Wednesday 28 September 2011

Thoughts On Wuthering Heights.

  This week I have been living on the moors in Wuthering heights. Emily Bronte's tale of of passion and greed is a really different read for me, my usual reads end happy and perhaps for a time make me forget all but the characters in the story. It is a pity miss Bronte did not live long enough to write any more tales, I believe she and her sisters had a real genius for being authors. I have read a book from each of the sisters and they all were so good in their own way.
Wuthering heights is a tale of emotions, it more looks at the dark side of human nature, than the happy one on which we try and dwell. The characters are I hope exaggerated, I can't help hoping as I read that no real living person could feel all of these hateful feelings, wouldnt any living creature feel some remorse or regret to cause a life time of agonizing mental suffering and repent for the enjoyment they felt at watching that other person be tortured in pain.
Emily paints a cold picture of a heart void of love and in its place where beauty should blossom and make new a seed of hate born from passion and greed springs up like thorns and briars, constricting and suffocating any attempts the heart would dare to try and feel love or compassion finally giving in to the blackness that surrounds it. All the wile I read this I keep looking for some sign of true feeling between Catherine and Heathclif but again and again they torture each other with cruelty all because of there unrelenting anger born from love and turned to rot and blackened hate.
Could two people really love each other and then have these kinds of feelings toward that person of so dark a nature? I cant imagine the thoughts going through Emily's mind as she penned the words to this dark tale, I know I try and feel the emotions in my self before I place the burden of them on my own characters.
Herein the pages if you choose to read lies the dark side of the human heart, diabolical revenge spanning the the coarse of a lifetime and the ultimate ruin that can only result when a person is caught in that blackened trap of hate, revenge, and unbridled anger, not choosing to love the other person but rather treat them brutally as if they were worthless. The story portrays the demise of head strong obstinacy, and burning wounds hidden away to be thought on with grotesque hatred never allowed to heal.
I cant hate any of the characters in the novel but rather I pity them, all lost in there own desires unwilling to let them selves be free made hard by circumstance and blindly following the mistakes of others.
In the end though I believe Emily tried to make the point that change to a cold and lifeless heart could take place and be given warmth again, the change for them takes place after they are released from there self inflicted tortured lives here on this earth and can finally the hidden love they both shared is made free of the blackness there hearts felt in life and can finally have its way.
A truly interesting story perhaps not the most romantic or happy but there are many lessons to be learned from it.




3 comments:

  1. Oh, this book is so heartbreaking! I read it this spring, and though I couldn't tell you *why* it captured me so, I was enthralled with the book and could hardly put it down. I do think it was an accurate and realistic picture of what misplaced passion can do to one. Those Brontes certainly had a knack for putting their finger on human passions and emotions, didn't they?

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    1. they certainly did ! It never ceases to amaze me.

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  2. I have read Wuthering Heights. I still can't tell whether I enjoyed it or not. It can't be compared to any of Jane Austen's works because they just aren't the same. I read once that the Bronte sisters read some of Austen's books and found them too bright and happy.
    You did a great job capturing the ideas in Wuthering Heights. Thanks for telling us about what you've been reading!

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