A Sinister Love Story

When most people think of Emily Bronte's ornately written first and only novel they groan as it was something they were mandated to read in high school.  I think if people really took the time and effort to sit down and read this brilliant victorian/romantic age piece they would really appreciate it.  The language Ms. Bronte uses is so absolutely fluid and poetic.  She takes words and spins them together taking most ordinary word stems for their literal meanings.  

Virginia Woolf would say about this novel, "It is as if Emily Bronte could tear up all that we know human beings by and fill these unrecognizable transparencies with such a gust of life that they transcend reality." This is very much the case in this novel.  It's the most unrealistic love story I've ever read but at the same time it's the most honest.  To me it is as if the main characters have no sense of right or wrong and can only act apon their feelings at the time.  Cathy a spoiled brat and Heathcliff a brooding gypsy son with a need to avenge his mistreatment.  This novel has everything, it has love, suspense, ghosts, and history.  It's like Jane Austen only much darker.  

Structurally, Ms Bronte is a genius.  This book is absolutely genius when I think about how she set it up.  It's a story told within a story.  We get the entire story from 20 years after the action of it, through the eyes of the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange, and then from his eyes we get the story of Cathy and Heathcliff from the servant Nelly.  The story makes a complete arc from the present to the past and back again to the present.  Bronte also is a genius with characterization.  These characters are so very vivid that you will never forget selfish Cathy, brooding Heathcliff, evil Hindley, dashing but tragic Mr. Linton and his equally as tragic sister Isobella.  There is such a feeling I get when reading this novel.  The final scene of the novel always gives me the chills and its rare that we get such strong emotions from a book especially one we've read more than once.  

 Ms. Bronte is a true artist and unfortunately never lived to see her genius get the praise it deserved as it was published under another name and she died shortly after it's publication.  She truly knew the land about which she wrote.  She lived on the Yorkshire Moors and this novel verges toward paganism.  I say this because it is almost as if the secluded English moors on which this story is set is almost a character of its own and so much of the story is effected by nature.  Emily Bronte truly loved the land she lived on and it's evident as well as crucial in setting this story, without that sort of utter seclusion the characters would seem even more over the top.  When you read this novel you will feel the cool misty greyness of the wild English moors and make you wish you were riding horseback over the endless rolling hills. You will never forget reading Wuthering Heights and it is unfortunate that it has become so underated in a society that enjoys books like Nicholas Sparks and Danielle Steel.  This is the ultimate love story for the ages, but also the most honest and at times supernatural.  A must read for anyone who enjoys the work of Ms Jane Austen. 

"Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves."- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, 1847