The Classic Tale of a Torrid Affair: Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights

“He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” – Catherine Earnshaw

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte has to be one of the BEST romances I have ever read. At that time I was mostly fed on Jane Austen’s drawing room romances, which I loved immensely. Not knowing much about the background of Bronte sisters at that time, I picked up this book thinking of it to be a romance in the similar vein.

I was, naturally, left shocked & awed by the end of the book. Not only was this a romance that was stark opposite of what I expected to read, it was also wonderful in every aspect. This is not the love story of lovely ladies in Victorian gowns & gentlemen complex in their own way, stealing furtive glances over flower-patterned china; this was WILD; wild like the moors of Yorkshire, where the story is set.

The story follows a very rarely used second person narrative for most of its part. We get introduced to a Mr.Lockwood, who is visiting from London to Yorkshire & rents an estate, Thrushcross Grange, as he requires some peace & quiet. He is introduced to the estate owner of both, Thrushcross and Wuthering Heights, Mr.Heathcliff. Though an owner, Heathcliff seems rough in his habits. He is a sullen man, who mostly keeps to himself, and cares little about Victorian niceties, that were a norm in those days. Mr. Lockwood visits Wuthering Heights & is shown into a room to spend the night. This room, he later finds out, belonged to a girl called Catherine. At night, Lockwood has a strange vision of the dead Catherine trying to crawl back in through her bedroom window. This scares Lockwood & he wakes up screaming. Heathcliff rushes to his room, and hears the story. However, oddly enough, instead of rejecting Lockwood’s nightmare, Heathcliff believes it & opens the bedroom window, hoping to let Catherine’s spirit in. This odd behaviour perplexes Lockwood.

Lockwood returns to Thrushcross Grange next morning & meets the old housekeeper Ellen (Nelly) Dean. Nelly had served Wuthering Heights since a very young age, and Lockwood asks her the story of this house & the strange Heathcliff. The story that unfolds is a classic tale of torrid, all consuming, passionate love & hate.

 

To share a little about the story: 30 years ago, Wuthering Heights was the property of a wealthy Mr.Earnshaw. He had two children, Hindley, an older son & Catherine, a younger daughter. His wife had passed away after giving birth to Catherine. One day, while travelling to Liverpool, Mr.Earnshaw finds a “dark, gypsy” like boy on the streets who is an orphan. Overcome with pity & affection for the child, Mr.Earnshaw brings him home. He is immediately despised by Hindley, and that angers the senior Mr.Earnshaw further. Mr. Eranshaw gives all fatherly affection to the poor orphan Heathcliff, that makes Hindley extremely jealous. On top of that, Catherine & Heathcliff, being of same age become great friends. With no mother to look after her & with Heathcliff as company, Catherine becomes wild & lacks proper lady-like manners. Hindley is sent to college in the city as his behaviour deteriorates. Things go on fine until senior Earnshaw dies & leaves his estate to Hindley.

Hindley returns now as a master of Wuthering Heights & with a wife Frances. He lets Heathcliff stay on, but only as a servant. He discourages his sister’s constant companionship with Heathcliff, and constantly humiliates Heathcliff to no end. Meanwhile Catherine comes upon a rich family in the nearby Thurshcross Grange, the Lintons. Their genteel & stately mannerisms & appearance wows her to no end, since she never saw the same in her own house. She is infatuated with Linton’s heir, Edgar. His gentlemanly manners are a stark contrast to Heathcliff’s brute mannerisms, the only thing Catherine had seen till then. On top of that the Lintons’ wealth also puts her in complete awe.

She makes the mistake of marrying Edgar for superficial things, and realises much later that she committed a grave mistake…but by that time it is too late. Heathcliff, in despair, runs away & completely disappears for 3 whole years. He returns back after 3 years, seeking revenge & with wealth to tow. His first target is Edgar & his sister Isabella; and then Hindley & his family. He wants to make everyone miserable who took Catherine away from her, and weirdly this makes Catherine long even more for him!!

The rest of the book is for you to read. But this much I can tell you that the story is a web of emotions like passion, jealousy, hatred, revenge & all-consuming love; feelings that were largely unexplored & very un-Victorian in nature.

Heathcliff, as the hero, is the protagonist & antagonist both, of the story. As a hero, his qualities are not virtuous, or he is not the sad victim of circumstances. True, he IS a victim of circumstances, but instead of being sad & melancholy, Heathcliff is vengeful, malicious, bitter yet brooding. As a reader, you might hate Heathcliff for these qualities in his character, but his pain at having lost Catherine & his yearning for her, makes you sympathetic towards his character as well:

“Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!” – HEATHCLIFF on losing Catherine.

The lines above effectively indicate the passion & ferocity with which Heathcliff loved his heroine. Thus in one single story, he is both a hero & a villain of the tale; a very rare & complex character sketch at that age.

Catherine, on the other hand is equally wild & complex. Unlike other Victorian romance heroines, Catherine is not coy & a paragon of virtuosity. In fact, she is shown as an opportunist too, which was rare trait in Victorian heroines at that time. She took an instant liking to Heathcliff when they first met, and was inseparable from him since childhood to teenage years. Yet, when she sees Edgar Linton, and his noble & rich family, she sees an opportunity for her to rise in life and ignores the love she had for Heathcliff to play a perfect coquette to Edgar. She tries to justify her actions to her housekeeper Nelly, by saying she will marry Edgar & use her newly acquired position to help Heathcliff rise in life. On Heathcliff’s running away in despair, Catherine realises her mistake, but it is too late by then. On Heathcliff’s return & attention towards Catherine’s sister-in-law Isabella, Catherine gets insanely jealous & cruelly mocks Isabella in front of Heathcliff. She is so disturbed at Heathcliff’s elopement with Isabella that she takes on to ill health, her husband & still to be born child completely ignored. They are last on her mind, which is completely occupied with Heathcliff all the time. Her most famous quote describing her love for the two men in her life is absolute brilliance in the work of literature & symbolism:

My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.”

In a way, Heathcliff & Catherine were two monsters meant for each other & no one else. They did not care how many lives they destroyed around them; they did not care about the hurt they caused each other; all they cared & knew was that they WERE each other & had to be ONE after their deaths in eternal afterlife.

Wuthering Heights, was Emily Bronte’s only novel. She wrote it under the pseudonym Ellis Bell in 1846. However, she found it too outrageous to be published. When Charlotte Bronte’s “Jane Eyre” became a success, Emily was goaded by her older sister to get “Wuthering Heights” published too.

At that time, Jane Eyre was a bigger success, and Wuthering Heights opened to mix to negative response. The novel was viewed with apprehension amongst readers at that time who found the story’s raw passion too negative and against the norm. In the age of gentlemanly heroes who waited on their sweethearts, and simpering heroines…this was a story of two lovers who were selfish, vile, malicious, opportunists, vindictive & jealous and yet completed each other in a way no one & nothing could.

Normally such characters are also portrayed as tortured victim of circumstances who deserve sympathy (which happens to this day), but Heathcliff & Catherine are the real torturers here, and yet walk away with readers’ understanding & sympathy, so deep & passionate is their love. This grey character-sketch of lead actors in a romance novel was not a popular notion and had largely negative undertones; hence the book was not very well received at that time.

Today, however, Wuthering Heights is considered one of the BEST works in romance fiction & an “all time classic” in World Literature. It has been adapted countless number of times in movies, plays, broadway musicals, songs etc.

This book was Emily Bronte’s debut & only novel. She died shortly afterwards at the young age of 30. One wonders what classics this lady could have come up with if she was alive. Perhaps, romance today would have a different benchmark altogether. At least, Emily broke away from regular & shifted the paradigm somewhere.

An eternal classic & a must read!!