to charming and lilting is startling. And just like Cathy, there are attachments that I carry along with me whether the other person is willing or not. As though I’m the only one who could really know them fully because I knew them as a child. It is this toxic line of thinking though: that only we can fully know another, and that possessiveness over someone else’s story and life can lead us to do pretty awful things to each other in the name of for your own good.
--Spoilers ahead if you haven’t read the book, so proceed with caution--
When Cathy inevitably dies, both of her lovers ascribe it to the other, when in reality Cathy has made her own prison inside her mask, and it is the mask that kills her. How can she possibly expect Edgar to know her when she has not been fully herself? How can she expect Heathcliff to subjugate himself for the love crumbs that she leaves for him? Cathy gives no one all of herself, and in the end is torn apart by the two people she is trying to be at once, instead of reconciling herself to her actual true identity.
There’s a lot at play here, of course, especially when you consider the social constructs and concepts of the time. Of course Cathy had limited options--much more limited than women today. But at the same time, in fiction, the author can make a choice for her character. Emily chose to tear Cathy into pieces to demonstrate her own fractured existence.
Thankfully Emily was not so abject in her own life that she gives us a totally hopeless novel. Instead, once Heathcliff finally dies, we see a Cathy and Heaton finally together and happy--because they must be happy out of sheer spite of the moors, the bitter cold, and the abusive anger they both endured under the hand of a heart broken Heathcliff.
A man that loves me (or at least he claims to) loves this novel, and I am pretty sure it is because he fancies himself a Heathcliff and me a Cathy. That possessiveness he feels about understanding “the real me” is perfectly captured in Heathcliff’s assertions about Cathy (for every thought she gives to Edgar, she gives a thousand to me... He has planted an oak tree in a flower pot...). This limits Cathy, and it limits me. And ultimately, I’d like to remind him, that it is Heathcliff’s love that destroys Cathy. Heathcliff’s desire to cause and sow pain in return for unrequited love breaks Cathy’s spirit. Although he may claim to deeply love her, there is no proof aside from his claiming that he understands her spirit (even as he ensures that it is dimmed and squashed).
Is he a devil? No. He’s an arrogant man of the time who cannot reconcile the child he knew to the woman she grew into.
My opinions at this time are mushy and half-formed. I’m sure that I’ll be reading this book over and over to find new meaning. Ultimately, I read this book as a warning--a warning away from the kind of love that will destroy us with its intensity, with its demands and with its bonds. How much better is it to be free than to be shackled and held down by this kind of “love”?
That’s a no from me, dog. (But I adore this book at the same time... thank you Emily for giving it to us.)
