73. WUTHERING HEIGHTS

Emily Bronte 1847

This classic is about the lives of two neighboring estates: the Lintons of Thrushcross Grange and the Earnshaws of Wuthering Heights in old England 1801. Heathcliff, the main character is an orphan raised by the Earnshaws who falls madly in love with Catherine, his 'adoptive' sister whilst developing extreme conflict with his 'adoptive' brother Hindley. Although Catherine does love Heathcliff, she marries Edgar Linton and later dies. Heathcliff suffers this tremendous loss and his heart fills with vengeance and hatred to no end. This truly is an exceptional gothic novel inspite of the characters that are unlikable and sometimes horrid, the setting that is ghostly, dark and moorish, and the language that is glorious and dramatic but challenging. It is a book like no other: ardent love that is haunting, mystifying and totally unforgettable.

'1801.--I have just returned from a visit to my landlord--the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.' (opening line)

'Wuthering Heights is the name of Mr. Heathcliff's dwelling. 'Wuthering' being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmosphere tumult to which its situation is exposed to stormy weather.'(4)

'But Mr. Heathcliff forms a singular contrast to his abode and style of living. He is a dark-skinned gipsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman: that is, as much a gentleman as many a country squire: rather slovenly, perhaps, yet not looking amiss with his negligence, because he has an erect and handsome figure; and rather morose.'(5)

'A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.'(28)

'Oh dear, I don't wonder! And how did you like the master?'
'A rough fellow, rather, Mrs. Dean. Is not that his character?'
'Rough as a saw-edge, and hard as whinstone! The less you meddle with him the better.'(35)

'The curate might set as many chapters as he pleased for Catherine to get by heart, and Joseph might thrash Heathcliff till his arm ached; they forgot everything the minute they were together again: at least the minute they had contrived some naughty plan of revenge; and many a time I've cried to myself to watch them growing more reckless daily, and I not daring to speak a syllable, for fear of losing the small power I still retained over the unfriended creatures.'(46)

'Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves.'(56)

'Nothing--only look at the almanack on that wall; he pointed to a framed sheet hanging near the window, and continued, "The crosses are for the evenings you spent with the Lintons, the dots for those spent with me. Do you see? I've marked everyday.'(68)

'The soft thing looked askance through the window: he possessed the power to depart as much as a cat possess the power to leave a mouse half killed, or a bird half eaten. Ah, I thought, there will be no saving him: he's doomed, and flies to his fate! And so it was: he turned abruptly, hastened into the house again, shut the door behind him; and when I went in a while after to inform them that the Earnshaw had come home rabid drunk, ready to pull the whole place about our ears (his ordinary frame of mind in that condition), I saw the quarrel had merely affected a closer intimacy-- had broken the outworks of friendship, and confess themselves lovers.'(71)

'If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable.'
'Because you are not fit to be there,' I answered. 'All sinners would be miserable in heaven.'(80)

'That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other. I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.'(80)

'My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning; my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as my own pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.'(82)

'You suppose she has nearly forgotten me?' he said. 'Oh, Nelly! you know she has not! You know as well as I do, that for every thought she spends on Linton she spends on a thousand on me! At a most miserable period of my life, I had a notion of the kind: it haunted me on my return to the neighborhood last summer; but only her own assurance should make me admit the horrible idea again. And then, Linton would be nothing, nor Hindley, nor all the dreams that ever I dreamt. Two words would comprehend my future--death and hell: existence, after losing her, would be hell.(148)

'You loved me--then what right had you to leave me? What right--answer me--for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart-- you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of liking will it be when you--oh, God! would you like to like with your soul in the grave?(159)

'And I pray one prayer-- I repeat it till my tongue stiffens--Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you--haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe, I know that ghosts have wondered on earth. Be with me always-- take any form-- drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!'(165)

'He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. I said his heaven would be only half alive; and he said mine would be drunk: I said I should fall asleep in his; and he said he could not breathe in mine, and began to grow very snappish.'(240)

'I know he has a bad nature,' said Catherine:'he's your son. But I'm glad I've a better, to forgive it; and I know he loves me, and for that reason I love him. Mr. Heathcliff, you have nobody to love you; and, however miserable you make us, we shall still have the revenge of thinking that your cruelty arises from your greater misery. You are miserable, are you not? Lonely, like the devil, and envious like him? Nobody loves you-- nobody will cry for you when you die! I wouldn't be you!'(277)

'My old enemies have not beaten me; now would be the precise time to revenge myself on their representatives: I could do it; and none could hinder me. But where is the use? I don't care for striking: I can't take the trouble to raise my hand! That sounds as if I had been labouring the whole time only to exhibit a fine trait of magnanimity. It is far from being the case: I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction, and I am too idle to destroy for nothing.'(312)

'In the first place, his starting likeness to Catherine connected him fearfully with her. That, however, which you may suppose the most potent to arrest my imagination, is actually the least: for what is not connected with her to me? and what does not recall her? I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped in the flags! In every cloud, in every tree-- filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object by day-- I am surrounded with her image! The most ordinary faces of men and women-- my own features-- mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and I have lost her!'(312)

'I lingered round them, under that benign sky: watched the moths fluttering among the heath and harebells, listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass and wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.'(326)

a Barnes and Noble Classics edition, 2004
326 pages
Book owned