Wuthering
heights, an extraordinary book published
by British author Emily Bronte falls into many categories:
it can be read as a
romantic story, or a gothic novel, even as an anthology of mental illnesses. The
wide range of subjects treated by this book makes it fascinating, even a
century after the publishing.
First of all, let’s
see the novel from the point of view of a Victorian female
reader. Hardened by
the burden of being a housewife, she needed something to pass her time. And what
better way to do it than to identify with the heroin of the book, Catherine Earnshaw?
She was a wild-at-heart young woman, torn between the love for Heathcliff, an
adopted servant-family member, and her foolish pride, a figment of her early
years.
Devastated by
Heathcliff’s leaving, as a reaction to the Earnshaws’ disapproval of a love
affair between her and the young man, Catherine marries young Linton boy. Torn apart
by her misfortune and aggressive towards the rest of the family, Catherine, now
a mother to be, decides to kill herself by starvation. She refuses to eat and
locks herself in her room. This is the moment when the reader can transcend the
romantic novel and enter a world of specters and mental frailty. But the story goes on, and a generation
later, Catherine’s daughter is the one that breaks the cycle of dark
happenings.
Was Catherine insane,
were there spirits haunting the mansion? The ambiguous nature of the book never
tells us what to believe, this is why I think that its complexity allows the
reader to categorize it as one pleases, according to preferences and literary
trends.
A novel so good
that its mystery is yet to be deciphered can only invite to further, more in
depth reading, disregarding the labels of the fore readers.