Wuthering Heights is a Romantic novel with the capital “R”. The Age of Reason is over, and Emily Bronte
seeks, and succeeds, in exposing our most irrational natures. In this novel, characters just speak about
their great passions, and get sick, and die.
Heathcliff and Catherine are the prime
exemplars of this; Catherine’s love for Heathcliff is strong, but inchoate. She dies. Heathcliff is constitutionally stronger than
Catherine, but after years of tormenting, both emotionally and physically,
those around him, he suffers death by Romance as well.
I write this tongue-in-cheek. Wuthering Heights is a novel that should be
read. Certainly it makes demands on its
readers. But we should rise to meet its
high mark.
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