Joy Nairambalam
YewThe end of the burning thirties. By that time, tuberculosis had covered the entire body of the woman. Death can strike at any moment. The written Wuthering Heights has yet to hit the printing ink. Emily Brontë reached the height of fame by writing only one novel in the vastness of human literature. There must have been a lot of agony behind Emily’s private declaration that even as the swan song of death reverberates nearby, death does not scare her and her friends will see her off with flying colours.
What should characterize Emily Brontë? Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, and Anne Bronte, one of the three known in literary circles as the Bronte Sisters. The other two were not as famous as Emily, although they wrote a couple of works.
In Yorkshire, England, the daughter of Patrick Bronte, a clergyman, Emily’s life was one of utter isolation as she huddled between her father’s strictures. Familiar only with the house where she was born and the surrounding countryside, Emily must have ignited some kind of talent. If that novel called ‘Wuthering Heights’ is to be completed in a world-class way, that creative wealth is not trivial.
Wandering alone in the valley of solitude, in that priestess’s daughter who did not know what the world was, fate had confined the emotionality, passion and imagination of many works that might have been written in one life to that single novel?
Wuthering Heights? An unusual, intense love story. How clearly Emily has written how the revenge that springs from an imperfect love begins to move and it jumps to the next generation.
Harton Earnshaw, a wealthy man living on the Moors in England, takes and raises an orphan boy. The little boy — Heath Cliff — grows up in that very rich house with all the comforts. Gradually the orphan falls in love with Catherine, Earnshaw’s only daughter.
Heath Cliff steps into the mysterious situation where their romance collapses and hooks Catherine up with Edgar, from another wealthy family, with a vengeful determination. He has no other thoughts. It was Catherine’s brother who took her away from him. Unable to bear the loss of love and humiliation, Heathcliff leaves the country. Years later he returns with a grudge and wealth. In front of him, two families — the Ernshaw family and the Linden family — were collapsing. As time went on, Catherine died untimely. Naturally he has to change with the death of his ex-girlfriend. But the grudge doesn’t end there. It came up. He mightn’t control himself and stammered. In the last days of writing, did the writer think that the character of the inscrutable Cliff was not confined to himself?
When it comes to the fact that Cliff’s grudge remains the same when Catherine’s father’s house and her husband’s house are destroyed by his evil thoughts and evil deeds, any psychology may have to judge the character of the man.
Towards the end of the novel, Heathcliff’s son and Catherine’s daughter are unexpectedly married. Heathcliff’s emotions are becoming conflicted in a new, yet submissive situation.Will her daughter betray her son as ruthlessly as ‘Catherine’? If he cheats.… He sinks into self-despair, hating the new couple as his mind-control degenerates from him. Many of his evil deeds fail and Heathcliff succumbs to his death.
Emily Brontë has handled the strategy of story writing in a different way. The ending of the novel is very poignant and emotional, with long conversations in Wuthering Heights where Nellydin, a building keeper who grew up with Catherine and Heathcliff, tells the story to another. Few other novels in the world literature are densely packed with love and its extended despair, sexual questioning, and revenge upon revenge. Wuthering Heights exudes the spirit of a lonely and desolate region.
When Somerset Mom, the editor of Red Books in the United States, was asked to choose ten books that are typical of the world literature, Wuthering Heights was one of those ten books he chose. The work is a mixture of swelling and excitement in the innermost places of a woman’s mind locked inside the house. The
