Tackling 'Wuthering Heights' -- Chapter 7

I kind of read ahead, past Chapter 7, so I'm going to try to be as brief as possible here.

Cathy didn't come back to Wuthering Heights (I think I'm just going to refer to it as "the Heights" from here on out) until five months later, around Christmastime. She was able to walk again, healed from the dog bite injury on her ankle.

I'm guessing this is sort of where SMeyer also wants us to draw a comparison between Cathy and Bella. Because Cathy had come back, all right. She came back all decked out and purrrrty so everyone fawned over her and admired her for the beauty that she was. Just like all the guys in the Twilight Saga fumble and get all worked up over Bella because of how speshul she is as the New Girl.

If Bella's so plain, why do all the guys think she's so hot and date-worthy, to the point where it's like a competition between them? She doesn't have much of a remarkable personality, really. Her hobbies include scrubbing her dad's house spotless, watching marathons of Romeo and Juliet and wishing she was Juliet, admiring the way Edward sparkles, and of course, riding on Edward's back like some kind of infant monkey.

Well, this looks familiar:

Aww... how cute!

At least Cathy had a penchant for exploration, what with her running around and masterminding (together with Heathcliff) pranks to get old Bible-spewing Joseph cranky. And, Emily wrote that Cathy really was pretty, instead of playing it off as though plainness was a flaw as SMeyer did. So it's logical to think that people admired her greatly for her beauty, and that Edgar Linton and Heathcliff would develop mondo crushes on her.

Though, Bella and Cathy are both bratty in their own respective ways. You can argue that Cathy's youthful spunk can turn into impetuous and impulsive vanity, whereas Bella is just (because she lacks that youthful spunk, having been "born thirty-five years old") ungrateful whenever Alice (who's really the most awesome character in Twilight) takes her on a shopping spree or throws parties in her honor.

So just how bratty can Cathy get? You'll see what I mean soon.

So while everyone kept fawning over Cathy, Heathcliff kept his distance. Even if Hindley and the Lintons always shooed him away, Heathcliff probably would have stayed away anyway. He would have felt extremely inferior, having spent the entire day working in the fields and never getting the opportunity to freshen up. Maybe he thought his B.O. would gravely offend Cathy.

Anyway, here's where Cathy seems a bit... how shall I call it?

Two-faced.

Try to imagine Cathy as the rich, most popular girl at your high school, and Heathcliff as the hot loner dude that everyone thinks is poor. Cathy, of course, will hang out with the other popular people and pay Heathcliff no mind because her peers don't think that he matters. Then when everyone's left and no one's looking, Cathy would seek out Heathcliff and tantalize him with the hope of spending some alone time together.

BUT when everyone else from the in-crowd comes back, Cathy leaves Heathcliff. She pretends not to know him at all while entertaining the vain inanities of her so-called "friends." Cathy's really no better than a mean girl.

Poor Heathcliff! No wonder he's all screwed up!

Okay. Maybe I'm being too harsh on Cathy (and okay, so I've also been pretty harsh on Bella). Peer pressure is a persuasive fiend that seduces you into wanting to fit inside its lukwarm half-open embrace. But it's just as ready to toss you aside if you cross it.

(I'm skipping Lockwood's interruption of Mrs. Dean's storytelling. It's not that important.)

TO CHAPTER 8... AND AWAY!

Tackling 'Wuthering Heights' -- Chapter 6

It's been a bit of a while, and I've been multi-tasking. Reading some chapters, recapping them, and working on my own story, as well as convincing my sister to paint my toenails red in between. It's a doozy! But anyway, I got them done.

So, without further ado, Chapter 6 of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights...

Hindley, Cathy's brother, came back to Wuthering Heights for the funeral. And he brought his new little wife with him. He's feeling really high and mighty now because the estate now technically belongs to him, thereby making him the new "master."

Frances -- Hindley's wife, if you recall from Cathy's diary entry -- became the talk of the neighbors. Apparently, funerals really freak her out (my mom would probably concur, since she hates watching horror movies and hates thinking about anything that's dead). Frances confided in Mrs. Dean, aka "Nelly" (a new nickname that we learn in this chapter), that she was afraid of dying because of her coughing fits. Maybe Frances has tuberculosis? It's either that, or she's a hypochondriac who just can't help but fret over every little health issue. Who knows? Nelly proably thought the case was the latter.

Turning our attention back to Hindley...

He's out of shape. And he's meaner. Hindley bossed the servants around ("My daddy's not here anymore, so that makes me the new master, and you have to follow me even though I'm being a douchebag bully to you, otherwise I'll throw you out and you'll have no home whatsoever! Mwahahahahaha!"). He told them to sleep in the back kitchen and leave the house for him and his wife. Hindley wanted to redecorate, but Frances liked things the way they already were, so he dropped all plans of fixing the place up. If Martha Stewart had already been born, then I bet Frances would have jumped at the chance.

Frances loved doting on Cathy -- she treated her like a little doll. But then this would get old and Frances would get "peevish," while Hindley grew "tyrannical." The lovebirds really do deserve each other, don't they?

Anyway.

Hindley forced Heathcliff into the servants' quarters, denied him of getting educated, and insisted that Heathcliff work in the fields like a common farm hand. Heathcliff, meanwhile, handled his situation well because Cathy would teach him what she learned and would would spend time with him in the fields. Whenever they got into trouble with Hindley, they would run away into the moors together and spend the entire day there, only to return very late. It was as if being together was the cure for their misfortunes.

It sounds very sweet at first. Until something happens that changes everything, turning Heathcliff's world inside out and upside down, as he then tells Nelly what happened...

One evening Cathy and Heathcliff were out in the moors when they decided to spy on Edgar Linton and his sister, Isabella (mmhmmm... Is this where SMeyer subconsciously got the name for her protagonist?). It was really all just for the "lulz." Just for laughs. And boy, was this a pathetic sight!

Edgar and Isabella had been fighting over a dog, over who deserved to cuddle with it. These kids were like, pre-teens (age 11 or 12), mind you. They'd nearly ripped the poor, yelping puppy into two. Savage!

One moment they were sniveling, and the next, you could have sworn their ears pointed up like this fellow, masquerading as an overly alert bunny rabbit:

They heard Cathy's and Heathcliff's snickering laughter. The two pranksters then proceeded to make "frightful noises to terrify them still more."

Edgar and Isabella alerted the servants. As Cathy and Heathcliff tried to run away, Cathy's foot got caught in the guard dog's mouth. She told Heathcliff to run ahead without her. (The guard dog's name, by the way, was  Skulker... that sounds scary, but way cooler than just calling it "Rex" or something ghastly cliched as "Spot." I wonder if Emily had a dog named Skulker.)

Then a servant came out, carried Cathy inside, and told Mr. and Mrs. Linton what all the hubbub was about. The Lintons recognized Cathy as servants tended to the girl's bleeding foot and ankle. They were shocked to find out that her BFF was an unruly-looking gypsy boy. LIKE, OMG, GASP!

Heathcliff, being the sweet little romantic rascal that he was as a pre-teen, refused to leave Thrushcross Grange without Cathy by his side. But they sent him off on his own into the cold, windy night with nothing but a lantern to guide his way. The moors probably look extra creepy at night.

Poor Heathcliff (I dare you to count off how many times I say "Poor Heathcliff" throughout my other chapter recaps)... I really do feel sorry for him. I want to hug him and tell him to kick to those mean people in the shins the next time he sees them.

Meanwhile, the Lintons were all over Catherine. In Heathcliff's words:

"They dried and combed her beautiful hair, and gave her a pair of enormous slippers, and wheeled her to the fire; and I left her, as merry as she could be, dividing her food between the little dog and Skulker, whose nose she pinched as she ate; and kindling a spark of spirit in the vacant blue eyes of the Lintons -- a dim reflection of her own enchanting face."

Maybe the Lintons felt guilty that their stupid Skulker (which I imagine to be a rowdy pitbull or rottweiler) bit little Cathy's foot and might possibly give her rabies or some awful canine disease. Perhaps Cathy might never walk again! Then she can no longer go outside and explore the moors with Heathcliff, leaving the poor guy all alone with no one decent to talk to! OMG! And then she'll fall for Edgar Linton instead, breaking Heathcliff's already overly-abused and battered heart!

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

Okay. I managed to get a grip. But it's clear that Heathcliff has a bad feeling about how things are going down, and you can sense the depth of his bitterness:

"I saw they were full of stupid admiration; she is so immeasurably superior to them -- to everybody on earth, is she not, Nelly?"

From then on, the Lintons and Hindley and his trophy wife Frances tried to keep Cathy and Heathcliff apart.

I'll say it again: Poor Heathcliff!

TO CHAPTER 7... AND AWAY!

Tackling 'Wuthering Heights' -- Chapter 5

Mr. Earnshaw, Cathy's and Hindley's dad, was weakening in his health and was confined to one room. He grew irritable, especially because he knew people resented him for taking in and caring for the gypsy-looking orphan boy Heathcliff. Paranoia at its finest.

Hindley, of course, grew even more jealous when the servants paid more attention to Heathcliff because they were trying to placate Mr. Earnshaw. Hindley's unruly behavior toward Heathcliff got so bad that Mr. Earnshaw had to send Hindley away to college to keep peace in the house.

As for Joseph, Mrs. Dean called him "the wearisomest self-righteous Pharisee that ever ransacked a Bible to trake the promises to himself and fling the curses to the neighbors." That's a brilliant description of the preachy old prick! Anyway, Joseph kept bothering Mr. Earnshaw about Heathcliff and Cathy, ratting them out and getting them into all sorts of trouble.

Cathy, on her part, was always hard-headed and difficult to control as a little girl. Always in mischief -- "a wilde wicked slip she was." But her cuteness as a kid and her beauty as a young woman made it hard for people to stay mad at her for too long.

"She was much too fond of Heathcliff. The greatest punishment we could invent for her was to keep her separate from him: yet she got chided more than any of us on his account."

How adorable... except that they're being raised as brother and sister. Not that Cathy and Heathcliff are blood-related. But it's still awkward. I guess I can kind of see how Cathy and Bella are similar in that quote. Both feel pretty darn lost without their men doting on them 24/7. There's a phrase for that nowadays: clingy.

They're on the fast track to insanity if they don't watch it. Well, with Bella she already lost her marbles when she cliff-dived and expected that Edward (the imaginary voice in her head) would save her. Either that, or she felt utterly worthless without her sparklepire and truly wanted to die. Behold the following image:

I predict Cathy will go mad when she realizes that she could never truly be with Heathcliff for the rest of her life. I wonder how Bronte will present that scene, if Cathy does indeed go insane.

Oooooh... Check this passage out:

"She was never so happy as when we were all scolding her at once, and she defying us with her bold, saucy look, and her ready words; turning Joseph's religious curses into ridicule, baiting me [Mrs. Dean, housekeeper], and doing just what her father hated most -- showing her pretended insolence, which he thought real, had more power over Heathcliff than his kindness: how the boy would do her bidding in anything, and his only when it suited his own inclination."

So Cathy would get a kick out of arguing and winning each time -- she reveled in outsmarting those who would chide her for her antics. Heathcliff must have been really been in love with her, even when they were both little children. He seems all-too-willing to be Cathy's lackey.

I kind of respect Cathy for her rebellious tendencies. However, I still have my reservations regarding her character. I also predict that aside from her going mad, Cathy's rebellious streak will morph into full-on catty behavior and manipulation.

Anyway, back to the story --

Mr. Earnshaw died. Cathy and Heathcliff were distraught, wailing when they discovered they were both orphans. Sucks for Heathcliff, having his adoptive father die. We see a little moment of sweetness when Cathy and Heathcliff tried to console each other:

"I ran into the children's room: their door was ajar, I saw they had never laid down, though it was past midnight; but they were calmer, and did not need me to console them. The little souls were comforting each other with better thoughts than I could have hit on: no parson in the world ever pictured heaven so beautifully as they did, in their innocent talk: and, while I sobbed and listened, I could not help wishing we were all there safe together."

Awwwww... Young, innocent love.

How theirs will unfortunately turn sour. This is silly of me, but I really think that Lady Gaga's hit song "Bad Romance" should be the theme song, if some production team ever decided to adapt teh novel into a soap opera. Maybe it should be called "Weathering the Heights."

Or "Passion: Romance and Revenge." Better yet... "Romancing Revenge."

Interesting titles, wouldn't you say? Well, even if they're tacky, I'm having way too much fun with this!

TO CHAPTER 6... AND AWAY!

Tackling 'Wuthering Heights' -- Chapter 4

Ms. Emily Bronte --

The main reason I avoided reading your novel when I was 13 was because of Lockwood's blunders with dogs and his stupidity in mistaking a pile of dead rabbits for cute, cuddly kittens. Lockwood, as a character, is just an unnecessary presence whose clumsy awkwardness and inability to get a freaking clue is just an embarrassment to the rest of us human beings. Do you truly hate your readers that much that you must bore us first before getting to the good stuff? We have incredibly short attention spans! Don't be a tease! Just jump into the juicy parts, why don't you?

At least, now we're getting somewhere!

You could argue that Chapter 3 should have been the start of the story, but for me, perhaps it should have been a sort of prologue. The REAL start of the story, I would say starts in Chapter 4. Mrs. Dean, the housekeeper, tells Lockwood about what had happened at Wuthering Heights. We finally get to learn who the people that inhabit the estate really are, and the reasons for their lackluster and hostile personalities. Mrs. Dean had been living in Wuthering Heights for 16 years, so there's bound to be some juicy stuff she's witnessed.

But before we plunge into the story, let's take a couple of steps back first so we don't get confused with who's who and who owns what and who screwed over who and... well, here it goes:

So Heathcliff owns Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights. He's extremely rich, but he doesn't spend any money on renovations to fix either place up. Maybe he's trying to pull a moldy and cobwebby Miss Havisham stunt (from Dickens' Great Expectations) by just letting everything dilapidate on their own because he's too busy being miserable and sour to care or notice. Or maybe it shows that he longs for the past because that's when he felt most alive. Otherwise, the dilapidated conditions of the estates represent his own ruin as a person, the ugly part of him that's torn and broken.

Anyway.

Heathcliff had a son, but his son died. His son was married to the young lady, Catherine. Catherine Linton -- not to be confused with Catherine Earnshaw Linton. Both were obviously mother and daughter. That's got to be pretty awkward for Cathy the younger, knowing that your father-in-law had the hots for your mom.

Meanwhile, Hareton Earnshaw was Catherine Earnshaw Linton's nephew. Hareton is younger Cathy's cousin.

Heathcliff's son was also Catherine the younger's cousin (ugh!) because Heathcliff had married the sister of Catherine Earnshaw Linton's husband. In other words, Heathcliff married Catherine the elder's sister-in-law. Why he did that is beyond me... Unless he did it to get back at Cathy the elder for dumping him. But this would still be f***ed up on sooooooooo many levels!

I think we've already established that it's a confusing family tree. Thank goodness no one marries their cousin anymore! Geez!

Cathy Linton (the younger one) is the last of the Lintons, and Hareton Earnshaw is the last of the Earnshaws. The Earnshaws used to own Wuthering Heights, whereas the Lintons used to own Thrushcross Grange.

So, on to the story...

Cathy and Hindley Earnshaw were brother and sister, and Hindley was 8 years older than Cathy. Their father was supposed to go away on some business trip, and he promised to bring back some spiffy presents for his kids.

But instead, he brought home a dirty beggar boy and decided to adopt him. Just imagine the look on Cathy's and Hindley's faces when they heard, "SURPRISE! YOU HAVE A NEW BROTHER NOW! BE NICE!"

It's like dropping a silent but fatal fart bomb on someone's head.

Of course, Cathy and Hindley were not thrilled, especially because they now had to share their room and their toys with this snot-nosed gypsy kid that their father randomly plucked off the street to raise as his own son. This street urchin was baptized and named "Heathcliff." In Mrs. Dean's words, "It was the name of a son who had died in childood, and it has served him ever since, both for Christian and surname." At first it sounded like he'd have a name like "Heathcliff Heathcliff." How dreadful. But then I thought about celebrities like Madonna, Prince, Pink, or Akon, who are known by just the one name (well, their stage names). Then I was like, OHH, I SEEEE...

Heathcliff -- a man without a history, a future, but a man nonetheless, who's just trying to make it through the present.

Sounds pretty sexy if you ask me. Until you realize how he ends up, if you recall from Chapter 3. That's right. Hysterically calling out the name of his long-lost beloved who may or may not be (to our knowledge) dead in the middle of the night. Depression? Bipolar disorder? Schizophrenia? Borderline personality disorder? Antisocial disorder? All quite possible. This guy needs a shrink.

Heathcliff was always "sullen... hardened, perhaps, to ill-treatment." Hindley always bullied Heathcliff, to show that he was better and more worthy of respect than Heathcliff. And I was right: Hindley tortured Heathcliff because he was jealous that his father treated Heathcliff with more favoritism. The two boys even got into a fight over who deserves to own a horse. No matter how badly Hindley beat up or insulted Heathcliff, the orphan boy always walked away with a sense of dignity, despite defeat.

Heathcliff's got swag. ;)

OHHHHH, and I just found out there's going to be an upcoming film adaptation of Wuthering Heights! Even though I know the sudden sparked interest is due to SMeyer's books' popularity, I'm still looking forward to watching it. I think it's coming out next year. Can't wait!

TO CHAPTER 5... AND AWAY!

Tackling 'Wuthering Heights' -- Chapter 3

Zillah leads Lockwood to the room in which he will spend the night until the blizzard passes. It's not a room that Heathcliff would be willing to have guests stay in. Oh, the allure of snooping around...

The room used to be Catherine's. Although which Catherine is unclear, as Lockwood notes upon seeing the window-ledge bookcase with the names "Catherine Earnshaw," "Catherine Heathcliff," or "Catherine Linton" scratched randomly onto the painted wood.

I'm guessing that all these different Catherines are actually pertaining to one person.

She may have been born "Catherine Earnshaw," daydreamed that she would marry Heathcliff and therefore become "Catherine Heathcliff." BUT things most likely didn't turn out so well. Instead, she married someone else and became "Catherine Linton."

Of course, I could be wrong. This is all just a hunch. A theory.

I doubt that Lockwood would have arrived to the same conclusion. He seems so clueless. I guess he's supposed to represent us, the readers, in much the same way that Horatio in Hamlet is supposed to represent us -- as transplants into the story. We're outsiders to the lives of the other characters, and we're only just learning about them.

He seems oblivious to the doodle-dreaming tendencies of a young woman fancying herself in love with someone and courting the idea of marriage. That Catherine was just trying out different names for herself to see which sounds better. I used to do this all the time -- up to now I still do, especially if I find a guy completely irresistable (e.g. "Julianne Gallinari," "Julianne Cavill," "Julianne Somerhalder," "Julianne Lautner," and... you get the picture).

Okay, turns out I was right after all! (At the time I was writing this, it was in real time, by the way.) Lockwood kept seeing all these different names and felt a little overwhelmed:

"In vapid listlessness I leant my head against the window, and continued spelling over Catherine -- Earnshaw -- Heathcliff -- Linton, till my eyes closed..."

It's not until Lockwood picks up some of the books on the window-sill shelf and flips through them that he realizes the girl -- Catherine Earnshaw -- was the one who wrote these diaries.

We get a snippet of this mysterious Catherine's childhood through the narration provided by Lockwood. It's pretty weird to stumble upon someone else's diaries and read all their deepest secrets to yourself. Then again, we have TMZ and Perez Hilton and a whole host of gossip magazines for that nowadays. Not to mention the Internet. Facebook's stalker-friendly nowadays. You can dig up dirt on virtually anyone!

I wonder if Emily Bronte will continue using Lockwood's narration as a storytelling device, or Catherine's diaries as some sort of plot ploy to get us suckered into the rest of the story.

So far, the excerpt that Lockwood came across in Catherine's diary came out of her youth when she, Heathcliff, and some other boy were supposed to be reading their prayer books to make up for not attending church. "It had been flooded with rain," so it wasn't wise to venture outside and risk it.

OH WAIT. Sorry. I think I misread that.

Joseph (the mean old servant, if you recall) had set up a makeshift church service "in the garret." Otherwise known as an attic -- especially a small, cramped one. Cathy, Heathcliff, and the ploughboy were supposed to sit on a sack of corn and pay attention to the sermon. They shivered from the cold, and exaggerated their shivering so that Joseph would quickly STFU. But it was useless because they ended up sitting through 3 hours of the sermon. Sucks for them.

Especially for Cathy. Her brother, Hindley, was a totall hypocritical douche bag. Here's why:

"...Hindley and his wife basked downstairs before a comfortable fire -- doing anything but reading their Bibles...'You forget you have a master down here,' says the tyrant. 'I'll demolish the first who puts me out of temper!' "

And then Hindley proceeds to verbally abuse Heathcliff and has his new wife (Hindley was a lot older than Cathy) pull the poor gypsy boy's hair.

I've got 2 words for Hindley and his wife: churlish and childish.

Hindley's totally jealous of Heathcliff. I'm guessing it's because Heathcliff got more attention from Hindley's dad, and Hindley felt robbed. Sore loser.

Cathy then wrote:

"Frances [Hindley's wife] pulled [Heathcliff's] hair heartily, and then went and seated herself on her husband's knee; and there they were, like two babies, kissing and talking nonsense by the hour -- foolish palaver that we should be ashamed of."

If you're wondering what Cathy meant by the word "palaver," it's defined as profuse and idle talk. Hindley and Frances were probably exchanging sickeningly saccharrine "OMG, ILY" with each other while feeling each other up. Cathy, I totally get where you're coming from. Hindley and Frances remind me way too much of those shameless couples on the Subway who can't keep their hands off each other. They're often oblivious to the fact that their PDA on overdrive grosses other people out. Some couples just don't know how to get a room. Or a freaking clue, for that matter.

Joseph's cruel. If he were living in today's society, he would definitely get arrested and locked up for child abuse. All Cathy did was try to keep herself and the boys warm, and what does Joseph do? Tear away their pinafores and bash Cathy's ears with his fists, claiming that they were being awful children. The cruel moron.

You gotta love Cathy for rebelling, though. She hurled her book into the dog kennel first, then Heathcliff followed. They got punished for it, but I think Cathy is a bit more resilient in receiving the punishment, believing herself to be in the right. All I have to say is, YOU GO GIRL!

Also, you can already tell Cathy's in love with Heathcliff -- "Poor Heathcliff!" -- and that their relationship will be defined by the rules of rank in Victorian society. Forbidden to associate with each other, even as young adolescents. That's pretty damn harsh. I would love to throw rocks at Hindley, if only to knock him off his high horse. Hindley needs to get over himself.

So, back to Lockwood...

He dozes off and gets a bad dream. It sort of mirrors the 3 hour service Cathy and Heathcliff had to go through -- Lockwood (in his dream, I suppose) had to sit through an entire tirade by a preacher named Jabes Branderham (what an awful name!).

"Seventy Times Seven, and the First of the Seventy-first. A Pious Discourse Delivered by the Reverend Jabes Branderham."

FML if I had to sit through an entire four hundred and ninety parts of a sermon. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe Branderham's so-called pious discourse is in reference to Jesus's response that we should forgive our transgressors seventy times seven times. And 7 is such a huge symbolic number in various religious traditions. In Christ's case, he meant we should ALWAYS forgive our enemies, no matter how horribly they've wronged us. However, if this is a novel about romance and revenge, then I highly doubt any of the characters would really heed Jesus's advice. Maybe that's what they get for not paying attention to the homilies every Sunday, ahahaha.

Anyway, Lockwood was sick of listening to it, so he let Branderham know. People ambushed Lockwood for it, including mean old Joseph. I would imagine that Lockwood gets the crap beat of him, but I'm not really sure because Emily doesn't give us that much details to go on.

She just jumps ahead to the disturbing part:

For some weird reason, Lockwood was inside of an oak closet (did he pass out in there? LOL!). He kept hearing odd sounds, which he ascribed to the belligerent windy weather surrounding the moors of Wuthering Heights. I think Lockwood may have heard banging noises that bugged him, so he went to see what it was, expecting that it was just a branch knocking on the window glass. But it wasn't.

Lockwood thought he had grabbed a branch, but realized to his horror that it was the "fingers of a little, ice-cold hand!" It freaked him out even more when the mysterious hand clasped onto his hand even tighter. And then "a most melancholy voice sobbed, 'Let me in -- let me in!"

SHIT. Talk about freaky!!!!!

But here's the kicker:

Lockwood asked the thing who it was, and the reply came back as "Catherine Linton... I'm come home: I'd lost my way on the moor!"

And then he saw a face.

WTF. I was confused as to whether this actually happened or it was all just in his head, because after the "Cathy" entity introduced itself, Lockwood was mentally talking to himself, as noted between the enclosed parentheses:

"Why did I think of Linton? I had read Earnshaw twenty times for Linton."

Was this the same Cathy? The same Cathy who wrote all those diaries? It would be funny if the reason she came back was to freak Lockwood out for reading her private thoughts.

Anyway, Lockwood became so desperate to free himself that he rubbed the Cathy entity's wrist back and forth across the window's broken glass -- to injure it so it would finally let go of him. The Cathy entity, meanwhile, kept begging to be let inside, wailing and wailing. As another attempt to have it let go of him, Lockwood said that he would let her in if she let him go. She did. But then Lockwood shoved a pile of books against the broken glass to keep the Cathy entity from terrorizing him further.

The Cathy entity claimed it was lost for 20 years. TWENTY FREAKING YEARS. And then it tried to push the books out of the way. Lockwood, obviously scared shitless, yelled. I honestly would have, too.

Then Heathcliff came rushing in, all hot and bothered, pissed off at Lockwood because (1) Lockwood wasn't supposed to be in this room, and (2) Lockwood's yell had probably woken Heathcliff up from an already disgruntled state of slumber.

Lockwood told him everything that happened -- excluding one little detail. The fact that Lockwood had... oh, I dunno, just snooped through the private diary pages of Heathcliff's dead girlfriend.

Heathcliff, meanwhile, struggled to keep his emotions in check. Most likely he and Cathy didn't end their relationship so well. Either that, or she was dead and Heathcliff was trying his best not to go berserk over a ghost. Just as Lockwood was leaving the room, Heathcliff lost all sense of control and flung himself onto the sheets, begging that Cathy come back to him.

That was really heartbreaking, that Heathcliff still mourns for her -- although whether Cathy Earnshaw Linton was, in fact, dead at this point, is unclear. Heathcliff at his most vulnerable = sad.

Even Lockwood was moved, and he felt ashamed to have witnessed this unraveling of emotions that he gave poor Heathcliff the space he needed.

Later, we can sense the tension between Heathcliff and the younger Catherine, his daughter-in-law. Perhaps she was the daughter of Catherine Earnshaw Linton?

I came across this fuzzy-looking cat when I was searching for images of Wuthering Heights, and it just made me laugh. Someone called it "the Poor Man's Garfield." Maybe it's named after the hero of Emily Bronte's novel? Hmm... But anyway, he sure does look happy!

Just thought it would bring a smile to your face. Prepare yourself for more depressing details in the upcoming chapters. I'll do my best to include a light-hearted flare in my next recaps.

TO CHAPTER 4... AND AWAY!

Tackling 'Wuthering Heights' -- Chapter 2

Lockwood leaves Thrushcross Grange and heads over to Wuthering Heights, just as snow begins to fall.

The weather -- hence, "Wuthering" -- gets really nasty, to the point that it becomes too dangerous to leave without getting lost in the moors or buried in the snowstorm. But anyway...

Lockwood comes across a rough-looking young man and a beautiful young girl seated beside a fire, whom Lockwood mistook for Heathcliff's wife. She's actually Heathcliff's daughter-in-law, but Heathcliff's son had died (I wondered how and why.) And as for the young man, he's not Heathcliff's son. His name is Hareton Earnshaw.

Since the snowstorm grows into one nasty blizzard, Lockwood asks for a guide to accompany him back to Thrushcross Grange. But no one wanted to help him.

Talk about awkward...

So Lockwood takes a lantern, saying he'll find his way back on his own and that he'll return the lantern in the morning. But the mean old servant Joseph thought that Lockwood was stealing it.

What does Joseph do?

He sics the dogs on Lockwood, of course! Poor dude. He's pinned down to the floor by the dogs, and he feels angry and humiliated. This brings on a nosebleed, so he has to stay at Wuthering Heights. Zillah, another servant, leads Lockwood to the room where he'll be sleeping for the night.

Maybe Bella (from the Twilight saga) has more in common with Lockwood than with Cathy. Lockwood really has a knack for putting himself in awkward and clumsy situations. But I don't know if I can really blame him. His host and the people who reside at Wuthering Heights are not likable at all. They're all so... cranky!

TO CHAPTER 3... AND AWAY!

Tackling 'Wuthering Heights' - Chapter 1 in a Nutshell

1801.

No, that's not a prequel to the Phoenix song. That's really the first thing Emily wrote down.

In which we meet the surly and sour-mannered master of both Wuthering Heights (hence, the title of the novel) and Thrushcross Grange. And his name is Heathcliff.

Narrated by some ass-kissser who's renting living space from Heathcliff. Said narrator's name is Mr. Lockwood, and he tries way too hard to stay in Heathcliff's good graces (whatever graces the man does happen to have, that is. He just seems so belligerent).

Joseph is Heathcliff's servant. Both are mean to Lockwood. Maybe they have really sensitive bullshit meters. Even the dogs don't take too kindly to Lockwood. They bark constantly and try to bite him. I kind of wished they did. Lockwood is already annoying me -- he's such a boring narrator!

TO CHAPTER 2... AND AWAY!

Tackling 'Wuthering Heights' - Before the Beginning

If you've read my last post, I said I would transpose my initial thoughts that I had written down in my handy-dandy notebook and type them out here on this blog. Here's what I wrote before embarking on this new reading venture:

Dear Reading Journal,
... And to whoever else that may be reading this --

I am attempting to break down chapter-by-chapter the romantic legendary novel of love, passion, betrayal, revenge, and all the guilt and good juicy stuff of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights.

My main reason for finally picking up this dusty book off my shelf is to find out what makes this story so effin' breathtaking that Stephenie Meyer kept referring to it in the Twilight saga as Bella's favorite (and by extension, SMeyer's fave) novel. But where the comparison lies between Bella and Cathy or Edward and Heathcliff -- that's something I plan to investigate, to see if the comparisons are really there.

Or not.

My bet is that SMeyer really only scratches the surface. Sure, there seems to be some passion and a smattering of vengeance-seeking throughout the Twilight saga. But to me, Bella and Edward got nothin' on the heated bad romance between Catherine and Heathcliff. I mean, Bella and Edward at least get to be together for eternity. But as for Cathy and Heathcliff... they're lost forever, DOOMED, their all-consuming love for each other never fully consummated.

That's the tragic part right there. And if you're pervy enough to be thinking this, you can also go so far as to say it's really tragic that Cathy and Heathcliff never actually... um, DID IT. With each other, that is. (Maybe that's why Bella's so anxious, so hot and bothered about dying a virgin. LOL.)

Both Cathy and Heathcliff die lonely and bitter, especially the surly (yet really sexy sounding) Heathcliff. He's had it rough since he was a kid, so I can't say I blame him that much for turning into a douche-faced jerk to everyone he meets.

And Cathy... she seems like one cruel little wench, playing around with Heathcliff's feelings for her.

But then again, I'm getting ahead of myself, only relying so far on what I've heard about the story. So I'm finally going to read it after 7 years of avoiding it due to the fear of confusion. So please, wish me luck!

I just hope I end up loving Emily's story as fervently as I love Charlotte's Jane Eyre -- or at the very least, appreciating Wuthering Heights for what it's worth as a literary mainstay.

TO CHAPTER 1... AND AWAY!

Brontë-saurus!

It's an odd title for a blog post, but if you have no idea what I'm talking about, then just bear with me. I promise that you will find out why eventually. ;)

Sorry if my last post sounded a little depressing. Things are okay and have calmed down over the weekend. In fact, my sister and I kind of re-bonded over a successful charity project we had to do yesterday for Rainbow. Thank goodness!

Anyway, I finished reading Jane Eyre recently, and I've gotta say, I ABSO-FREAKIN'-LUTELY LOVED IT. Charlotte Bronte, you are a literary genius! AMEN to strong female protagonists who show us the way to be true to ourselves, who reject the BS society tries to shove down their throats, who eventually forgive those who have utterly wronged them, and who are capable of loving someone unconditionally (no matter how horribly twisted his mistakes were, *cough, cough, Rochester*).

Jane Eyre has officially joined my list of favorite female heroines, along with Viola of Messaline, Elizabeth Bennet, Suze Simon, Em Watts, and Buffy -- to name a few.

So anyway, I've recently picked up Wuthering Heights, written by Charlotte's sister Emily, and so far I'm on Chapter 5. It's been sitting on my shelf collecting dust for about 7 years. I bought the paperback in a 2-book special from the Scholastic catalog when I was in the 6th grade. You can't resist buying a couple of classics that cost altogether $2.00 and have pretty covers like these: 

Darcy gives his letter of sincere apology to Elizabeth! GASP! I devoured Pride & Prejudice right away -- it was actually the main reason for my purchase, hehe. I'd read the abridged version in 4th grade and wanted to read the original text, so I went ahead and bought it -- especially since Wuthering Heights came with it, both for a cheap price!

Heathcliff on this book cover looks TOTALLY hot. That's the edition that I have, and man, do I feel butterflies a-fluttering in my tummy whenever I admire the cover. But perhaps Scholastic picked up on this, so they changed the cover to something less... um, provocative. They're a children's book publishing company, first and foremost. Go figure. Here's the new cover that they settled for instead:

The cover art seems appropriate here, if a 12-year-old girl were to pick this up and read it. The setting is in the moors, an endless stretch of uneven grassland that you could easily get lost in. It's supposed to symbolize the characters getting lost in their passions -- both for love of each other and for bitter revenge against those who have wronged them.

But I still prefer the blue cover with the hot Heathcliff. I could just 'effing SWOON!

Then, in the middle of my search, I came across a completely different type of cover...

OH GOD, NO. I found this Twilight-ish cover for Wuthering Heights on this website. WHY, WHY, WHY must it permeate everything?! To tell you honestly, Stephenie Meyer sort of killed Wuthering Heights for me. When I was reading Eclipse last summer, I thought Meyer was stretching the comparison between Belward and Cathcliff wayyyyy too far. Bella, according to SMeyer, has it SOOOOO BAD for Edward -- as much as Cathy had it for Heathcliff. But I beg to differ. Bella's just sex-starved, in my opinion. As if dying a virgin was a fate worse than death itself. There are SAINTS who died to preserve their virginity, and yet this twit-face a-dork-a-klutz is so willing to give hers away to a sparkly, blood-sucking century-old popsicle. I mean, Bella was the one trying to desperately jump Edward's bones from day one.

I get the message that both couples are star-crossed, but they're star-crossed in very, very different ways.

Exhibit A: How The Lovely Couples All End Up 

Cathy and Heathcliff NEVER get together -- not officially, at least to my knowledge and from what I've heard about Bronte's story. Society always gets in the way, because society says that Cathy's too good to marry Heathcliff. And okay, it may seem that forces also try to keep Bella and Edward apart -- such as Bella's werewolf friends disapproving of her relationship with Edward, and other vampires who want to tear Bella's throat out. HOWEVER, Bella and Edward end up attached at the hip for eternity with a life-sucking monster daughter whom Jacob imprints on. A slightly messed up ever after for the vamp lover and the twinkle-toed mind reader, but an ever after nonetheless. Cathy and Heathcliff weren't so fortunate -- one of them dies, and the other is constantly haunted by the lover's ghost (or vivid memory of their beloved, really).

Exhibit B: The Heroines (in Bella's case, the heroin, hardy-har-har)

Cathy is impetuous and mischievous, often wiry and adventurous. She's always getting into trouble because she's always active. If I'm correct, she always drags Heathcliff down with her when she's running around making mischief. Whereas Bella is just a Mary Sue whose only interest is in doing the laundry, washing dishes, and eye-sexing (er, gawking and drooling over) her dazzling undead "veggie" vamp boyfriend. If Bella does find herself in knee-deep shit, it's because she's the passive victim of other vamps wanting to drink her blood or wanting her dead because Eddie killed their mate.

Exhibit C: The Heroes, the Bloody Bastard and the Bloodsucker
Heathcliff is a surly and sullen kind of guy, due to his rough childhood. He's an orphan, and he was found by Mr. Earnshaw, Cathy's father, who decided to take him in and adopt him as if Heathcliff was his own son. Meanwhile, Cathy's older brother, Hindley, totally hated Heathcliff because Heathcliff was always stealing his thunder, always their father's favorite. Heathcliff was pretty much abused throughout his life, and this hardened him into the harsh man he grew up to become. Heathcliff can't possibly be compared to Edward -- at least, not in a substantial and monumental way that SMeyer tries to pass it off as.

So Edward is also an orphan, due to the Spanish influenza outbreak in the early 1900s. And maybe Edward's probably killed a few people because he may have lost control when he was a newborn vampire (as we vaguely learn in the leaked Midnight Sun draft). But a majority of the time Edward is too much of a gentleman to get rowdy. Sure, he gets jealous of Jacob -- especially after Jake does a reverse fur-splosion and morphs back into his impeccable naked human glory. (Bella, you should have gone for wolf boy!) But despite the angsty grimacing and jealousy, Edward usually is the Kodak picture, the poster-child of decorum (insofar as how Meyer wants us to see him; Edward's just a walking mess of psychological fuckery, even more so than Heathcliff).

The Verdict?
If anything, I think SMeyer's attempt at the comparison between her lovebirds and Emily Bronte's classic couple pales greatly. Twi-tards are going to get the wrong idea about Wuthering Heights.

On a lighter note, I found out that a Sparknotes blogger plans to blog about Wuthering Heights, mostly to find its literary merit. SMeyer had also killed the classic story for this person, but due to the persuasive pleading of some Brontephilic friends, this person decided to read Wuthering Heights after all, and to also blog their reactions about it. They're pretty funny. So far, they've blogged about chapters 1 and 2. You can find their blog posts -- just click here.

I think I'll do the same. I already have a marble composition notebook especially dedicated for this, and I actually entitled it "Julianne's Reading Journal for Breaking Down Dense Literature: Tackling Wuthering Heights." So far I've written recaps for chapters 1-5. I'll type them up and post them in this blog in my next entries. Maybe it'll help you out and also get you interested in the book.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with this extremely amusing video that I found on Youtube a couple of weeks ago. These would have been AWESOME toys to play with growing up, wouldn't you say?