Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

I know that it's my turn to contribute to this family literary effort. I watch my children enthusiastically plough through book after book particularly John, a voracious reader, and Anna, who breezes through a chapter or two before moving onto a new story. Then I compare them to myself. My reading period falls in the brief space between the moment that I get into bed and the time that my eyes close for the night. Consequently I manage to absorb at least part of a page every day, a chapter or two at most. This is the reason it has taken me the better part of two months to finish Wuthering Heights.

This was a book I had never read before. I hadn't watched any film adaptation of it either. I blindly walked into the story with a vague notion that it would be Jane Austen-ish. As I was expecting romance and flirtation, pretty costumes and elegant houses, I was absolutely unprepared for the book's ominous, dark and malignant story line and characters. Deep snow, isolated country estates and a vengeful ghost made peculiar and contradictory company for me on warm and peaceful summer nights. 

I had been aware of a certain 'Heathcliff' of whom a lot of bookish teenage girls were drawn to and now, having lived with said Heathcliff through so many pages, I cannot understand how this could possibly be character that that they were sighing and fawning over. If they are drawn this handsome, angry loner they are able to somehow overlook his base brutality. He is an evil man capable of extreme cruelty; he wrenches the fingernails off of someone, he hangs a dog, he terrorizes children trapped under his care and assaults women as willingly as he batters weaker men. Young Hareton, a boy who through a series of unfortunate events ended up being raised by Heathcliff fondly referred to him as his "Devil Daddy".

I hopelessly crawled through the dialect of Joseph who is the deeply religious servant living at Wuthering Heights. He is a bitter and mean old man who speaks with a very thick Yorkshire accent that is all pieced together phonetically for the readers. Copied here are a few sentences to demonstrate how difficult it is to get through Joseph's conversations.
"''Nelly,' he said, 'we's hae a Crahnr's 'wuest enah, at ahr folks. One on'em's a'most getten his cut off wi' hauding t'other froo' sticking hisseln loike a cawlf. That's maister, yah knaw, ut's soa up uh going tuh t' grand 'sizes. He's noan feard uh t' bench us judges, norther Paul, nuh Peter, nur John, nur Matthew, nor noan on 'em, nut he!" I think I'd have trouble understanding the man even if he were standing right in front of me, looking at me in the eye and speaking very, very slowly!

There was one thing that bothered me throughout the entire book. For the most part this story was being told through the recollections of an ever present housekeeper, Ellen or 'Nelly' Dean, as she knitted by the bedside of an infirmed guest. She conveyed to him the complex events revolving around the relationships of the people living at Wuthering Heights and their nearby neighbors. The story began when they were all happy, young children and progressed chronologically through to the relationships of those children's children. She recounted decades of memories in boundless detail. Nelly could recall every conversation: "she said, and then I said, and then she said..."  As I read I often wished that Emily Bronte had chosen a different approach in which to tell her tale as I could never get over the niggling thought that no one could possibly remember all that Nelly Dean did. At times she was actually quoting someone who was in turn quoting someone else. A triple layered quote for the reader.

If you are like me and frequently choose to read the introduction and preface of books only after the story has been read then you will, like I did, find the extremely helpful family tree printed in those pages too late. I ended up having to make my own weak version of the tree as I went along in order to more fully keep track of exactly who was who.

Having no previous experience with this story I was startled and relieved to fall upon it's happy ending. I was expecting the caustic curse of Heathcliff to ruin both families and thereby fulfill his perpetual goal. The tender, loving relationship that blossoms after so many pages of nightmarish situations left me satisfied. It stands as a reward for those who persevered with Catherine and Hareton though all the darkness.