Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Since I am on a quest to read the Great Books, I decided to download the audio version of Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. I think because it's audio, it got a bit confusing, plus there are characters with the same name and it goes back and forth in time. Certainly a recipe for confusion.

After looking up a summary in order to get everyone straight, I got the gist of it. There are three children being raised together by the Earnshaw family. Two, Hindley and Catherine are biological brother and sister. Heathcliff is adopted as a young lad. Hindley becomes bitterly jealous of the new addition, while Catherine and Heathcliff grow very close. There is another family that lives nearby, the Lintons. They have two children, Edgar and Isabella. Eventually Hindley marries and his wife dies giving birth to Hareton. Catherine marries Edgar, much to Heathcliff's enduring disappointment, yet she also dies in childbirth with Catherine (called Cathy). Heathcliff marries Isabella to spite Edgar who hates him. While she doesn't die in childbirth, she leaves Heathcliff shortly after giving birth to a son, Linton. When she dies about 15 years later, he is sent to live with the father he never knew. Heathcliff is now more bitter than ever, abusively raising Hindley's son, Hareton, after Hindley dies as a form of long-term revenge. When a pale, sickly Linton comes to live with him, Heathcliff only cares so that he may marry the boy off to Cathy and thereby inherit for himself the Linton property.

Everyone in the novel is a pretty unimpressive human being. The entire story is told by the housekeeper to a visitor. No one looks good. Even the housekeeper has fallen victim to the selfish mentality. All are narcissistic and extreme versions of awful, selfish people. I suppose this is what "love" looks like when there is absolutely no thought of another. Even Cathy, who seems untainted by the drama of her parents, eventually falls prey to Heathcliff's bitterness after going to live with him upon her marriage to Linton. It's two in-bred generations of self-centered self-pity. It's not unusual for the cause of death to be a broken and embittered heart. Odd.

I guess I didn't really identify with any of the characters, except as a cautionary tale. What not to do. No one is happy. Everyone lives their entire lives full of anger, bitterness, and regret. The book ends with Heathcliff being buried in the same grave as Catherine, literally on top of her so he can be with her in eternity.

Really.

Maybe it's me, but I really did not like the book. I'm not sure of the point. I'm sure better minds than I can get far more out of it.

UPDATE 9/25: I reread the book. My original synopsis still holds quite well, but my takeaway has changed. I now see the point. Bronte is asking whether each generation MUST suffer the sins of its fathers. MUST the second generation of very similarly named characters reenact their parents tragic lives. 

By bringing Hareton and Cathy together in a hopeful union after the death of Heathcliff, I believe she answers, "No." 

The Close Reads Podcast asked the question, "Is this a love story or a ghost story?" I now see it as a ghost story. Everyone is haunted by something; Heathcliff famously by the ghost of Catherine. Assuming the ghost is not real (although Lockwood sees her in the beginning), we can assume that Heathcliff was simply driven to his evil behavior by the haunting of his own demons. Assuming the ghost is real (as Bronte seems willing to suggest), it's possible that the ghost of Catherine comes back to haunt Heathcliff and drive him to his death to free her daughter from their fate.

Either way, the book makes much more sense and I think it has definitely grown on me.