In my desire to enjoy more fiction, I’ve also decided to read more of the classics. They are, after all, deemed classics for good reason. Wuthering Heights was a perfect start; highly regarded, set in my locality, at once recognisable characters and yet a dawning that I knew little (if any) of the story.
The immediate and obvious note; this clearly isn’t a love story, but more the interactions of a set of largely insane and terrible people. It’s a compelling read albeit full of dreadful people. The adult Heathcliff/Cathy relationship is obsessive, controlling, violent, selfish, and generally dark. Heathcliff’s later coercive and frankly criminal behaviour over entire households is even darker.
It really gives pause for thought about the potential for terrible behaviour in a world of remote houses, master/servant power dynamics, and absence of social services. Fiction would have been tragic fact many times over in our real past.
It’s unlike anything I’ve read; a tale of abuse and cruelty over many years. Where Emily Brontë pulled this all from is the real question.
