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Wuthering Heights, Weathering Lows

I always feel it’s essential to read a treasured book at different points in life. When we revisit a story at twenty-one and find we dislike a character that we once adored at thirteen, we verify the growth and maturity we should have attained with the passage of time. On the cusp of my thirteenth birthday, I completed my first purchase of young adult literature, Wuthering Heights. Earlier that summer, an older relative had teased me out of the warm and comforting literary cocoon I had built around myself consisting of the Anne of Green Gables series and all work by Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author. This relative had dragged me to the classical section of local bookstore and bought me a copy of Pride and Prejudice. Equipped with my mother’s ancient dictionary and ready to reread as many passages as necessary, I was determined to understand and finish that story. That summer was quite pivotal in turning around my literary tastes, when I finally forayed into unfamiliar genres like science fiction and fantasy in addition to exploring the classics.

I’m unsure what attracted me to Wuthering Heights. I suppose the paperback cover, with its characteristically desolate moor as well as the title itself, both shrouded under a veil of mystery and dread, cumulatively illustrate silent wails of haunting sadness. Appealing to a preteen always fascinated almost genetically by ghost stories. I grabbed the tome and rushed home to devour the contents. Although I recall very little detail about that first reading, excluding the numerous shuffling of pages in that old dictionary, I do remember both loving and hating Heathcliff. Admiring his tenacity, determination, mysterious origins and lost years, and intelligence but hating his cruelty, especially to Hareton, an innocent child who, I thought, deserved none of Heathcliff’s revenge but just a modicum of what may remain of his empathy in spite of Hindley’s hatred.

A few years later, Wuthering Heights was required reading for our senior high school class. Unfortunately, I had moved little beyond my first impressions of the characters. In fact, I think my conflicting feelings for Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff had gravitated further toward the negative realm. For someone who had really experienced very little of romantic love, I certainly had strong opinions on how people should act. For instance, I failed to grasp how such a spoiled and capricious little girl like Catherine could capture Heathcliff’s heart so steadfastly. Only years later did I understand the power of first love, especially one formed under such dire, isolated circumstances. At this point, I think I just gave up on the story, tired of the grotesque cruelty pervading much of the book. Although I am relieved that Cathy Linton and Hareton end the curse by closing the cycle of revenge and hate in their families, their blossoming love fails, in my eyes, to adequately make atonement for the loss of love, longing and sadness endured by the numerous others who came before them.

Recently, however, I ran across the newest adaptation of “Wuthering Heights” on PBS. Perhaps after a decade and a half spent learning about love and being, in general, happy, my views on Catherine and Heathcliff have transformed. When the two are finally reunited on the moor, only to be followed up by another trying scene of unhappiness, a sense of melancholy overwhelmed me. When I was younger, Catherine bore the brunt of my contempt. Because of a sheer case of bad luck (or is it good?), Catherine finds herself a guest of the Lintons for an extended period of time during which she discovers the privileges of being part of the gentry. Although Catherine hails from the landed classes, she is never educated in the “proper ways of a lady,” spending much of her time running wild and free in the moors. Heathcliff feels she betrays him, but as a woman in such a desolate place, what great choices did she have? In fact, although he never hears it, Catherine tells Nelly she is marrying Edgar to partially elevate Heathcliff’s station in life. On the other hand, Heathcliff, though born penniless, is a man, intelligent to boot. If he had received just an iota of love and nurturing, he would have most likely reaped his success through admirable means. But, alas, we are sometimes only a reflection of and remembered for our worst flaws.

Time has certainly softened my views on certain characters, but it has also changed my outlook on another aspect as well: the moors. Windy, cold, dark and uninviting, how could one find such solace in such a barren and soulless place? Now I realize that to Catherine and Heathcliff, this place was as lush and beautiful as the open greenspace is to me in the springtime, so verdant after a long winter rainy season, the magical weeks before the strong California sun bleaches the landscape to an overwhelming flaxen gold certainly less easy on the eyes. In the moors, there is freedom, there is equality, there is love, all of which disappears within the confines of Wuthering Heights. Ironically, man’s worst tendencies, including selfishness, bitterness, jealousy and cruelty, enjoy free reign in the man-made, “civilized” walls of Wuthering Heights, but his best, loving tenderness, joy and liberty find a home roaming in the wild heath, which is often mischaracterized as bleak, ugly and dangerous.

Wuthering Heights is a beautiful and seductive chameleon rather than the dragon first described by critics. Despite its intense and savage view of human nature, the story, once captured in the heart, beckons throughout one’s life with new insights. Not for the faint of heart. It is certainly a story to which I often return, yet I can’t help but wish that the next time I open the book, Catherine and Heathcliff are finding happiness in this life as opposed to the next. But then, what would we gain and learn?

The Last of the Polymaths, a Musical

I see another Alexander taking over the stage! Bursting on to the global scene shortly after the American Revolution, Alexander von Humboldt and his enthusiasm and relentlessness to make sense of the natural world was contagious. The end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth really invited excitement from a public that yearned to understand the world around it. Young Alexander, as portrayed in Andrea Wulf’s The Invention of Nature, was an active youngster, interested in everything and always pursuing the latest adventures of discovery in the woods located in his ancestral estate, the bucolic German countryside. When I think of young Alexander in this book, I cannot help but recall a sentiment shared by an expert commenting in a recent biography of Teddy Roosevelt—that if young Teddy were alive in modern day United States, he would have been given Ritalin and constantly told to slow down. The same could be said of Humboldt, and any number of small, curious children who love to spend hours outside and have a thousand questions about what they see in nature. Lucky for Humboldt, with his charming personality and the right connections, coupled with sheer determination and an extremely punishing work ethic, the world was his to explain.

In this wonderfully vivid narrative, Wulf sets the story to the pace at which Humboldt really lived his life, constantly moving from place to place, with people to see and lectures to deliver. The level of description is exquisite, mirroring the amount of detail Humboldt himself would have taken in while trekking through wild, lush South America, honing his skills in deduction and hypothesis generation. Much of the book creates lively imagery in the reader’s mind; however, Wulf’s description of the thirty-year-old Humboldt’s adventures in Latin America, which took place over a number of years, is a cornucopia for the senses. The heat and humidity, the raw jungle sounds and smells, a jaguar’s snarl, an alligator’s hiss, the buzzing mosquitos, the majesty of rivers joining together, and finally climbing Chimborazo—visions that most of us only dream of, Humboldt lived through it all, all the while joining the framework necessary for his masterpiece, Kosmos, where he attempted to weave together different disciplines, presenting evidence for the interconnectedness of life.

According to Wulf, Humboldt, particularly in his travels through South America, began to understand the effects of human behavior on the ecosystem far earlier than most others, warning against how unregulated growth can wreak havoc in fragile environments. In fact, she says in Venezuela, he was able to see how climate itself was affected when farmers recklessly cleared forests without regard to soil replenishment or vegetation regeneration, or the permanent desiccation in areas where water was channeled away for agricultural use. To Humboldt, everything had a cause and effect, with even minor details in the universe inextricably linked to the larger picture.

This holistic attitude regarding the universe also meant that all disciplines seamlessly meld together. Humboldt, cosmopolitan to the core and the toast of the town because of his famous adventures in Latin America, enjoyed friendships with many great minds of various backgrounds. According to Wulf’s research, he spent a great many months collaborating with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, fostering a friendship that lasted decades. He also met Simón Bolívar and Thomas Jefferson, enlightened thinkers who shared many commonalities with Humboldt, and inspired a number of younger scientists, including Charles Darwin, and philosophers and writers, such as Henry David Thoreau, and California’s very own naturalist, John Muir. In addition to his scientific contributions, Humboldt ardently supported democracies and abolition. For those who think globalization is a new concept that can easily be tossed aside, Humboldt’s life and influence offer strong alternative evidence.

As scientists, we are constantly trying to figure out structure and order in nature. We are generally good at finding patterns and understanding cause and effect, within limits. To me personally, being a scientist, observing nature and exploring concepts in chemistry and order in ecosystems have given me a deeper appreciation of the arts. You begin to see the role of nature in literature, poetry, art, history and even human nature. I’ve partaken in careers pertaining to both the humanities/social sciences as well as the sciences, singularly; however, when I’m in the middle of one, I always miss the finer points of the other. Perhaps as humans, we innately understand this interlocking to which Humboldt referred, though we never fully realize its meaning. Humboldt certainly did, and his gift to humanity is how exquisitely he weaved together the tapestry of this harmony with Kosmos. Forward thinking, optimistic, and revolutionary, fully capable of inspiring a musical. I would be especially thrilled to see a dance up to Chimborazo, gliding past snowy white clouds, measuring the blueness of the sky, and symbolically carrying human ambition to great heights. Once forgotten, but no longer so.

Not only in a name but in a dream

Researchers are finding that more and more humans are chimeras, having absorbed the genetics of a “ghost twin” they never knew had existed with them in the womb. A number of unbelievable examples have popped up recently, specifically having to do with paternal and maternal testing. A woman in Boston, the first and most famous example of human chimerism, unwittingly discovered that she was not the biological mother of her children. After enduring numerous genetic tests, she discovered that her ovaries’ genetics were completely different from that of her thyroid gland. In a very early stage of development, the woman had absorbed her sister, who, not to be forgotten in the game of life, had in turn fused her ovaries with that of the woman’s. In a more recent case, a man discovered he was not the biological father of his child. The genetics of the cells inside his cheek were different from the cells producing his sperm, which were actually remnants belonging to a brother the man had absorbed in utero. Ironically, although the ghost twins in these examples never received the chance to experience living, they have indeed won the larger evolutionary battle: their offspring will live on.

Fantastical, wouldn’t you say? But completely true. Potentially, some of us have also absorbed a ghost twin, but we may never know because the chimerism in us could inhabit places other than our reproductive organs. I like to imagine that people’s chimerism, really, is at the very heart of our multifaceted personalities. The girly girl that loves dinosaurs and running (me!), the rambunctious five-year-old boy who can never satiate his love for the playground but insists on an hour of reading everyday… chimeras surround us. Wildly fanciful, imaginary, unreal, but truly existing on earth.

Similar to the idea of chimeras, where a living being differs from what he/she initially seems, a prism, a transparent object used to refract or disperse light, transforms one reality into another. Fused together, the chimerical prism allows us to thrive as a whole, enabling us to produce innovative, spectacular, and useful gifts to enlighten humanity. Go out, it urges, embrace everything you love and become the Renaissance men and women you were always meant to be.