Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Height, is a classic story about love, revenge and forgiveness. It started with a big manor. The owner, Earnshaw, adopted a gypsy boy Heathcliff , as a servant. The boy fell in love with old Earnshaw’s sister, Catherine. At that time, the love between a lady and a servant was not allowed. The young couple, Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw was soon separated. Heathcliff then left Wuthering Height with great anger after he knew Catherine accepted one wealthy man, Edgard’s proposal. Instead of listening to Catherine’s confessions, he left without saying a word.. After few years he returned with malice, he vowed to take back everything that should have belonged to him. But what he saw when he came back was his nearly dead lover and her new born daughter, Cathy, who he despised. Since then, his life was exclusively companied by hatred.

I was horrified by this story when I read it for the first time. I couldn’t believe that the love of a man could be that strong, that deep. He used his entire life to love Catherine, and took the revenge on everyone who had destroyed their love. Heathcliff was a man built with love and hatred. The line between love and hatred was blurred in his heart. To me, he is the poorest man in whole story. He couldn’t endure others’ happiness; he wished to make everyone as poor and sad as he was. It’s somehow sick, I think. He did horrible things to Catherine’s husband, brother, daughter and even his own wife who was also her sister-in-law.

I have different feelings when I read the book again. I sympathize them, all of them. After I have experienced that the loss of someone who I really cherished, I finally understood how Heathcliff felt. It’s too hard for one to admit their lover’s left. Catherine was everything to Heathcliff, his family, his love, his faith to live. Behind the terrible revenge, it was a broken heart fed by strong hatred for almost eighteen years. I believe every time he saw Cathy, she was a great torment, it strongly reminded how he lost her mother, forever. I also feel sorry for another man, Edgard. Apparently, he married Catherine, but did he really get her heart? The love between she and Edgard was the fallen leaves on the ground; but the love to Heathcliff was like the huge rock, tough and eternal, even it came along with hatred! Therefore, if I could choose, I would rather be Heathcliff but not Edgard. I wanted to be the one she really loved.

Among all the characters, I like Hareton the most. He was Catherine’s nephew and his eyes were precisely familiar with her. Because of those similarities, Heathcliff had a special connection with him. When I saw the parts talking about interactions between them, I felt sad for both of them. Hareton was a poor boy, he worked as a slave in his own house, he never got any love from his parents, he was somehow an orphan. He was rough but warm, he couldn’t read but eager to learn, he tried to help Cathy when she was tortured by Heathcliff; he had never been loved by anyone, but he was always nice to not only Heathcliff but also Cathy, who had tried to hurt him at first. His sincerity and appearance touched them, through Hareton’s eyes, I can tell that Heathcliff had never forgotten Catherine, his love to his dead lover grew deeper and deeper instead. I felt sorry for him; he made himself a devil, why couldn’t he transfer his love to others? If I were him, I would cherish Cathy as my own girl. How she looked like her mother!

What a beautiful but sad love story! Some critics questioned about how can Emily Brontë finish this work without any experience of romance? They talked over many details in the book, and some feminist criticized about Catherine’s personality, etc …But, for me, Wuthering Heights is always the symbol of classic love. Something will never change even after three hundred years, eternal and forever -That is love.