Wuthering Heights: An Appreciation
Jun. 27th, 2012 11:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakI had the great luck of reading Wuthering Heights without any expectations whatsoever. What I mean by that is: being German, it wasn't a part of our literary canon we had to read, so I didn't encounter it in school (though I was still a teenager when reading it - I simply came across it in the library, started and couldn't put it down), I had never heard about the characters before and had not seen any of the film versions. Given that a lot of the time when I come across references to WH, I have the impression that the people in question either haven't read the book at all or came to it because they had to and/or expecting a romance and not surprisingly were bewildered by what they found (WH not being a romance in the sense we use the word), and given that I am by no means immune to the effect of coming to a literary, cinematic or tv work via hype/raised expectations and then feeling let down not so much by the content on its own merit but by the wrong expectations, I think that's very lucky indeed. (Vide my Jane Austen reaction; I didn't read any Jane A. until I did know her reputation, that she was the greatest of the great, P & P was supposed to be the epitome of novels, Lizzie and Darcy the pairing of pairings, etc., etc., and that may have contributed to my "well, yes, it was fun to read - and?" reaction when I finally got around to it.) (I take it in recent years WH also had the misfortune of being liked by Stephanie Meyer, but really, that has nothing to do with anyone's reactions predating Twilight.)
It's been a few decades since I was a teenager, and here are some reasons why I still love Wuthering Heights in my jaded 43rd year of life, which also hopefully explain the "have you actually read the book?" reaction I often have when encountering said references. (Also why I think most of the films get it completely wrong.) (Not least for missing the book's sense of humour.)
1.) Emily Bronte is gloriously immune to the woobification syndrome. See, neither Heathcliff nor Cathy are ever excused by their narrative for what what they do, and what they are. If you go into the story expecting Heathcliff to be a likeable romantic hero, or Cathy a likeable romantic heroine, you're bound to be dissappointed, but not because the narrative ever pretends they are. Wuthering Heights has two main narrators, Mr. Lockwood (city boy posing as a brooder, and Emily Bronte has a lot of satiric fun at his expense, as Lockwood is prone to get everyone's relationship and character wrong at first glance; the early scene where Lockwood first shows up at Wuthering Heights and wants to make conversation, only to be snarled at by Joseph and Hareton, getting sarcasm by Catherine and even more sarcasm by Heathcliff is darkly hilarious) and Nelly Dean (the narrating voice through most of the story, with brief interjections by diary excerpts, letters and other people's stories). One of the most basic mistakes nearly every film version except a French one makes with Nelly is casting her as old enough to be Heathcliff's and Cathy's mother and portray her as the more restrained version of Juliet's nurse. Whereas she's actually the same age as Cathy's older brother Hindley (her mother was his wetnurse), is a teenager when Heathcliff and Cathy are children and has a disapproving older sibling attitude to them throughout. She feels very occasionally sorry for them whenn it's actually warranted but doesn't like either of them, has no problem calling Cathy on her selfishness and cruelty or the adult Heathcliff on his greed and again, cruelty, and much prefers the Lintons. There is an emotional connection but it's of the "you don't choose your family" type (she grew up with them), but there is at no point sentimentality. (Take the famous "I am Heathcliff" scene, which starts with Cathy telling Nelly that Edgar Linton asked her to marry him and that she accepted, wondering whether it was the right thing to do. Nelly's reply to this is the ultra wry: "To be sure, considering the exhibition you performed in his presence this afternoon, I might say it would be wise to refuse him: since he asked you after that, he must either be hopelessly stupid or a venturesome fool.’
This, incidentally, is also why Heathcliff as a character works far better for adult me than does Mr. Rochester from sister Charlotte's Jane Eyre or his literary descendant Maxim de Winter in Rebecca (but that' separate rant and I have already written it). I'm not sure how much Charlotte is aware that Rochester acts like an ass towards Jane, Adele and of course his first wife most of the time. I'm very sure Emily is aware Heathcliff is no noble misunderstood soul. Not least because the entire subplot about Isabella Linton is there to make that very point. Isabella at first sees Heathcliff as a romantic Byronic hero, despite being warned otherwise:
‘No, you have not,’ said the infatuated girl. ‘I love him more than ever you loved Edgar, and he might love me, if you would let him!’
‘I wouldn’t be you for a kingdom, then!’ Catherine declared, emphatically: and she seemed to speak sincerely. ‘Nelly, help me to convince her of her madness. Tell her what Heathcliff is: an unreclaimed creature, without refinement, without cultivation; an arid wilderness of furze and whinstone. I’d as soon put that little canary into the park on a winter’s day, as recommend you to bestow your heart on him! It is deplorable ignorance of his character, child, and nothing else, which makes that dream enter your head. Pray, don’t imagine that he conceals depths of benevolence and affection beneath a stern exterior! He’s not a rough diamond—a pearl-containing oyster of a rustic: he’s a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man. I never say to him, “Let this or that enemy alone, because it would be ungenerous or cruel to harm them;” I say, “Let them alone, because I should hate them to be wronged:” and he’d crush you like a sparrow’s egg, Isabella, if he found you a troublesome charge. I know he couldn’t love a Linton; and yet he’d be quite capable of marrying your fortune and expectations: avarice is growing with him a besetting sin. There’s my picture: and I’m his friend—so much so, that had he thought seriously to catch you, I should, perhaps, have held my tongue, and let you fall into his trap.’
Isabella's marriage to Heathcliff is accordingly an abusive disaster. (BTW, if you think Emily didn't know just how bad it makes Heathcliff look to kill Isabella's dog right at the start of it - Emily had a dog (and several other animals) herself. This is not a gesture meant to endear him to the reader.) Of which she's not liberated or helped by another (male) character, as happens in other novels of the same period with minor characters who make a bad match like Isabella. No, Isabella, being entirely cured of the notion of Heathcliff as a misunderstood soul, runs away by herself and after a quick stop to update Nelly Dean on the situation at Wuthering Heights exits the narrative head held high.
Most film versions only use half of the book, which is a shame. Charlotte Bronte wrote a preface to Wuthering Heights when it was republished for the first time after Emily's death under Emily's name (as opposed to the Ellis Bell pseudonym) and is incredibly apologetic in it (the gist: "OMG, readers, so sorry that Emily wrote this novel and created such awful characters, but you have to understand, she was a child of nature and didn't have much contact with people and that there was That Matter At Home by which I mean our Branwell drank himself to death so that gave her maybe the wrong impression of human nature") but she makes one observation which I agree with and I wish more critics and secondary media had followed up upon, and that is that Heathcliff's unwilling affection for Hareton Earnshaw, whom he raises as a tool of revenge but finds himself identifying with and loved by not in a blind Isabella fashion but in an open eyes fashion is perhaps his most "human" (I would say "interesting", but then I'm not a Victorian) emotion. Wuthering Heights is that rare thing, a novel with a passion/revenge narrative which doesn't end when those goals are accomplished but puts that in the middle, asks "what then" and shows you what then. Of course, it's also the section which must have frustrated its contemporary readers to no end. On the one hand, Heathcliff seems to fulfill the villain function (scheming against the younger generation, bringing them into his power, making them miserable, until the Catherine II and Hareton team up), but on the other, the narrative doesn't put him through a villain denouement. What brings down Heathcliff isn't that Hareton and Catherine become friends, then lovers (Hareton defends Catherine against Heathcliff, but he also defends Heathcliff against Catherine), it's the realisation he doesn't care one way or the other and uses his own considerable willpower to enforce his death, in an exculting instead of despairing manner. Where's the conventional justice in that? Which brings me to:
2.) Emily doesn't care about your narrative conventions. I mean, I do sympathize to a degree with the difficulties any adaption has because the way she writes is exactly against what's taught. There are no characters to identify with, for starters. The only film I can immediately think of who pulls off a compelling main character whom the narrative goes out of its way not to make sympathetic or excuse hasn't got anything to do with the Brontes but is Capote. (Which doesn't ask you to like Truman Capote, and also offers narrative commentary pointing out all his flaws.) Heathcliff and Cathy for me are among those characters I wouldn't want anywhere near me in real life but do find captivating to read about precisely because they don't behave according to the sympathetic romantic character rules. And the story they're in, with is considerable emotional and physical violence, also does something which Gothic novels rarely do (for another century at least); it consistently offers black humor along with the drama. Take this scene, when Nelly has just hidden toddler Hareton from a drunken Hindley Earnshaw, who pulls a knife on her:
‘There, I’ve found it out at last!’ cried Hindley, pulling me back by the skin of my neck, like a dog. ‘By heaven and hell, you’ve sworn between you to murder that child! I know how it is, now, that he is always out of my way. But, with the help of Satan, I shall make you swallow the carving-knife, Nelly! You needn’t laugh; for I’ve just crammed Kenneth, head-downmost, in the Black-horse marsh; and two is the same as one—and I want to kill some of you: I shall have no rest till I do!’
‘But I don’t like the carving-knife, Mr. Hindley,’ I answered; ‘it has been cutting red herrings. I’d rather be shot, if you please.’
I can't think of another 19th century novel who defuses a situation like that - alcoholic maniac putting knife at our (female) narrator's neck - by that ew, fish knife, can't I have a pistol? wryness. In its use of humour in the midst of a tense melodramatic standoff, it wouldn't be out of place in a Buffy episode.
There's also the complicated narrative structure, which on the one hand is very 18th and 19th century but rarely pulled off so well. Our first narrator is Lockwood, who then is told the story by Nelly Dean, who in turn includes several reports to her by other characters. The amazing thing is that each of these first person voices comes across differently and individualistically. For example: very early on, Lockwood comes across a snippet of Cathy's diary. This excerpt not only gives you an immediate impression of child!Catherine Earnshaw but also is one of the few 19th century depictions of a child narrative voice that sound convincing instead of sounding like an adult or an idealized child.
‘All day had been flooding with rain; we could not go to church, so Joseph must needs get up a congregation in the garret; and, while Hindley and his wife basked downstairs before a comfortable fire—doing anything but reading their Bibles, I’ll answer for it—Heathcliff, myself, and the unhappy ploughboy were commanded to take our prayer-books, and mount: we were ranged in a row, on a sack of corn, groaning and shivering, and hoping that Joseph would shiver too, so that he might give us a short homily for his own sake. A vain idea! The service lasted precisely three hours; and yet my brother had the face to exclaim, when he saw us descending, “What, done already?” On Sunday evenings we used to be permitted to play, if we did not make much noise; now a mere titter is sufficient to send us into corners.
‘“You forget you have a master here,” says the tyrant. “I’ll demolish the first who puts me out of temper! I insist on perfect sobriety and silence. Oh, boy! was that you? Frances darling, pull his hair as you go by: I heard him snap his fingers.” Frances pulled his hair heartily, and then went and seated herself on her husband’s knee, and there they were, like two babies, kissing and talking nonsense by the hour—foolish palaver that we should be ashamed of. We made ourselves as snug as our means allowed in the arch of the dresser. I had just fastened our pinafores together, and hung them up for a curtain, when in comes Joseph, on an errand from the stables. He tears down my handiwork, boxes my ears, and croaks:
‘“T’ maister nobbut just buried, and Sabbath not o’ered, und t’ sound o’ t’ gospel still i’ yer lugs, and ye darr be laiking! Shame on ye! sit ye down, ill childer! there’s good books eneugh if ye’ll read ’em: sit ye down, and think o’ yer sowls!”
‘Saying this, he compelled us so to square our positions that we might receive from the far-off fire a dull ray to show us the text of the lumber he thrust upon us. I could not bear the employment. I took my dingy volume by the scroop, and hurled it into the dog-kennel, vowing I hated a good book. Heathcliff kicked his to the same place. Then there was a hubbub!
‘“Maister Hindley!” shouted our chaplain. “Maister, coom hither! Miss Cathy’s riven th’ back off ‘Th’ Helmet o’ Salvation,’ un’ Heathcliff’s pawsed his fit into t’ first part o’ ‘T’ Brooad Way to Destruction!’ It’s fair flaysome that ye let ’em go on this gait. Ech! th’ owd man wad ha’ laced ’em properly—but he’s goan!”
‘Hindley hurried up from his paradise on the hearth, and seizing one of us by the collar, and the other by the arm, hurled both into the back-kitchen; where, Joseph asseverated, “owd Nick” would fetch us as sure as we were living: and, so comforted, we each sought a separate nook to await his advent. I reached this book, and a pot of ink from a shelf, and pushed the house-door ajar to give me light, and I have got the time on with writing for twenty minutes; but my companion is impatient, and proposes that we should appropriate the dairywoman’s cloak, and have a scamper on the moors, under its shelter. A pleasant suggestion—and then, if the surly old man come in, he may believe his prophecy verified—we cannot be damper, or colder, in the rain than we are here.’
I think my favourite detail, other than the book kicking, is that child!Cathy is disgusted by the kissing and cuddling of her brother and his wife, because that's such a life like reaction. Incidentally, Emily being a Pastor's daughter and co-raised by a Wesleyan aunt I can't help but wondering whether the children kicking the "good books" (with their well parodied titles") into the fire were belated wish fulfillment. Her poetry certainly is anything but atheist, but her belief is her own and not allied to one particular denomination. It's not really surprising that at the end of the novel, she has her main character, who is neither villain nor hero, still reject "good books":
‘You are aware, Mr. Heathcliff,’ I said, ‘that from the time you were thirteen years old you have lived a selfish, unchristian life; and probably hardly had a Bible in your hands during all that period. You must have forgotten the contents of the book, and you may not have space to search it now. Could it be hurtful to send for some one—some minister of any denomination, it does not matter which—to explain it, and show you how very far you have erred from its precepts; and how unfit you will be for its heaven, unless a change takes place before you die?’
‘I’m rather obliged than angry, Nelly,’ he said, ‘for you remind me of the manner in which I desire to be buried. It is to be carried to the churchyard in the evening. You and Hareton may, if you please, accompany me: and mind, particularly, to notice that the sexton obeys my directions concerning the two coffins! No minister need come; nor need anything be said over me.—I tell you I have nearly attained my heaven; and that of others is altogether unvalued and uncoveted by me.’
I think it was Cecil Day Lewis who said Wuthering Heights reads as if an eagle had written it. It's perhaps the best image for how it feels like to me I could find as well. It's a story that doesn't pander any of its characters to me, and shows me passion and pettiness, cruelty and humour and sometimes even grace, but never in a moralizing manner. That is why I fell in love with it as a teenager, and that is why I love it still.
It's been a few decades since I was a teenager, and here are some reasons why I still love Wuthering Heights in my jaded 43rd year of life, which also hopefully explain the "have you actually read the book?" reaction I often have when encountering said references. (Also why I think most of the films get it completely wrong.) (Not least for missing the book's sense of humour.)
1.) Emily Bronte is gloriously immune to the woobification syndrome. See, neither Heathcliff nor Cathy are ever excused by their narrative for what what they do, and what they are. If you go into the story expecting Heathcliff to be a likeable romantic hero, or Cathy a likeable romantic heroine, you're bound to be dissappointed, but not because the narrative ever pretends they are. Wuthering Heights has two main narrators, Mr. Lockwood (city boy posing as a brooder, and Emily Bronte has a lot of satiric fun at his expense, as Lockwood is prone to get everyone's relationship and character wrong at first glance; the early scene where Lockwood first shows up at Wuthering Heights and wants to make conversation, only to be snarled at by Joseph and Hareton, getting sarcasm by Catherine and even more sarcasm by Heathcliff is darkly hilarious) and Nelly Dean (the narrating voice through most of the story, with brief interjections by diary excerpts, letters and other people's stories). One of the most basic mistakes nearly every film version except a French one makes with Nelly is casting her as old enough to be Heathcliff's and Cathy's mother and portray her as the more restrained version of Juliet's nurse. Whereas she's actually the same age as Cathy's older brother Hindley (her mother was his wetnurse), is a teenager when Heathcliff and Cathy are children and has a disapproving older sibling attitude to them throughout. She feels very occasionally sorry for them whenn it's actually warranted but doesn't like either of them, has no problem calling Cathy on her selfishness and cruelty or the adult Heathcliff on his greed and again, cruelty, and much prefers the Lintons. There is an emotional connection but it's of the "you don't choose your family" type (she grew up with them), but there is at no point sentimentality. (Take the famous "I am Heathcliff" scene, which starts with Cathy telling Nelly that Edgar Linton asked her to marry him and that she accepted, wondering whether it was the right thing to do. Nelly's reply to this is the ultra wry: "To be sure, considering the exhibition you performed in his presence this afternoon, I might say it would be wise to refuse him: since he asked you after that, he must either be hopelessly stupid or a venturesome fool.’
This, incidentally, is also why Heathcliff as a character works far better for adult me than does Mr. Rochester from sister Charlotte's Jane Eyre or his literary descendant Maxim de Winter in Rebecca (but that' separate rant and I have already written it). I'm not sure how much Charlotte is aware that Rochester acts like an ass towards Jane, Adele and of course his first wife most of the time. I'm very sure Emily is aware Heathcliff is no noble misunderstood soul. Not least because the entire subplot about Isabella Linton is there to make that very point. Isabella at first sees Heathcliff as a romantic Byronic hero, despite being warned otherwise:
‘No, you have not,’ said the infatuated girl. ‘I love him more than ever you loved Edgar, and he might love me, if you would let him!’
‘I wouldn’t be you for a kingdom, then!’ Catherine declared, emphatically: and she seemed to speak sincerely. ‘Nelly, help me to convince her of her madness. Tell her what Heathcliff is: an unreclaimed creature, without refinement, without cultivation; an arid wilderness of furze and whinstone. I’d as soon put that little canary into the park on a winter’s day, as recommend you to bestow your heart on him! It is deplorable ignorance of his character, child, and nothing else, which makes that dream enter your head. Pray, don’t imagine that he conceals depths of benevolence and affection beneath a stern exterior! He’s not a rough diamond—a pearl-containing oyster of a rustic: he’s a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man. I never say to him, “Let this or that enemy alone, because it would be ungenerous or cruel to harm them;” I say, “Let them alone, because I should hate them to be wronged:” and he’d crush you like a sparrow’s egg, Isabella, if he found you a troublesome charge. I know he couldn’t love a Linton; and yet he’d be quite capable of marrying your fortune and expectations: avarice is growing with him a besetting sin. There’s my picture: and I’m his friend—so much so, that had he thought seriously to catch you, I should, perhaps, have held my tongue, and let you fall into his trap.’
Isabella's marriage to Heathcliff is accordingly an abusive disaster. (BTW, if you think Emily didn't know just how bad it makes Heathcliff look to kill Isabella's dog right at the start of it - Emily had a dog (and several other animals) herself. This is not a gesture meant to endear him to the reader.) Of which she's not liberated or helped by another (male) character, as happens in other novels of the same period with minor characters who make a bad match like Isabella. No, Isabella, being entirely cured of the notion of Heathcliff as a misunderstood soul, runs away by herself and after a quick stop to update Nelly Dean on the situation at Wuthering Heights exits the narrative head held high.
Most film versions only use half of the book, which is a shame. Charlotte Bronte wrote a preface to Wuthering Heights when it was republished for the first time after Emily's death under Emily's name (as opposed to the Ellis Bell pseudonym) and is incredibly apologetic in it (the gist: "OMG, readers, so sorry that Emily wrote this novel and created such awful characters, but you have to understand, she was a child of nature and didn't have much contact with people and that there was That Matter At Home by which I mean our Branwell drank himself to death so that gave her maybe the wrong impression of human nature") but she makes one observation which I agree with and I wish more critics and secondary media had followed up upon, and that is that Heathcliff's unwilling affection for Hareton Earnshaw, whom he raises as a tool of revenge but finds himself identifying with and loved by not in a blind Isabella fashion but in an open eyes fashion is perhaps his most "human" (I would say "interesting", but then I'm not a Victorian) emotion. Wuthering Heights is that rare thing, a novel with a passion/revenge narrative which doesn't end when those goals are accomplished but puts that in the middle, asks "what then" and shows you what then. Of course, it's also the section which must have frustrated its contemporary readers to no end. On the one hand, Heathcliff seems to fulfill the villain function (scheming against the younger generation, bringing them into his power, making them miserable, until the Catherine II and Hareton team up), but on the other, the narrative doesn't put him through a villain denouement. What brings down Heathcliff isn't that Hareton and Catherine become friends, then lovers (Hareton defends Catherine against Heathcliff, but he also defends Heathcliff against Catherine), it's the realisation he doesn't care one way or the other and uses his own considerable willpower to enforce his death, in an exculting instead of despairing manner. Where's the conventional justice in that? Which brings me to:
2.) Emily doesn't care about your narrative conventions. I mean, I do sympathize to a degree with the difficulties any adaption has because the way she writes is exactly against what's taught. There are no characters to identify with, for starters. The only film I can immediately think of who pulls off a compelling main character whom the narrative goes out of its way not to make sympathetic or excuse hasn't got anything to do with the Brontes but is Capote. (Which doesn't ask you to like Truman Capote, and also offers narrative commentary pointing out all his flaws.) Heathcliff and Cathy for me are among those characters I wouldn't want anywhere near me in real life but do find captivating to read about precisely because they don't behave according to the sympathetic romantic character rules. And the story they're in, with is considerable emotional and physical violence, also does something which Gothic novels rarely do (for another century at least); it consistently offers black humor along with the drama. Take this scene, when Nelly has just hidden toddler Hareton from a drunken Hindley Earnshaw, who pulls a knife on her:
‘There, I’ve found it out at last!’ cried Hindley, pulling me back by the skin of my neck, like a dog. ‘By heaven and hell, you’ve sworn between you to murder that child! I know how it is, now, that he is always out of my way. But, with the help of Satan, I shall make you swallow the carving-knife, Nelly! You needn’t laugh; for I’ve just crammed Kenneth, head-downmost, in the Black-horse marsh; and two is the same as one—and I want to kill some of you: I shall have no rest till I do!’
‘But I don’t like the carving-knife, Mr. Hindley,’ I answered; ‘it has been cutting red herrings. I’d rather be shot, if you please.’
I can't think of another 19th century novel who defuses a situation like that - alcoholic maniac putting knife at our (female) narrator's neck - by that ew, fish knife, can't I have a pistol? wryness. In its use of humour in the midst of a tense melodramatic standoff, it wouldn't be out of place in a Buffy episode.
There's also the complicated narrative structure, which on the one hand is very 18th and 19th century but rarely pulled off so well. Our first narrator is Lockwood, who then is told the story by Nelly Dean, who in turn includes several reports to her by other characters. The amazing thing is that each of these first person voices comes across differently and individualistically. For example: very early on, Lockwood comes across a snippet of Cathy's diary. This excerpt not only gives you an immediate impression of child!Catherine Earnshaw but also is one of the few 19th century depictions of a child narrative voice that sound convincing instead of sounding like an adult or an idealized child.
‘All day had been flooding with rain; we could not go to church, so Joseph must needs get up a congregation in the garret; and, while Hindley and his wife basked downstairs before a comfortable fire—doing anything but reading their Bibles, I’ll answer for it—Heathcliff, myself, and the unhappy ploughboy were commanded to take our prayer-books, and mount: we were ranged in a row, on a sack of corn, groaning and shivering, and hoping that Joseph would shiver too, so that he might give us a short homily for his own sake. A vain idea! The service lasted precisely three hours; and yet my brother had the face to exclaim, when he saw us descending, “What, done already?” On Sunday evenings we used to be permitted to play, if we did not make much noise; now a mere titter is sufficient to send us into corners.
‘“You forget you have a master here,” says the tyrant. “I’ll demolish the first who puts me out of temper! I insist on perfect sobriety and silence. Oh, boy! was that you? Frances darling, pull his hair as you go by: I heard him snap his fingers.” Frances pulled his hair heartily, and then went and seated herself on her husband’s knee, and there they were, like two babies, kissing and talking nonsense by the hour—foolish palaver that we should be ashamed of. We made ourselves as snug as our means allowed in the arch of the dresser. I had just fastened our pinafores together, and hung them up for a curtain, when in comes Joseph, on an errand from the stables. He tears down my handiwork, boxes my ears, and croaks:
‘“T’ maister nobbut just buried, and Sabbath not o’ered, und t’ sound o’ t’ gospel still i’ yer lugs, and ye darr be laiking! Shame on ye! sit ye down, ill childer! there’s good books eneugh if ye’ll read ’em: sit ye down, and think o’ yer sowls!”
‘Saying this, he compelled us so to square our positions that we might receive from the far-off fire a dull ray to show us the text of the lumber he thrust upon us. I could not bear the employment. I took my dingy volume by the scroop, and hurled it into the dog-kennel, vowing I hated a good book. Heathcliff kicked his to the same place. Then there was a hubbub!
‘“Maister Hindley!” shouted our chaplain. “Maister, coom hither! Miss Cathy’s riven th’ back off ‘Th’ Helmet o’ Salvation,’ un’ Heathcliff’s pawsed his fit into t’ first part o’ ‘T’ Brooad Way to Destruction!’ It’s fair flaysome that ye let ’em go on this gait. Ech! th’ owd man wad ha’ laced ’em properly—but he’s goan!”
‘Hindley hurried up from his paradise on the hearth, and seizing one of us by the collar, and the other by the arm, hurled both into the back-kitchen; where, Joseph asseverated, “owd Nick” would fetch us as sure as we were living: and, so comforted, we each sought a separate nook to await his advent. I reached this book, and a pot of ink from a shelf, and pushed the house-door ajar to give me light, and I have got the time on with writing for twenty minutes; but my companion is impatient, and proposes that we should appropriate the dairywoman’s cloak, and have a scamper on the moors, under its shelter. A pleasant suggestion—and then, if the surly old man come in, he may believe his prophecy verified—we cannot be damper, or colder, in the rain than we are here.’
I think my favourite detail, other than the book kicking, is that child!Cathy is disgusted by the kissing and cuddling of her brother and his wife, because that's such a life like reaction. Incidentally, Emily being a Pastor's daughter and co-raised by a Wesleyan aunt I can't help but wondering whether the children kicking the "good books" (with their well parodied titles") into the fire were belated wish fulfillment. Her poetry certainly is anything but atheist, but her belief is her own and not allied to one particular denomination. It's not really surprising that at the end of the novel, she has her main character, who is neither villain nor hero, still reject "good books":
‘You are aware, Mr. Heathcliff,’ I said, ‘that from the time you were thirteen years old you have lived a selfish, unchristian life; and probably hardly had a Bible in your hands during all that period. You must have forgotten the contents of the book, and you may not have space to search it now. Could it be hurtful to send for some one—some minister of any denomination, it does not matter which—to explain it, and show you how very far you have erred from its precepts; and how unfit you will be for its heaven, unless a change takes place before you die?’
‘I’m rather obliged than angry, Nelly,’ he said, ‘for you remind me of the manner in which I desire to be buried. It is to be carried to the churchyard in the evening. You and Hareton may, if you please, accompany me: and mind, particularly, to notice that the sexton obeys my directions concerning the two coffins! No minister need come; nor need anything be said over me.—I tell you I have nearly attained my heaven; and that of others is altogether unvalued and uncoveted by me.’
I think it was Cecil Day Lewis who said Wuthering Heights reads as if an eagle had written it. It's perhaps the best image for how it feels like to me I could find as well. It's a story that doesn't pander any of its characters to me, and shows me passion and pettiness, cruelty and humour and sometimes even grace, but never in a moralizing manner. That is why I fell in love with it as a teenager, and that is why I love it still.
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