It did take me some time to come to it, however. I expect
that may be because, like most males, I’d come to the conclusion, without ever
having read it, that it was a girl’s novel – chic lit, as it were.
Why then did I finally read it? Because I’d decided that
I ought to read what I had not when I was younger: important classics. What was
I reading then? SF and horror originally; then Fantasy once I’d been introduced
to D&D. Some thrillers. Then Can Lit (that’s Canadian Literature). One
might imagine that I inched my way towards better literature as I aged. That is
true, but it is also pejorative. Who says that any form of literature is better
than another? (I do, to some extent, if I’m being honest; I always have, and
likely always will.) Read what you like. But I encourage one and all to
challenge themselves to read outside their comfort zone.
Which brings me to Wuthering Heights. I was pleasantly
surprised by what I found betwixt its covers. It’s a frame narrative: the
“narrator” is a man who tells a story about a woman who tells him a story. Both
might be considered unreliable narrators. The man, Mr. Lockwood, pays a visit
to his landlord, Heathcliff, and finds a sullen and inhospitable household.
Snowed in, he reads a diary by a Catherine Earnshaw he finds in the room he’s
shown to. Lockwood later returns to the house he is renting (Thrushcross
Grange), falls ill, and while recovering his housekeeper, Nelly Dean, tells the
tale of how Wuthering Heights came to be as it is now. Nelly tells a
captivating tale, presumed accurate and reliable, but her story is coloured by
her recollections, her love of the people involved, and her prejudices against
what they’ve done to one another. One then must parse her praises and
condemnations by what we learn in the narrative, and come to one’s own
conclusions on what she speaks on. In time, Nelly’s tale brings us up to the
current date. And in time, Mr. Lockwood leaves, only to return months later,
and we discover how their story resolves.
I will not tell you how it ends. Indeed, I will not tell
you how the plot plays out at all. Either you already the book and know already
or you haven’t and don’t. If you don’t, my telling you will spoil the tale if
you’ve a mind to read it.
I do this a lot, don’t I? Not tell the tale. That’s by
design. I want you to read the classic books that have stood the test of time.
They’ve endured for a reason. They’re good. They’re excellent, in fact. That’s
why they survive. Perhaps that’s because they are more than their mere narrative.
Sometimes they are parables, sometimes retellings of far older tales, suffused
with biblical and poetic themes. Often they are highly moral tales, cautionary
tales, with complex, conflicted characters who do not always do the right thing.
This tale is one of those.
Despite that, and despite its age (Emily Bronte published
this, her single work of fiction – she was also a poet – in 1847), its prose is
quite modern, and not at all difficult as some of her contemporaries might be
(I point my finger at you Edgar Allan Poe, whose works I love, but whose prose
I find daunting to my somewhat dyslexic mind). It is considered the best of the
Bronte sisters’ novels. I cannot claim to judge whether this is true, as, to
date, the only other I’ve read is Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, which I’ve only
just completed. Both were good – that sounds like faint praise: both were
excellent – but I believe Emily’s work is the superior of the two. This is not
to say that Charlotte’s most famous work is not also phenomenal, in its way. It
most certainly is! But I found Emily’s prose far more accessible, however.
Maybe that’s why I, personally, place hers above her sister’s.
Long story short, I really do believe that Emily Bronte’s
Wuthering Heights is truly one of English literature’s greatest achievements,
and that, if you have not read this – regardless your sex – you ought to.
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