Wuthering Heights
Haunting Love In the winter of 1801 in England, a man named Lockwood rents a manor house near the Wuthering Heights where he learns the story of mysterious Heathcliff and the other denizens of the Heights, present and past. The story begins in the past at the beginning of Heathcliff’s time in Wuthering Heights as an orphan boy for Mr. Earnshaw. The story unravels, and Mr. Earnshaw dies leaving Heathcliff vengeful against the remaining family, but filled with the passionate yet frowned upon love for Earnshaw’s daughter, Catherine. Years pass for the two lovers dishearteningly because neither can ever be with the other due to commitments to other people, family, and societal class expectations. As Catherine dies a terrible death, her daughter Catherine and Heathcliff’s son, Linton relive the difficulties love can cause in Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. Presently, they become imprisoned by Heathcliff, which is where Lockwood first began his experience in Wuthering Heights. Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights exceptionally demonstrates the destructiveness and lasting effects love can have through all tests of time with astonishing symbolism, settings, and characterization. Wuthering Heights proved to be a meaningful and worthwhile novel for multiple reasons. Emily Bronte easily conveyed an entire love story with depth, passion, and complications that can easily be related to although it was written long ago. Heathcliff and Catherine were never in the right place at the right time in order for their love to work. Catherine explains this to her housekeeper, “My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff’s miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning” (Bronte 122). The two lovers wanted each other no doubt, but each time they had tried, misery and difficulties came about. Having a similar situation to a certain extent caused me to want to read the novel without stopping. Love is complicated no matter where you are, how old, or what period