Why did he become so malevolent? Why did he become so cruel? Why was he so angry? Why was he so prey to these spasms of bitterness? And so I was as much fascinated with what kind of sensibility had written this as I was with what was in the book. I never know what to think of it. I have just read over Wuthering Heights , and, for the first time, have obtained a clear glimpse of what are termed and, perhaps, really are its faults; have gained a definite notion of how it appears to other people — to strangers who knew nothing of the author; who are unacquainted with the locality where the scenes of the story are laid; to whom the inhabitants, the customs, the natural characteristics of the outlying hills and hamlets in the West Riding of Yorkshire are things alien and unfamiliar.
To all such Wuthering Heights must appear a rude and strange production. The wild moors of the North of England can for them have no interest: the language, the manners, the very dwellings and household customs of the scattered inhabitants of those districts must be to such readers in a great measure unintelligible, and—where intelligible—repulsive.
With regard to the rusticity of Wuthering Heights , I admit the charge, for I feel the quality. It is rustic all through. It is moorish, and wild, and knotty as a root of heath. Nor was it natural that it should be otherwise; the author being herself a native and nursling of the moors. Doubtless, had her lot been cast in a town, her writings, if she had written at all, would have possessed another character.
Even had chance or taste led her to choose a similar subject, she would have treated it otherwise. Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know: I scarcely think it is.
But this I know: the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master—something that, at times, strangely wills and works for itself. Wuthering Heights was hewn in a wild workshop, with simple tools, out of homely materials. The statuary found a granite block on a solitary moor; gazing thereon, he saw how from the crag might be elicited a head, savage, swart, sinister; a form moulded with at least one element of grandeur—power.
He wrought with a rude chisel, and from no model but the vision of his meditations. Wuthering Heights is told so brilliantly. Heart of Darkness also blew me away when I first read it. That, Wuthering Heights , and Hemingway showed me what literature could be; I could do whatever I wanted! Heathcliff embodies the idea of acting on pure id. I read Wuthering Heights when I was sixteen and had just left home. I did not read it as a love story.
I thought it was a loss story. Heathcliff loses Cathy. Cathy loses Heathcliff. Edgar Linton loses Cathy, their daughter, his life, and Thrushcross Grange. Hindley loses Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff is a foundling. As an adopted child I understood his humiliations, his ardour, and his capacity to injure. I also learned the lesson of the novel that property is power.
It seemed to me that if you want to fall in love you had better have a house. Whatever Emily Bronte was doing, it was not the sentimental interpretation of this novel of all for love and the world well lost. His gradual gain of every house, horse and heirloom belonging to the Earnshaws and the Lintons is his revenge and his ruin. It was once suggested to me that, as an antidote to crying, I put my head in a paper bag. Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature. By Emily Temple.
Virginia Woolf: Wuthering Heights is a more difficult book to understand than Jane Eyre , because Emily was a greater poet than Charlotte. You can buy it here. And what classic book do YOU think everyone should read at least once in their life? Be sure to stay up to date with the latest at Retro Gazing. Sign up for our weekly email newsletter for exclusive content. Plus, return to RG daily for the latest nostalgic news!
The Retro Gazing Team collaborates together to figure out just what their favorites of the moment are. The Team consists of a bunch of old movie nerds desperately looking for a way to ramble about their current obsessions. I accept the Privacy Policy. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed. Skip to content. A possible portrait unconfirmed of Emily Bronte, by her brother. In the days that followed, I kept reading.
And as I did, I found myself becoming more involved with the story. It was so wild and windy there, so remote and dark and untamed, so dangerous.
Headcases lived in that house. Their names were Cathy and Heathcliff and they were totally out of control. Wild and passionate, selfish, obsessed, and insane. It was fierce and overwhelming and destructive. I wish I could say the book had changed me totally then. I wish I could tell you it made me a deeper, smarter person overnight. A budding writer. An artist-to-be. That all took time. Years, in fact. Cathy and Heathcliff taught me to risk, to dare, to love. To love people, books, art, ideas — with passion, with feeling, and with little regard for the consequences.
In fact, they stayed with me all my life — two of the most brilliant, original, unforgettable characters ever written. And as I grew up, they taught me to risk, to dare, to love.
They challenged me to enlarge my view of the world. I became Linton and Nelly Dean and Hareton. I became the house, the moors, the wheeling birds, the sky above them. I felt their joys and sorrows.
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