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.
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