Wuthering Heights thoughts

How can any review possibly do justice to so timeless a book? What could I possibly say that has not already been said? Wuthering Heights is the first book I remember loving. I don’t remember now why it so captured my senses even at such a young age when I read it in 5th grade. It is obsessive, codependent, and toxic. Let's not delude ourselves. Yet this obsession drives the book; Cathy and Heathcliff are like a cyclone, whipping everyone around them up into their frenzy without care for anyone else, wreaking destruction everywhere.

One of the aspects I really enjoy about Wuthering Heights is Emily’s description of the moors. Having grown up on the moor of Haworth, in a rather solitary upbringing, her love for its nature are seen clearly, yet she also does little to soften its harshness. And thus does she paint Heathcliff, that he, in a way, mirrors the moors. He is as harsh, and as merciless as the setting in which he is placed, further stripped of humanity by those around him. As far as we know, he could indeed have sprung from the earth itself. I love this book, not simply for the intense, insane love (for lack of a better word here) of Heathcliff and Cathy (which I both feel akin to, yet also repulsed by), but for the tragedy of Cathy, to have been born as wild as Heathcliff and the moor, yet to be forever torn between accepting her true nature and conforming to the expectations of society.

In contrast to hers and Heathcliff’s love, her daughter and Hareton’s relationship arises at a more gradual pace, as they grow from scornful enemies (as Heathcliff intended for them), to lovers standing upon a foundation of mutual respect and the desire to become better for each other. Perhaps not as thrilling, nor as captivating as, “He is more myself than I,” but far healthier—surer. That, I believe, is what finally broke Heathcliff. As the narrator repeatedly observes that Heathcliff sees Cathy in both her daughter and Hareton, to see them then love each other in spite of his best efforts to sow hatred, utterly defeats him.

This is one of those books I can read a thousand times and still find something new each time.