The Tamesis
Like many members of this book club (I bet), I have a notebook in which I copy lines Wuthering Heights As a teenager. There’s no denying that this is a more analog age, with people using pen and paper instead of note-taking apps. I can almost evoke the color of the ink on the page, but what I will never forget is the sentence itself: “He desires that all may lie in the ecstasy of peace; I desire that all may sparkle and dance in glorious jubilee.”
I have kept this quote in a mental notebook for years to evoke the most passionate love a person can conjure: the union of opposites in joy! Except, maybe not.
When I read this sentence this time (I think it was my third time), it was young Cathy (not the original Catherine, as I imagined) who uttered it, describing her dispute with her cousin, the grumpy, uncharismatic Linton, over what constituted a perfect day. “I said his heaven would be half-dead, and he said my heaven would be drunken,” she continued. “I said I should fall asleep on top of him and he said he couldn’t breathe on top of me and he started getting really cranky. “Opposites attract and all that, but that’s not the stuff magnets are made of.
How could I misremember something so basic? language Wuthering Heights So dense yet so melodic, so complex yet rewarding, I was struck, on a recent re-read, by the level of fascination that ensues when one first walks through its alluring jungle. Did I get lost in that forest? Or did I just, after putting it down for the first time, stop thinking about what happened after Catherine and Heathcliff’s doomed love, and just remember that this novel was written for star-crossed lovers? They are particularly attractive to moody teenagers.
Now, some twenty years later, on my third reading, I’m not sure it’s a love story at all—no matter how firmly etched these two madmen are in the pantheon of devoted lovers. An entire generation (like me) is reading for the first time Wuthering Heights In high school, they might have not just latched onto lines and passages that they slightly (or completely) misremembered, but also images of iconic love that were… more than just a little confusing?
No matter how resounding these quotes are, it’s hard to argue that Catherine and Heathcliff are the epitome of romance. In the same scene, Catherine declares that Heathcliff “whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same” and she vows to marry another man “for he is handsome and agreeable” and because he will make her rich – lovely!
The connection between Heathcliff and Catherine is not pure, but stems from a sense of persecution, an us-versus-them struggle: two soulmates pitted against Catherine’s vicious brother Hindley; two wild animals from the moor, peering through the windows of Thrushcross Grange at the blandly civilized Linton. “I left her,” says Heathcliff, telling the story of Catherine’s first chance visit to the farm, “with a spark of spirit kindled in the empty blue eyes of Mr. and Mrs. Linton – vaguely reflected in her charming face – and I saw them filled with a foolish admiration.” Years later, Catherine’s love for Heathcliff seemed most alive when she sensed Heathcliff’s shift in attention – it was his infidelity that prompted her most explicit contempt for the man she married. “Your veins are full of ice water,” she tells her placid husband Edgar, “but mine is boiling, and the cold sight makes them dance.” There is an element of torture in Catherine and Heathcliff’s relationship, almost as if the joy and joy they bring to each other can only be appreciated when they are deprived of it. How strange – or maybe not so strange – that I’ve never heard of Wuthering Heights Quoted in wedding vows.
What yes What is the purest example of love in this book? As a married mother, decades apart from her own teenage love, I was surprised to find the most believable example of love in the book Wuthering Heights Quieter, more parental or filial: Edgar represents his daughter Cathy, hers for him; Nelly represents the “little lamb” Hareton, whom she raised as her own before she was banished from the Highlands. Isabella’s love for her hard-to-love son Linton happens mostly off-screen, but there seems to be some genuine affection behind it – which is pretty much the only thing Linton is praised for. (Contrary examples aside for a moment: Hindley’s spiteful and inexplicable hatred for his son Hareton; Heathcliff’s careless and manipulative use of his own son for revenge.)
