Wuthering Heights: An Overview: Wuthering Heights Journal: Part Ten And One Half

So I recently finished the novel Wuthering Heights.

If I were to describe it in a few words, it would be summed up as a dark love-story in reverse. I can see how this was hailed as a classic because for its time, this love-story-in-reverse is a revolutionary idea.

I guess I should explain why it is a love story in reverse. It seems that the only time everyone was truly happy was in the beginning of Mrs. Dean's tale. As the novel progressed, all of the characters seemed to get angrier in countenance as their stories and injustices deepened.

This novel basically follows the life and times of the (extremely) evil Heathcliff, incited by Lockwood meeting him, and asking Mrs. Dean about him.

If I were to assign a generic theme to this novel it would be: Don't be a Heathcliff. However, I don't think that serves as a theme as much as it serves as just good advice. So, I guess in a broader sense, a theme could be that love can prevail only if both parties pursue it.

Another could be along the lines of that of Romeo and Juliet, where the inevitability of fate plays a rather huge role. It seems that every character is realistic in the sense of how they are their own person, and organically make decisions of their own accord without realizing how it affects one another.

Love plays a role in this novel in complicating itself. (I need to explain this...) Heathcliff loves Catherine I, and that's plain as day. However, because of his three-year absence, Catherine I moves on and marries Edgar Linton, writing Heathcliff off as escaped and possibly dead. He comes back, and is essentially told "you snooze, you lose" and he cannot find it inside of himself to move on. His life's mission is avenge this doomed love.

It appears that Heathcliff was doomed from the start with this love, after all, why couldn't he have just written her off as a sister, and loved her in that sense? It probably would have made him less a devil and less a tortured soul. (Remember that in this universe, it is apparently okay to marry your cousin?)

I have been looking at this novel through the eye of a high school sophomore in the United States in 2012. My guess is that some of the goings-on in this novel would make more sense to me if I were a fifteen or sixteen year old living in the late 18th century. Nevertheless, it stands out to me as a reverse love story which Mr. Lockwood played as a vessel, and not a pivotal piece (I am still a tad bummed about that part...).

I see love as an understanding between two people that there is something more between them. Love is this concept one cannot quantify in mere words, but rather through this mental understanding. There are ways of showing this love, but in the end the love itself is this understanding of one another. It seems that neither Heathcliff nor Catherine I ever understood that part.