Wuthering Heights

Cold, windy, flat, and grassy. That's how I can describe the English moors; a land all on its own, the moors seem other-worldly. Only the most desperate people would make a living here, carving out a life from the rough, craggy cliffs and beating out happiness from the howling winds. The moors hardly seem the proper setting for a love story, and yet Emily Bronte did it. She set one of the most famous stories of passion her only novel, Wuthering Heights in this wind swept locale. Perhaps this is why Wuthering Heights works, the moors' coldness contrasted by fiery passion, and the stone cliffs' roughness overshadowed by a loves' tenderness. Drawing from her own home  on the moors, Emily Bronte's novel is as beautiful as an English spring while still remaining oddly mysterious like the moors of Wuthering Heights.

Who can know the depraved mind; who can find the man behind the beast? When Emily Bronte created the man Heathcliff, she created a very unique monster: a man who had spent his childhood on the moors, a gypsy with an unknown past, a man who only knew how to hate because all he had ever known was people's hatred for him. It seems inconceivable that anyone could love Heathcliff. But then Bronte created Cathy, a woman who was the complete opposite of Heathcliff and yet his equal in every way. Cathy loved a monster; she gave him part of herself. This is a story of forbidden love that spans two generations, a story of passion born on the moors, passion that is strong, strange, and everlasting even beyond death.

I found this book quite interesting but a little strange. While I like classics, and this is definitely that, I have a genuine dislike for many of the characters. The story its self is well written and tells a fascinating tale, but most of the characters are so rude, conniving, and ill tempered that I found it very hard to be invested in their struggles. Written in 1800s English, the languages is flowery and some might find it hard to read. There is also one character who speaks with such a thick Gaelic accent (the words are written how they would be spoken) I couldn't understand them. Wuthering Heights is an interesting book and is worthy of being a classic; I think it's a book everyone should eventually read. But there are many other classics which are much better and worth more time.

*****
RJ