Wuthering Heights

I just finished reading Wuthering Heights a second time, the first time being when I was in class seven or eight and hence of course had never truly appreciated it (though I do recall going about telling everyone what a marvelous book it was just so they would think I was quite the literary kid!). So anyhow, coming back to the point, this time around I actually did get it and realized exactly how magnificent a piece of literature it is.

Usually I am not a very harsh critic, I either like or I like a lot; I never dislike really, when it comes to pieces of creative art, be it books or movies or music (ok maybe some music I can’t stand but for most part it’s still true what I say). I find something to enjoy even in the Sidney Sheldons and Barbara Cartlands that I come across. For the way I see it is, each creation has something to offer, however trivial that may be - a moment of pure magic in an average movie that makes it worth watching or a little piece of interlude music in an otherwise raucous song. I try to look for those instead of finding the glaring flaws which would be obvious to all anyway - call it naiveté or call it the glass-half-full syndrome.

Coming back to Wuthering Heights, I realized this time, how a simple tale (for it is a simple story) has been woven into such an enchanting book. The all consuming passion of one man, that wreaks havoc on the lives of everyone who crosses his path including the one person he loved; the woman who is capable of the kind of love that can destroy and liberate at the same time; and the man who turns his lost love into the guiding light of his life until the day the light and the life are together extinguished. All strongly etched characters, with immense misdeeds committed by each (except, perhaps, the last) and yet they draw you to themselves with such an intensity that you are rendered incapable of feeling anything but sympathy for them. The setting maybe that of the English countryside of the early nineteenth century, but the storytelling is such that you can virtually see the events unfold in front of your eyes and feel the emotions of the protagonists as if they were your own, even though you belong to another century and another place altogether.

What makes it even more captivating for me is the author, to imagine that a girl in her early twenties had the gumption to write a tale of this kind at a time when women who wrote of passion could possibly be taken to the stake. And to think that after this one flash of brilliance, the fire just died down for she never wrote again until she died.