Recent Reads - Wuthering Heights (Back to the Classics Challenge)

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Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte - I've often heard that this is a book that readers either love or hate. I'm not sure my feelings about it are that neatly delineated, but it took me many long weeks to finish it. It took me quite a few chapters before I actually wanted to continue reading, and by that time I'd also decided that there were very few characters in the book that I liked or had much sympathy for, so while it's certainly a well-crafted and fascinating story of how bitterness and hatred bring destruction and misery to two generations of families and their servants, I couldn't genuinely like it.

The story opens with Mr. Lockwood's narration of his visit to the estate of Wuthering Heights, being new to the area and letting the smaller house known as Thrushcross Grange from the master of Wuthering Heights, Mr. Heathcliff. Lockwood's interactions and brief unplanned stay at Wuthering Heights are so unusual that as he is recovering from an illness, he requests his housekeeper to tell him the background as she knows it. Most of the remainder of the book is Ellen Dean's telling. Ellen (or Nelly, as she is often called) was nurse and servant to both generations of the two families.

Heathcliff is a wild young orphan brought up by Mr. Earnshaw, along with his own daughter Catherine and son Hindley. Catherine and Heathcliff are inseparable companions as children and develop a fierce love for each other as they grow up, but even so, Catherine marries a neighbor, Edgar Linton. Heathcliff is jealous and angry, and on top of that is badly mistreated by Hindley Earnshaw who became master of Wuthering Heights several years previous. There is a great deal of hysterics and passions and throwing of fits by all three of them, and eventually Heathcliff elopes with Linton's younger sister, which sets up even more complete enmity between the two houses. Catherine takes ill and passes away after delivering a child - her namesake, Cathy - and is mourned by only her husband and the self-absorbed Heathcliff. Heathcliff's wife, having been cruelly treated, runs away and for several years brings up her own child, Linton, by herself, being determined that Heathcliff should not even know about him.

This second generation of characters takes over the story when Linton Heathcliff's mother dies, and Edgar Linton brings the child home. Young Cathy is determined to be friends with her cousin, but Heathcliff comes to claim the child almost immediately. Young Linton is sickly and spoiled and under the cruel conditions and scorn of his father, he becomes a weak-willed, selfish, and manipulative little tyrant. I tried to like Cathy, as she was spirited and cheerful, but I didn't like her a great deal, to be honest. Unfortunately, she is manipulated and tricked into finally marrying Linton, by design of Heathcliff, so that he can gain his revenge on Edgar Linton by having ownership of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange by the marriage. Of course Linton does not live long, and Cathy's father-in-law is incredibly cruel to them both, as well as to Hareton Earnshaw, who would have been the rightful heir to Wuthering Heights, except that his father had mortgaged the estate heavily and lost it to the conniving Heathcliff.

I suppose the ending is more or less happy for Cathy and Hareton, and sobering when when Heathcliff finally dies completely unrepentant of all the torment and wickedness he has heaped upon so many people, none of whom deserved his savage hatred. This is why I say I disliked the characters. Heathcliff does not have even one redeeming characteristic, in my opinion; and the object of his selfish obsession, the first Catherine, was likewise a selfish, malicious, hateful person. Neither of them seemed sane from early on, and both had a tendency to be vicious and vindictive, and actually took pleasure in hurting others. Young Linton was a sniveling and spoiled weakling when he was introduced, and quickly became a hateful and self-absorbed wretch, and why Cathy made any effort to care for him after his first display of vileness is beyond me, except that she was very young. I did have a little bit of sympathy for Cathy, and for Hareton, who seemed to have everything and everyone against him through no fault of his own. 

How anyone could consider this a love story is inexplicable. Whatever the feeling between Heathcliff and Catherine is, it is definitely not love. It is obsession and possessiveness, and I felt like they both needed to committed to insane asylums. Heathcliff is a thoroughly evil villain and yet is somehow cast as a star-crossed lover. Young Linton is despicable, although I suppose he didn't have much chance to become otherwise. Certainly Cathy would have been better off if he had died much sooner like I was hoping, but then Heathcliff wouldn't have been able to get his desired revenge on all the people that were already dead. That, in itself, is an indication of his depravity and insanity. Overall, I'm glad to be finally finished reading this classic! I doubt I'll re-read it.

This post is linked to the Challenge Link-Up Post: Classic With a Place Name in the Title

All the details are here: Back to the Classics Challenge for 2016, hosted at Books and Chocolate. 

1. A 19th Century Classic - any book published between 1800 and 1899.
2. A 20th Century Classic - any book published between 1900 and 1966.
3. A classic by a woman author 
4. A classic in translation - any book originally written and published in a language other than your native language.
5. A classic by a non-white author - can be African-American, Asian, Latino, Native American, etc.
6. An adventure classic - can be fiction or non-fiction.
7. A fantasy, science fiction, or dystopian classic
8. A classic detective novel - It must include a detective, amateur or professional. The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, completed February 10th.
9. A classic which includes the name of a place in the title - It can be the name of a house, a town, a street, etc.  Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte, completed June 5th.
10. A classic which has been banned or censored - If possible, mention why it was banned or censored.
11. Re-read a classic you read in school (high school or college)
12. A volume of classic short stories - This must be one complete volume, at least 8 short stories. White Nights, by Fyodor Dostoevsky, in progress.

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