Emily Brontë wrote one famous book before her sad, premature death at age 30: it was the 1847 novel Wuthering Heights, set in rural England in the late 18th century and the start of the 19th. It is a curiously presented story, told in the first person by an outside character named Lockwood who happens to be residing for a short period on the estate that the story centers around. However, most of the tale comes out, once again in the first person, as housekeeper Nelly Dean lays out the history of the families involved. Lockwood, a new tenant on the property, is entranced by her story, as his first impression of his host, a Mister Heathcliff, is traumatic from his poor treatment after a visit to the latter's home on Wuthering Heights...being attacked by his dogs and treated disrespectfully, both by Heathcliff and his employees and relations. Among these are Healthcliff's sullen daughter-in-law Cathy, an uncouth young man named Hareton Earnshaw, and a cranky old man named Joseph. Nelly herself works at the house Lockwood is staying at, but her personal history is all about Wuthering Heights, having grown up there with Heathcliff and his family...if you can honestly call it "his" family. Oh, and there also seems to be a ghost lurking around the place named "Catherine"...and Heathcliff knows all about it after Lockwood loudly screams out in his sleep, thinking he dreamed about seeing her. Yes, there is a rather complicated background to the present circumstances...and why exactly is Heathcliff such a vindictive and viciously rude man? Nelly lays it all out in her tale to Lockwood...
Wuthering Heights is a story about two neighboring families, the Earnshaws and Lintons. They both have a sense of nobility about themselves, which contributes to the developing problem as the elder Earnshaw one day brings home from Liverpool a homeless "gypsy-like" little boy (Heathcliff) that he adopts as his own son and showers favoritism upon, to the disadvantage and envy of his biological son. The resentment between the two boys grows into full-blown mutual hatred, and the two spend the remainder of their lives deliberately undermining the dreams and hopes of the other, purely out of spite. Then Heathcliff has to deal with his affections for Catherine, his "sister", who has gone over to the Linton's and married into that family. More resentment, hatred, jealousy, regret, revenge...a vicious cycle that consumes Heathcliff and condemns him to being seen as something of a monster to those around him ...and ultimately destroys him.
There's something rather easy about looking about how other people dwell upon the past in their lives in an unhealthy manner, but it's often hard to see the same thing in one's own life. But this book definitely made me wonder if maybe I had better take a hard look at my own life and see if I might be holding on to some negative, harmful (to me) grudges...
There's something rather easy about looking about how other people dwell upon the past in their lives in an unhealthy manner, but it's often hard to see the same thing in one's own life. But this book definitely made me wonder if maybe I had better take a hard look at my own life and see if I might be holding on to some negative, harmful (to me) grudges...
