Friday, September 24, 2010

Wuthering Heights-second half

To start off I have never heard of a gothic romance novel.  I went into reading this book expecting to read about the characters and somehow one or more of them are vampires.  The way that Heathcliff portrayed himself in from of Lockwood and how everyone in the manor were so mean and had a evil side to them.  At the start of this book it was very hard to understand the language mostly because of the time period it was written.  I did start to enjoy the flow of the writing because it was very eloquently written.  In the second half of our reading there seemed to be a strong parallel between the first half of the book and the second.  You can see how within the families of Earnshaw and Linton that the children acted in the same manner as the adults did without really knowing that fact.  I became very empathetic of Heathcliff, even though in the second half of the book he was about revenge and how he felt he could and would manipulate anyone.  But all of the moves he made in revenge were only because he was hurt by Catherine, he always loved her but he seems to hate her at the same time.  I could understand that because they were friends and even though Edgar had such distain for him Catherine couldn’t get enough.  They would play together and would have the best times, but once she came back home all of that had changed.  It was kind of like the movies that are set back in the 19th century or even early 20th century where the girl would disobey her family and enjoy the company of a lower class individual.  And once they would attend finishing school all of that would change, Catherine did as a good girl and married Edgar.  If I were Heathcliff I would be angry too.  I am not quite sure why Heathcliff would want to keep Hareton and young Catherine apart, I mean if Hareton was some was a sort of representation of him then wouldn’t he want to rewrite history so to speak.  When he push them together because he couldn’t be with the elder Catherine?  I think all the hatred and revenge completely consumed him that he couldn’t think sensibly.  I think it had to be really rough on the kids because of how much Edgar and Heathcliff hated each other and they would do anything in their powers to make sure the other was miserable.  I am not sure if Heathcliff really saw the elder Catherine but I think that he loved her so much but hated her at the time that after awhile he went crazy and didn’t know how to deal with his emotions and he felt like he actually saw her but he was coming to the end of his life.  I like how it seemed that young Catherine made everything right by apologizing to Hareton for how she treated him, like she undid a curse or something.  I can’t say that I was completely shocked that the narrator of this story turned out to be Nelly because she seemed to be a common thread throughout the book and generally the hired help seems to know everything that is going on because they either see it or they are confided in.    

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