Wuthering Heights.
By Emily Brontë.
It's always hard reviewing a book you love so deeply, to review a book I hate is quite a joy same with ones I like & ones I slightly love a bit tricky but able, but a book you adore, a book of near perfection, almost impossible, but I shall dutifully try.
I believe it was Mark Twain who famously said “Classic' - a book which people praise and don't read.” or a least read once praise continually & never plan on reading again....right? Well I would have agreed with you until I picked up a little know book about passion, romance & revenge,Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights & was utterly flawed, with it's utter perfection.
Mr Lockwood, a rich man from the south, has rented Thrushcross Grange in the north of England for peace and recuperation. Soon after arrival, he visits his landlord, Mr Heathcliff, who lives in the remote moorland farmhouse called "Wuthering Heights". He finds the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights to be a strange group: Mr Heathcliff appears a gentleman but his manners and speech suggest otherwise; the mistress of the house is in her late teens, an attractive but reserved, even rude woman; and there is a young man who appears to be one of the family although he dresses and talks like a servant.
Being snowed in, he has to stay the night and is shown to an unused chamber where he finds books and graffiti from a former inhabitant of the farmhouse called "Catherine". When he falls asleep, his dreams are prompted by this person and he has a nightmare where he sees her as a ghost trying to get in through the window. He wakes and is unable to return to sleep so, as soon as the sun rises, he is escorted back to Thrushcross Grange by Heathcliff. There he asks his housekeeper, Ellen Dean, to tell him the story of the family from the Heights.
& this is were we learn the entire history of the inhabits of the heights & thrush cross grange throughout births, deaths, marriages, love, loss, revenge & intense passion we hear from nelly how these peculiar inhabits came to be.
I firstly decide to read wuthering heights on a whim, I would like to say it was to broaden my enjoyment of classic English literature but it wasn't, it was...well this sounds kinda odd but because of the classic Kate bush song "Wuthering Heights" the song supposedly makes more sense once you've read the book (in which it does) but anyway I downloaded a audio copy & decided to listen to it while doing house work which I did, My neighbors must think me quite mad because I was constantly dropping my jaw, fuming with anger, near tears & smiling like a cheasha cat, all of which while cleaning...surely it can't be that entertaing, well it is, not the cleaning part tho...lol
Some people have mentioned the annoyance of being narrated the story by house servant nelly & also mr lockwood but I loved it, being audio (& reading my paperback latter) I felt as if I was being told the story by nelly myself so on that level it worked really well.
I found the audio for "free" at Librivox Recording, I'm not much for audio books but this was great you can download other free novels & poems at http://librivox.org
If I was reading an e-book I would have highlighted so much of it there would barley be a line un-coloured,Emily's writing is nothing less then beautiful.
Wuthering Heights Is Why I Read.
I still am baffled how Emily could make me read let alone love such deplorable unjust characters each with their own selfish & insidious nature, Yet she did. Which is such a credit to her writing These characters are so very, very flawed & My hatred & pity for them is endless but I simply love yet hate them Emily made so I would, that's why years latter We're still talking about WH, still being baffled by it & will continue to, as i continue to adore her work.
After reading wuthering heights I felt numb, emotional less. All my emotions has been striped away until I felt bare & numb. It was quite a complexing feeling, I've truly never felt like that after a book, it's just simply that good.
How could I not include some quotes I'm a quoting addict & by god these are beautiful quotes.
"The intense horror of nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, 'Let me in - let me in!' 'Who are you?' I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself. 'Catherine Linton,' it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of LINTON? I had read EARNSHAW twenty times for Linton) - 'I'm come home: I'd lost my way on the moor!' As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child's face looking through the window."
- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 3 (mr Lockwood)
"Terror made me cruel; and finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes..."
- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 3
"I'm trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don't care how long I wait, if I can only do it at last. I hope he will not die before I do!"
- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 7 (Heathcliff)
"he had ceased to express his fondness for her in words, and recoiled with angry suspicion from her girlish caresses, as if conscious there could be no gratification in lavishing such marks of affection on him."
- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 8 (Nelly)
"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."
- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 9 (Catherine earnshaw- linton)
"If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it."
- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 9 (Catherine earnshaw- linton)
"Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being."
- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 9 (Catherine earnshaw- linton)
"'I seek no revenge on you,' replied Heathcliff, less vehemently. 'That's not the plan. The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don't turn against him; they crush those beneath them. You are welcome to torture me to death for your amusement, only allow me to amuse myself a little in the same style, and refrain from insult as much as you are able. Having levelled my palace, don't erect a hovel and complacently admire your own charity in giving me that for a home. If I imagined you really wished me to marry Isabel, I'd cut my throat!'"
- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 11 (Heathcliff)
"It is not in him to be loved like me: how can she love in him what he has not?"
- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 14 (Heathcliff)
"That is how I'm loved! Well, never mind. That is not my Heathcliff. I shall love mine yet; and take him with me: he's in my soul."
- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 15 (Catherine earnshaw- linton)
"Kiss me again, but don't let me see your eyes! I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer--but yours! How can I?"
- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 15 (Heathcliff)
"'And I pray one prayer--I repeat it till my tongue stiffens--Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you--haunt me, then! The murdered DO haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts HAVE wandered on earth. Be with me always--take any form--drive me mad! only DO not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I CANNOT live without my life! I CANNOT live without my soul!'"
- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 16 (Heathcliff)
"Is Mr. Heathcliff a man? If so, is he mad? And if not, is he a devil? I sha'n't tell my reasons for making this inquiry; but I beseech you to explain, if you can, what I have married."
- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights. (Isabella lintion-Heathcliff)
"He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. I said his heaven would be only half alive; and he said mine would be drunk: I said I should fall asleep in his; and he said he could not breathe in mine..."
- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 24 (Catherine lintion-Heathcliff-earnshaw.)
"I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction, and I am too idle to destroy for nothing."
- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 33 (Heathcliff)
"Last night, I was on the threshold of hell. To-day, I am within sight of my heaven. I have my eyes on it: hardly three feet to sever me!"
- Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights, Ch. 34 (Heathcliff)
That Awesome character drawing has been done by An artist named gerre to see more of her work visit http://gerre.deviantart.com/ & other great WH fan Art on http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=wuthering+heights+Heathcliff+&view=detail&id=324D5D11BE22517F0DF4A1189DA7568C5557FB65&FORM=IDFRIR
