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Date Posted: 08:25:24 05/18/02 Sat
Author: Puja
Subject: Wuthering Heights: A Review of one of the Finest Love Stories....

"Wuthering Heights: A Review of one of the Finest Love Stories" by Puja Goyal.

About the Author: Emily Jane Bronte was born in Bradford, Yorkshire on 30th July 1818. She was the fifth child amongst the six children in the family. Emily's life has had a great influence in the writing of the book. With the passing of time she became more and more reserved and spent considerable time alone. She hardly spoke to people. Wuthering Heights was written between 1845 and 1846. On its completion she sent it to several publishers all of whom rejected it. It was finally published in 1847.

Wuthering Heights is one of the most sort after books by young people, throughout the ages. The novel blends well with the attitude of the youth, because of the reason that it always remains young, fresh and passionate in its appeal.
The dark, stormy love - story has a constant feeling from the beginning to the end. The orphaned Heathcliff is brought into the household. Heathcliff is welcomed with disgust by Cathy's brother Hindley, but Cathy welcomes him warmly. She loves him and protects him completely. They grow together but her love for good-breeding and position makes her marry Linton. Heathcliff who leaves thinking Cathy does not love him, returns as a completely changed person. He shows all signs of a gentleman that Cathy always wanted, but it's too late. Heathcliff's anger on loosing Cathy makes him destroy everyone in the novel. He takes control of Wuthering Heights by taking advantage of Hindley's (Cathy's brother) weakness for gambling. He marries Isabel (Linton's sister). Cathy's sickness kills her in the middle of the novel. The death of Catherine increases her presence in the novel.
It is a classic novel, with a blend of love and hate and a taste of burning wine. Heathcliff and Catherine, the main characters of the book cannot be identified with ordinary mortals and remain larger than life symbols in an anarchic universe rather than positive or negative patterns of human behaviour. The very simplicity of the love affair makes it difficult for everyone to comprehend it. The time scheme is accurate and leaps are made imperceptibly.
The basis of most of the classic novels is the forces that act opposite to each other. The characters do not understand it nor does the reader; their energy is aimed at trying to solve this puzzle. In this book however it is the similarity of inner character and personality between Heathcliff and Catherine that keeps them together, and, the dissimilarity of outer differences like money and good-breeding that pulls them apart. These strong forces work for and against each other throughout the book.
The hero-villain Heathcliff though portrayed often as a vicious beast does not initiate any evil in the book. He only reacts to what is done to him. Powerful, manly, mysterious, fully conscious of his own worth, frequently brutal, he remains nevertheless absolutely submissive to the woman he loves. Heathcliff is every woman's dream - a powerful man controlled by a woman's power of love. When she dies, she draws him to her death. Heathcliff's love for Catherine is fierce and inhuman. Heathcliff is ennobled by his depth and capacity for suffering - his banging his head against the tree on the night that Catherine died, his howl of anguish and his crying for her as he steals a lock of her hair from her dead body. There is a sad tormented beauty in their mystic relationship. There is something primeval and atavistic about such a relationship.
Catherine on the other hand shows the universal desire to do exactly what she wants, cutting ruthlessly into the wishes and desires of others - leading only to destruction. She is affluent, from a rich family, spoilt and outspoken. She loves Heathcliff but does not realise it, or maybe she does but she neglects it. Heathcliff is perfect for her, but she marries Linton. She is 'a wicked unprincipled girl', is an idea that has occurred to the reader but has been dismissed by the forces and attraction of Cathy's passion. Cathy and Heathcliff are alike, but they are given opposite status that keeps them apart.
Emily Bronte has shown two types of men here, the kind, good and considerate husband in Linton, and the wild demonic lover in Heathcliff. Catherine loves Edgar Linton for what he has, good-looks, money and position but she loves Heathcliff for what he is, 'Because he is more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton's is as different as the moonbeam from lightening or frost from fire'.
This emotional capacity to feel intensely not only lifts both Heathcliff and Catherine out of the normal plane but makes all the other relationships in the novel dwindle and pale in comparison.
The rest of the characters are given only so much life as it is required to structure the novel. There relative importance is reduced to nothing but spectators and even Linton can do nothing for his wife's madness for Heathcliff. Linton is fully aware of the love- affair between the two. He is no match for his wife's intensity.
Cathy and Heathcliff are the dynamic forces in the novel. Both of them are wilfully uncontrolled when in temper but it is Cathy who is more so. Heathcliff bides his time and vents his anger out of frustration after he loses Catherine.
The central episode of the novel is the love between Catherine and Heathcliff. Of the two, Cathy being the impulsive and inspite of the fact that she dies in the middle of the novel, she dominates the whole of it. The peculiar thing of the novel being that the reader need not like her, even Ellen the care-taker does not like her. Cathy can be said to be the impulse of the story in which case, Heathcliff is the framework on which the plot is built. Everything that takes place does so out of Heathcliff's two passions - love and a deep desire for vengeance.
The love between them is more descriptive, this makes it easier for the reader to feel it. It is more like fire, not mellow but intense, it has maturity blended with naivety that causes it to be contemporary in nature, for readers of all ages.
The pschycology behind such a novel could be playing with the good and bad side of human nature. It appeals to the sadist and the saint within us. The two giants who are of the same intensity are not allowed to meet; this has created the passion between the two. After the book has been read, the reader wonders, why the two have not been allowed to meet. The two are so much alike. We sympathise with the madness of Heathcliff and the naivety of Cathy. We feel sorry for the two and the other characters that are drawn into the downfall.
If Cathy and Heathcliff would have been married, would all the intensity disappear? Would there be nothing to write about? The reader at this point does not want the two to marry or unite in any way. He wants them to be torn apart. This feeling is almost cruel. This has made all the difference in the readers mind. When the two agree in things, the situation is such that it becomes difficult for both to reconcile because of material differences. The reader does not know what to make of the love; he can feel the tension but cannot comprehend why the material differences have come between the two.
Heathcliff destroys everything in the novel; his desire to be reconciled with Catherine is immense. His Death brings about a peace in the end. Heathcliff dies, hoping to be reconciled with Catherine, after death. All the tension, contradictions and irreconcilable elements have found their rest.'......watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells; listen to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.' (the sleepers being Heathcliff, Catherine and Linton, buried next to each other.)
The novel begins when all the action is over, the narrators have been used with great skill and diligence as they are unbiased in there opinion. The novel ends when normalcy is restored. Wuthering Heights is not novel; it is a feeling that lingers in your head long after bedtime. And this very feeling makes this book a must - read classic for all ages.

Courtesy : Wuthering Heights By Emily Bronte published be Oxford University.
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