Wuthering Heights is the only novel written by Emily Brontë. Considered a masterpiece of Gothic fiction, it centers on the intense and tragic love between Heathcliff and Catherine, a passion that transforms into hatred and revenge. The story told by Nelly Dean, former servant of Wuthering Heights and later become the servant of Thrushcross Grange rented by Mr. Lockwood in the present time of this book.
Wuthering Heights is a house on the top of the moor, stormy and windy, which fits the wild weather that often surrounds the house. The atmosphere is dark, cold, and rough. The house is built strong to face the violent storms, but inside it feels gloomy and harsh. Mr. Earnshaw, the mister of this house, has brought neglected orphan boy, later named Heatcliff, when he's come back from Liverpool. Heathcliff has dark-skinned, dirty, and poor, black hair, black eyes, and a gypsy-like appearance that makes him look very different from the Earnshaw family. After Mr. Earnshaw died; Heathcliff was often treated as a servant by Hindley, he found pleasure and happiness when playing with Catherine who thought of her as a friend and play together. Times flies, this friendship soon become lover.
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| Wuthering Heights (1992) House |
Thrushcross Grange, on the other hand, is bright, peaceful, and elegant. It represents comfort, wealth, and good manners. The people who live there, like Edgar and Isabella Linton, are gentle and polite. When Catherine stays with the Linton family, she learns their polite and gentle ways. She starts to like their comfortable and rich life and civilized. Later, she says she wants to marry Edgar Linton because he is kind and wealthy, even though she still loves Heathcliff. This makes Heathcliff very sad and hurt feeling heartbroken, he runs away from Wuthering Heights.
‘I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out, into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy. 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.’
Instead of finding peace, Heathcliff lets his pain turn into revenge. His heart, once filled with love for Catherine, becomes dark and cruel. He even hurts the next generation, Cathy and Linton, who are innocent. His own child suffers from the same hatred he gives to others. This shows that revenge only continues pain. If Heathcliff had chosen forgiveness, he might have broken the cycle and found peace. He is both a victim and a villain, a victim because he was treated badly as a child, but a villain because he lets his anger destroy others.
After all, I am so curious about ghosts in Wuthering Heights, it can be real or just in the characters’ minds. For Heathcliff, Catherine’s ghost is a sign he cannot let her go. The ghosts or the spirits remind us that the past still haunts the people in the story. Their love becomes so strong that it seems to transgress into another life, showing that death cannot end their bond. It's the pain that endures through generations, wounding both body and soul. Heathcliff’s grief over losing his soul-bound love, combined with the cruelty of an unjust society, drives him to seek vengeance. It sears and burns with unrelenting force, and it etches itself deep into memory. Emily Brontë shows through him that strong passion, when twisted by pride and revenge, can destroy love and life itself.
Title : Wuthering Heights
Author : Emily Brontë
Publisher : Penguin English Library
Year : 2012 (First Published in 1847)
Format / Pages : Softcover / 360 pages
ISBN : 9780141199085
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