“Heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.”
Ghosts, spirits, and heart-wrenching emotions transcending life and death are woven into the chilling novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Published in 1847, the book was soon in the midst of a confusing mixture of reviews. Some praised the vivid atmosphere and creativity of the writing, describing it as “strangely original” and possessing a “sort of rugged power” while the novel’s startling portrayal of human cruelty and evil soon earned itself reviews such as “wild, confused, disjointed, and improbable” and “compound of vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors”.
Clearly, much controversy and ambiguity surrounds Wuthering Heights. Wuthering Heights is the name of a house atop a hill, in which the majority of the story occurs. The unusual term “wuthering” is defined in the book as “a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather”. This name—as the title—sets the dark, ominous, windy tone of the novel. Although most of the action occurs between Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, a house that is the polar opposite of the former, the story cannot be described as stationary or monotonous. Tempests of abuse and evil are continuously sweeping over the characters, spurring them into taking desperate actions.
The book begins peacefully with the narrator, Mr. Lockwood, stepping into Wuthering Heights, encountering Heathcliff and two others, whom we later learn to be Catherine Heathcliff and Hareton Earnshaw. That very night, a ghost of the dead Catherine strikes at the window, and the story takes a gruesome turn as well as a dark one—Heathcliff bursts into uncontrollable weeping as he calls, agonized, for Catherine. The novel begins to answer the mysterious questions surrounding tenebrous Heathcliff and his history when Mrs. Nelly Dean, the former maid of Wuthering Heights, takes up the tale as the narrator, beginning with the childhood of Hindley and his younger sister Catherine Earnshaw.
The rest of the book alternates between Mr. Lockwood and Mrs. Dean, although the latter, having lived through the whole story, narrates the majority. Heathcliff is first introduced as a pathetic, unkempt, wild, almost inhuman little orphan. Hindley, a rash and unforgiving boy, Catherine, spirited and mischievous, and Heathcliff, sullen and dark, grow up together for the next ten years or so. Irreconcilable hatred grows between Hindley and Heathcliff, and a peculiar friendship that soon deepens into the wildest kind of love between Catherine and Heathcliff. This love, at first denied by both, will soon grow to harm everyone around her as she chooses to take a different path in life.
This novel, despite its many criticisms, is a delicate, complex masterpiece. Its fragmented structure is an echo of the bottomless, unfathomable air of the story. The more background that is revealed, the more the reader finds oneself drawn into this haunting tale. It is true that the vilest depths of human nature are freely depicted through most of the characters; violent abuse, loathing, and cruelty appear throughout this tale full of tempests. This honesty is perhaps what shocked, frightened, and likely sickened or repulsed readers. It is also what sets this novel apart from others, having such strong undertones of evil.
As well, the unsubtle sharpness with which such themes are drawn, is a jolt for the reader. It is jarring to encounter such gruesomeness in a novel, from the Victorian Era at that. It causes readers to reflect on the extent humans will reach with hatred—or if they’d go into insanity without restraint. Many of the characters certainly seem to have qualities that indicate a mental frenzy. The violence with which Hindley treats Heathcliff as a child is startling to witness; Catherine’s temper is enough to make her dash her head against the sofa and make her ill for many days; Heathcliff refuses to eat or drink, claiming that he can see and speak to Catherine’s ghost. None of the characters are lightly and sunnily created: they all have real, grisly characteristics that will arouse both disgust and self-reflection in the reader’s mind.
Wuthering Heights is not a light, sweet read. It is a chilling, grim, and potentially repugnant piece of literature that tests many limits concerning the good and evil of human souls. However, passionate love, courage, and self-sacrifice are there along with the darkness, as they are in real life. Perhaps, with all the crimes and horrendous actions we hear about each day from the newspaper and social media, Wuthering Heights can be an accurate reflection of the human life. The characters in the book commit many punishable deeds, and not all are redeemed. Yet both in the tale and in reality, love and selflessness, along with those horrors, manage to create an imperfect yet captivating story—or life.
(Published in The Sequitur, April 2019, Westdale Secondary School, Hamilton, ON)
