The realization that it has been almost exactly twenty years since I first read Wuthering Heights was a cruel one. I am now old enough to simply forget if an event took place ten or twenty years ago. Perhaps that’s why I find myself compelled to journal or blog about the books that speak to me. I can revisit my notes to refresh my ailing memory, without needing to resort to pulling entire college reading lists off my bookshelves.
I originally read Wuthering Heights without being required by a college professor or high school teacher, which is regrettable. While the narrative isn’t difficult to follow, it is difficult to know how to respond to the main characters, Heathcliff and Catherine. The connection shared by Heathcliff and Catherine often causes Wuthering Heights to be described as one of the most romantic English novels, but this book is not your mother’s romance novel.
In fact, the dark tone set by the novel, in which all of nature seems to echo the tumultuous relationship of the main characters, has proven a real attraction to Japanese readers, who flock to the moors of England in large enough numbers to require some remote road signs to be printed in English and Japanese.
My reaction to Heathcliff was apparently more ambivalent than that of his Japanese fans. Heathcliff’s passion for Catherine seems to require an active hatred for the rest of mankind. His only pleasure seems to be in planning the torment of those around him, and I find myself too easily echoing the sentiments of the less imaginative characters in their condemnation of Catherine and Heathcliff’s actions.
Still, Bronte has created two unforgettable characters in Cathy and Heathcliff, and her affection for them is contagious. You won’t forget them, but you may forget precisely how long it has been since you first encountered them.
