I re-read Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. Teen memories made me recall it as a tale of passion and eternal love, and the depths to which one might fall once losing that. I wasn't so naive to think it a love story, but I did think that the book as a story of revenge was coupled with and as a result of a story of unconsummated love.
I was a little sickened upon reading it anew. I couldn't recognise a single healthy relationship in there, whether it be romantic or not. The closest to one was the new couple at the end, between Catherine Linton and Hareton Earnshaw, even if it did begin with him enduring such abuse from her merely because of her beauty. (I was glad though, to see Hareton come to some good eventually. To be inspired to be more than he had been, to push himself to learn to read, to recognise he might be worthwhile. I like to think that maybe he ended up allowing a relationship between them because without meaning to and despite herself, she made him want more for himself, rather than because he was bewitched by her beauty and kisses.)
Rather, now I recognise it as a tale of obsessive, undeserving passion, and how it can destroy a person. The reminder of how obsession is not the same as love, and how revenge can engulf a person such that they cannot define themselves outside of it.
I'm not saying that I don't still enjoy the book, that I don't think it's worth reading. But I don't remember myself or any of my peers recognising how icky all the relationships are. Edgar proposing to Cathy after she physically abuses him and he realises that she's always lied to him about her personality tendencies? His doting on her through all her unpleasantness, and her manipulation of her husband and sister (and everyone else) through either being pleasant infrequently as a reward or having fits otherwise? Actually, the way that just about everyone has fits when they don't get their way, lies, and how they treat servants, even those who've been with them their entire lives? I suppose the treatment of the servant class is not considered, really, but how it does reflect the people their "betters" actually are. Not that I particularly like the person of Nelly Dean. And given the time of the writing, maybe a lot of other stuff is considered fine. But the confusion between love and covetousness is still yucky.
Other yucky moments include Cathy and Heathcliff crying out passion for each other and making out and whatever else while she's just about to give birth to her child with Edgar, young Catherine fancying herself in love with Linton, Nelly so easily tricked and manipulated, despite receiving some sort of education and growing up exposed to such behaviour, Heathcliff impregnating Isabella even with his dislike of her coupled with his belief that he truly loves Cathy. So many others too.
The worst part, really, is that I remembered how in love Cathy and Heathcliff were. The romance of them together after death, on the moors. Rather than remembering how abhorrent every person in that book is. (I think that Hindley's wife might have been okay, if she weren't so compliant with how her husband treated Heathcliff.) The interesting story now is a man who wishes to be completely consumed with hatred and revenge. Who is at a loss when he fears that he isn't as committed to hatred as he thinks he should be. A petty boy, becoming a petty man, who confuses passion for other feelings. And how others can confuse this for either love or hatred, failing to see at the heart is a petty, greedy, unpleasant person, unable to accept responsibility for consequences. And the people around him whose own passions and regard for Heathcliff's consequently see him as being more than he is. People, including the readers, end up seeing Heathcliff as being greater than what he was. (Greater not necessarily meant as a positive adjective.)
It really isn't pleasant to look at oneself and see what you used to think of as romantic, and what you used to be able to explain away. How one can convince themselves that certain continuing behaviour is somehow not that bad because there were extenuating circumstances.
And yet I love Bronte for choosing to write about such unpleasant people and circumstances. For the reminder of the consequences of excesses, and how overwhelming, self-devouring passion, while compelling, is dangerous and unappealing with enough reflection. And what skill to be able to write of such horrible people and circumstances, of so many unhappy endings, and yet still to be able to keep so many reading all the way through, again and again, and to remember.
Note: It can be confusing, differentiating the older and younger Catherine/Cathy. As Heathcliff refers to the older one as Cathy, I think I kept consistent with that.
