Wuthering Heights Reader Response

641 Words3 Pages
Wuthering Heights Reader Response I enjoyed Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë immensely. The novel had many characteristics that I admired and appreciated, but one in particular stood out most to me. Brontë’s writing was extremely intricate. It was clear that she had spent extensive amounts of time creating and building the layers of the novel. Brontë works with three layers of complexity in Wuthering Heights: the characters, the chronology, and the telling of the story. The protagonists of the novel, Heathcliff and Catherine were individually complex characters. Throughout the novel, I found myself perpetually surprised by the decisions they made. The moment I thought I had understood either one of them was always the moment I was shocked to find they went with the unexpected. For example, Heathcliff’s passion towards Catherine seems to be indicative of his faith, but he surprises us by marrying Isabella Linton, despite his love for Catherine. We are able to gather from this incident that Heathcliff is not as innocent as we think; that he is willing to use his own family and loved ones as pawns to reach a selfish objective. The novel seemed to be split into two halves; the first ending with Catherine’s death and the second beginning at the same point in the novel. Each half told the story of a separate generation. The first illustrated Heathcliff’s introduction to the Linton/Earnshaw families while the second explained the lives of the children whose parents were in the first. As a reader, it was gratifying to be able to draw parallels between the two generations. For example, both Catherines share similar personalities. Older Catherine says in chapter IX “I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry
Open Document