Victorian Challenge--Wuthering Heights

Despite the fact that it's the 15th day of the new year, I've only managed to finish one book.  *sigh*  I'm rather disappointed in myself for that.  On the other hand, I've been planning a class I've never taught before, and trying to deal with some minor personal crises.  Still, I have been "grazing" through other books and, hopefully, will be finishing a few more soon.

I am glad, however, that Wuthering Heights is my first book of the year.  It's been nearly a decade since I read this fabulous story, and I really needed to re-acquaint myself with it.

As with all good fiction, when I returned to it, I noticed things I'd never thought of before.  The story is the same, but it offered me different things to notice this time around.  I was much more aware of Nellie Dean as a narrator this time around, and also more aware of the somewhat (ok, very) ridiculous Mr. Lockwood.  I've always been interested in what I think of as Lockwood's sadism, but this time around, I decided that his ruling emotion was not a sense of power, but one of fear.  He is terrified of the ghost Cathy and that terror shows itself in the cruelty of dragging her wrist across the broken glass.  His fright manifests itself in cruelty at least once more in our narrative--when he describes the reason he left town.  He fell head over heels for a young lady, but the moment she showed a bit of interest in him, he spurned her.  This time through, I read that moment as a result of fear.  He was too afraid of having his heart broken.  Lockwood seems afraid of his own nature, and it leads him to imagine that he wants to live in isolation and solitude.  Perhaps, now that I'm thinking along these lines, Mr. Lockwood is just an overly sensitive romantic.  When he is faced with the realization of his romantic fantasies (in terms of romance or of fancy), he pushes them violently away rather than admit that they might not hold up to his imaginings.  I don't know.  What do you think?

Well, Nellie Dean is certainly no romantic, either in love or in outlook, but I was surprised to find how integral to the story she was.  I hardly remembered her as more than a straightforward narrative voice, but her presence is more constant than that of any other character.  Many of the incidents in the novel could not have happened but for Nellie, with or without her permission.  Nellie is the most responsible character in the book, it would seem, but I have to continue reminding myself that the whole narrative was told through her eyes.  Perhaps she has colored it a bit so that her own failings show less.  I certainly wouldn't envy her position with either Catherine.

The final thing that struck me this time around is how much time the story spends on the second Cathy and Linton.  I remembered Wuthering Heights as a story of consuming passion and jealousy between Heathcliff and the first Cathy, which was inflicted on their children.  I did not remember how much time we get to spend with the second Cathy and Linton.  It actually kind of annoyed me, not as one might expect, because Linton was such a cringing worm, but because I felt it took attention away from Heathcliff and the first Cathy.  I clearly liked that story better, which is why I seem to have forgotten most of the middle bit--ha!

Still, this is a grand read and I long for a field of heather where I could take a thermos of tea and lounge all day with this book for company.