30 Books Before I'm 30: Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights 
by Emily Bronte
"It was a strange way of killing: not by inches, but by fractions of hairbreadths, to beguile me with the spectre of hope through eighteen years!"

For some reason, I always thought Wuthering Heights was a gothic romance; I figured it would be similar to Jane Eyre or Sense and Sensibility. I thought Heathcliff was supposed to be a tragic, yet romantic man who pulls himself up by his bootstraps to make something of himself in society.

Um. Not quite. The entire time I was reading it, I kept asking myself, "Where is the part where people are not crazy?" Because everyone in this book is absolutely nuts. The story follows the course of the Earnshaw and Linton families, who lives across the moors from each other. The Earnshaw pater familias dies after bringing home an orphan boy (Heathcliff) who may or may not have Antisocial Personality Disorder. The other Earnshaw kids-- older son Hindley and daughter Catherine-- have a spectrum of feelings for Heathcliff-- mostly negative, though Catherine apparently falls in love with him (because they were close during childhood), even though she treats him like a jerk and marries another man for his money. Heathcliff takes revenge by being a general a-hole. The narrator is Mr. Lockwood, who rents Thrushcross Grange (the Linton home), and may or may not be gay, but he is told the story of the Earnshaw and Linton families by the head housekeeper, Ellen Dean. Lots of people die, but no one is murdered. There may have been a ghost or two.

What I Liked: I prefer this book to Jane Eyre because, though all of the characters are awful, they stay awful. Heathcliff is only redeemed (spoiler alert!) when he dies, and Catherine Jr. and Hareton are able to love each other because they were never actually terrible people themselves but were only raised by terrible people. There is more depth to this book than I gave it credit in the beginning, and I probably shouldn't have read half of it on a treadmill because I would have gotten more out of it.

What I Didn't Like: I can't decide whether I liked or hated the narrative device. I realize that it was a stylistic choice that reflected the time period, but it felt removed to be getting the story from the housekeeper.

I wish I had known from the beginning that the story wasn't really a romance (in the way I conceptualize romances) and that Heathcliff wasn't going to be a likable character. I kept waiting for him to get nicer (and was a bit shocked when he hanged a puppy), but he didn't. 

This Book Would Be Best When Read: On a sunny Sunday in your favorite reading chair, or wherever you read when you're comfortable (NOT THE GYM!)

I Would Recommend this Book to: Anyone feeling slightly morbid (as the characters are all pretty awful and abusive).

In my Psychological Opinion*: I would diagnose Catherine Earnshaw with Borderline Personality Disorder due to the following criteria: pervasive pattern of interpersonal instability (I mean, come on, she marries one guy, has an affair with her adopted brother, and hardly reacts when her father dies while stroking her hair), frantic efforts to avoid abandonment (locking herself in her room and wailing that she's dying until someone notices), pattern of unstable relationships characterized by vacillation between idealization and devaluation (her entire relationship with Heathcliff), impulsivity, affective instability, and inappropriate and intense anger. 


Examples from the book: "There she (Catherine Earnshaw) lay dashing her head against the arm of the sofa, and grinding her teeth, so that you might fancy she would crash them to splinters! Mr. Linton stood looking at her in sudden compunction and fear" (inappropriate anger and self-harm behaviors?) and "A minute previously she (Catherine Earnshaw) was violent; now, supported on one arm, and not noticing my refusal to obey her, she seemed to find childish diversion in pulling feathers from the rents she had just made, and ranging them on the sheet according to their different species: her mind had strayed to other associations" (possible dissociation?)

This Book Wins my Award for: Most intolerably incomprehensible colloquial language used by the servants (except, thankfully for Ellen Dean who tells most of the story). For example: "They's nowt norther dry nor mensful abaht t' place: nowt there isn't!" 

Up Next: Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, though I'm currently reading a non-30BBI30 (see what I did there?), At Bertram's Hotel by Agatha Christie. I needed a palate-cleanser.


*Note: This section is intended as a joke only; I would never diagnose someone, real or imagined, without an appropriate clinical interview.