In some books there is passion and then there is passion in this one. An all time classic from Emily Brontë. I read this book for the first time in my school. (ISC class 12). I was (and still am) not very fond of romantic novels. And I was petrified with the idea of reading one as part of the syllabus. I certainly had no idea what I had in store.
Wuthering Heights is all about passion. The characters in this are all passionate about something or the other to the level of insanity. But most of all this novel is about the love of Heathcliff and Catherine that not even the marriage of Catherine could erode. It is a story of a love to be proud of. A brilliant and dark story from the Yorkshire of England.
This is a story of two houses the Thrushcross Grange (TG) and the Wuthering Heights (WH). Two very different houses reflecting the people living in them. TG is a quaint, nice and sophisticated house just like the Lintons living there. And WH a rugged and rough house at the windy hilltop just like the Earnshaws living there.
The story goes as thus. Mr. Earnshaw on one of his travels picked up a street boy called Heathcliff and he started living with the 2 children there (Catherine hence Cathy and Hindley). They grow up together and each forms a certain different rapport with the other. Hindlay hates Heathcliff and Cathy starts loving him. Once HC and Cathy were playing and they reach their only neighbors the Lintons at the TG. There Cathy gets hurt and has to stay there. She meets Edgar Linton there and he falls in love with her.
Cathy now is very confused. She loves Heathcliff but knows that he has nothing and as soon as her father dies Hindley will throw him out. And Edgar, he is a sophisticated fellow but does not have the same spirit and her. Here she makes her biggest mistake. She is talking about her dilemma to the housekeeper and meanwhile Heathcliff hears the conversation. He is so hurt that he goes away.
He returns a rich man only to find his Cathy married to Edgar. He takes revenge by marrying his sister. He seduces her and woos her and marries her and then torments her. He then proceeds to extract his revenge from Hindley by gambling with him and taking all his money and soon takes possession of the house and all the property. Hindley soon dies leaving his son in Heathcliff’s possession.
On the other house Cathy is tormented everyday by Heathcliff’s marrying his sister in law. She is jealous and now has started hating her husband for his weakness and fragility. Soon she falls sick and dies.
Heathcliff now has possession of both the houses through his marriage. But he now has lot his beloved and he becomes even more of a misanthropist. He keeps Hindley’s son and Cathy’s daughter Catherine in his house and keeps them in tight control. Till he dies he remembers his Cathy.
I know I haven’t done justice to the book in this review. But midway I realized that the story is so complex that if I write the whole story, it will take the whole review and a lot of comments too. So I will new write about my favorite passionate scenes from the book.
In one scene (after the death of Cathy), a Mr. Lockwood encounters the ghost of Cathy. Lockwood is terrified and screams. When Heathcliff hears this, he goes in the same room and begs the ghost to appear again and haunt him till his life ends.
In another scene he misses his Cathy so much that he digs her grave, just to see her.
I know that all this can be creepy, but it is brilliantly written by Emily.
I admit that I would not have read this book if it were not in the syllabus. But now I have read this book a few times and each time I adore the book.