[WH] - YOLO

"...and, as he had no surname, and we could not tell his age, we were obliged to content ourselves with the single word, 'Heathcliff,'" (pg 286).

Whoever decided to say YOLO has never met Heathcliff nor Catherine (lucky them).  So when Catherine died, Heathcliff asked Catherine to not cease haunting him until he should die.  Apparently even then Heathcliff was planning his revenge to rise from the dead to haunt other people.  Obviously ghosts symbolize something in this novel since they haunted the book multiple times, but I am really struggling to decide their purpose.  Bullet lists, here I come!

• Though Catherine could die, her spirit lived on as a sign that true love never dies and that her love with Heathcliff could not be diminished.  Maybe he should be glad he never took his vows since they never married?
• After Heathcliff died, the two were able to haunt the moors.  See my analysis of the moors and why it would make sense for the two to reside there right here.
• If Heathcliff could remain in love with a ghost who is haunting him, then obviously he deserved her in the first place.
• Since Catherine never haunts Edgar Linton, it does not appear that she ever loved him as she did Heathcliff.
• Bronte was a Gothic writer and really found ghosts to interesting to not randomly throw into a love novel meet murder mystery minus the mystery minus the love.

[WH] - This book needs an I hate the moors speech...

"Grief, and that together, transformed him into a complete hermit: he threw up his office of magistrate, ceased even to attend church, avoided the village on all occasions, and spent a life of entire seclusion within the limits of his park and grounds; only varied by solitary rambles on the moors, and visits to the grave of his wife, mostly at evening, or early morning before other wanderers were abroad" (pg 158).

Before I get to why I hate the moors, let me first relay to you how much I hate Bronte's syntax throughout her novel.  The syntax was long and complex, probably adding to the confusion she so desired, and succeeded, to create.  Congratulations Bronte, if your goal truly was to confuse your readers to parallel the relationships at Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, then you have truly outdone yourself this time.  Not only did I become trapped in confusion until the plot finally clicked about 170 pages into the book, but your long and windy sentences that usually contained a plethora of hanging antecedents and dependent clauses usually left me forgetful of where the sentence actually began, which was never where it began.

This, my dear friend, is a moor.  You probably call it a swamp or marsh if you are from the 21st century.

 When I get older, I think that I might move out to somewhere wuthering just off the edge of a beautiful moor.  I mean, look at the view!  You can see for miles.

But seriously, moors are more of a symbol than a setting throughout this novel.  Moors are only home to grass and rarely trees which sort of sums up how Catherine and Heathcliffs initial love was, bland.  Due to the lack of anything stellar on a moor, they are often easy to get lost in (so I hear, I don't believe that I've ever ventured onto a moor before).  This might remind you of Cathy and Linton's love because neither of them really knew where they were going with the love and it became a trap.  Also, moors are pretty infertile.  I don't really know why, but I'm not actually an expert on moors.  I don't know about you, but infertile love sort of draws me to acknowledge Hareton and Cathy's love.  Where did this love even come from?  I feel like they just kind of decided that since they were together so often, they might as well get married.

This book makes me want a pet hamster.

[WH] - Symbols only work if I get the reference

 Before you start reading this set of blogs, I should probably warn you that the majority of them talk about how certain elements of the story lead up to the climax of the story (so I think) at Catherine's death.

"It was not the thorn bending to the honeysuckle, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn" (pg 80).

As "the best romance novel of all time" (such a lie) I had to do one sappy love story blog post.  No matter how much it makes me want to throw up, this metaphor to true love gives my heart some warm fuzzy feeling when you see it between Cathy and Heathcliff's love.  Unfortunately, this is not a warm and fuzzy blog so if you want a happy story then you probably should not read this post, but if your name is Mr. Costello and you are compelled to read my blog in entirety I assure you that this will not be one of my more simple posts.

A thorn is obviously a symbol of an obstacle to love, but a honeysuckle cannot be easily defined.  It would be easy to say that it is the beauty of the love, but it would be deeper and more symbolic to portray the honeysuckle as if it were a weaker power.  The thorn is the overbearing presence that it would make sense for the honeysuckle to run from.

As foil characters, I believe Edgar and Heathcliff's relationship can be best described by the above metaphor.  When Heathcliff was adopted, he was abused by Edgar because he did not bend to the honeysuckle, but rather allowed Edgar to consume and trap him, figuratively that is.  This negative relationship inevitably lead Catherine to marry Edgar which led her to becoming the thorn and Edgar and Heathcliff fighting over becoming her honeysuckle, very masculine if I do say so myself.