It took me almost a month to complete this book, not because I don't like it, but because I DO LIKE IT. AND HATE IT AT THE SAME TIME.
I'm calling it the paradox of Wuthering Heights. To be clear, it is not a difficult read. The language is accessible, and the story easily followed. I found challenges in the characters and their actions. They are too believable, and that is such a sad commentary on my life. Lol!
It's hard to believe people can be SO bitter and hateful towards each other, especially because they loved each other. What I felt for Heathcliff alone is all kinds of complicated. I pitied him as an orphan with no family and unfair treatment from Earnshaw and the others. I was mad with him and was kind of happy when he first started taking revenge (I'm a bitter type of person by nature), but it wouldn't stop! How can YEARS go by and his hatred still burn so strong? And worse yet, he loves Catherine and yet abuses her daughter.
Catherine (mother) is childish and petty. She wants Heathcliff, but she wants more than what he is and I can't begrudge her that, but she makes herself ill and in her own head thinks the world revolves around her and her whims and ends up dead. She never gets over Heathcliff, but she also loves Edward. She wants them to get along for her benefit, but at the same time, causes their hate.
The children unfortunately come into the world bearing the sins of the parents and end up paying for them. Cathy never strays too far from her mothers shadow. She is a spoiled princess to her father and her own free will traps her and results in her own anger at the world and bitterness. Linton is used and abused and just like Heathcliff was twisted towards bitterness and hate is made the same by his own father. And Hareton.....he was my absolute favorite character.....he was born to have so much more, Heathcliff hated everything he stood for and was, yet he adopted him and was as tender as could be towards him raising him better than he did his own son (debatable). But is that better or worse for Hareton? He ends up illiterate and gruff, he is mentioned to smack Cathy in the face when she is being a total b@tch and ridiculing him, yet he is lost in his devotion to her, bearing the brunt of Heathcliffs anger for himself to avoid punishment for her.
As you can see, it's not that I find the story un-entertaining or bad, but it hits so close to home and makes me almost scared to see when Bronte holds this mirror up to my face. I've loved, and the only person I've hated was te person I loved. We would go out of the way to make scars that should last quite a while on either side. And even now, years later, looking back it's a medley of emotions from sad and mad to happy and lonely.
I hate to say it, but I can see a real Wuthering Heights scenarion having happened in my own life. As much as I hate to admit it, there was so much anger, we could have really caused some harm, to others and ourselves. And we kind of did for a while. Luckily something happened that let us let it go. We can even stand to be in the same same room now and look back with both measures of sadness and joy.
This is still too close for my own heart and maybe years from now when I read it again, I will be at a different place and experience a whole new way. For now it feels a little like someone picked at a scab. And that someone might have been me!
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