Wuthering Heights - Epsiode 5 - Emily Bronte - Redemption, Forgiveness and Overcoming - a podcast by Christy and Garry Shriver

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte - Episode 5 - Redemption, Forgiveness and Overcoming

 

WH- Episode 5

 

Hi, I’m Christy Shriver and we’re here to discuss books that have changed the world and have changed us.

 

I’m Garry Shriver, and this is the How to Love lit Podcast.  If you have made it this far into Wuthering Heights, I feel like you deserve an award or something.  This is our fifth episode analyzing this book, taking five episodes on a single work is something we have only done with two other authors- Hawthorne with the Scarlet Letter, our first series, and then again with our Shakespeare plays.  But  my goodness-navigating through Wuthering Heights is nothing short of brutal- I’ve gone back and looked at those initial harsh criticisms we read in episode one- and I have to admit, they weren’t wrong in recognizing this.

 

Well, you are right about that.  It IS brutal- but honestly, how could a book about generational abuse be anything except brutal- exposing the brutality of abuse is in many ways at the heart of this book, but honestly, an even more important purpose- and for me the reason to suffer the experience of reading this book, is because Emily offers hope.  There is literally NOTHING anyone can ever do to undo any abuse anyone has suffered in the past- and Bronte highlights that very clearly- however, she suggests that even under terrible circumstances, there is a way to be free of the curse of abuse and move into a future of new beginnings- and yet she absolutely parallels with this idea that it is also possible and perhaps in some ways easier to live and die in the victimhood of the past- this week we will end this journey and for me she concludes in an almost fairy tale-like way- which is alright with me!

 

 My first question about this book when I read it was this- why does Bronte give the girls the exact same name?  It’s SO confusing.  Even if one had been Catherine and the other Cathy that would have helped= but she even mixes the nick names up- deliberately trying to get us the confuse the two women. 

 

Mine too- actually- Of course, it now occurs to me, as I really believe great authors don’t do things accidentally or whimsically- that this confusion is for us to undeniably understand that the journeys of the catherines is perhaps the same journey- the experiences are the same- and yet she juxtaposes two opposite postures in life and two very different outcomes: one a tragedy the other a comedy- one ends in death, the other a wedding.  And this last episode absolutely leaves us with a feeling we haven’t felt as we’ve left parts of the book- this last episode leaves us with a feeling of hope, security and empowerment- it also clarifies Emily Bronte’s heterodox religious  views- which I will say are very Christian in tradition, but not traditional in their Christianity (that, btw is a chismus- I’m proud of that sentence structure- that’s hard to do.

 

HAHAHA- chiasmus it is- but let me say that hope, security and empowerment are great emotions to carry forward especially this time of year and particularly this year, if you are listening to this episode in real time- this is the first weekend of December, which in the Western tradition is the month where we do focus on hope, peace on earth and good will toward men- and it is the year 2020.  So happy December 2020! as we round out the tumultuous or wuthering year of 2020, Christy and I have thought about how WE could use our small voice to give hope, peace and good will to the different communities that we connect with through this podcast and we came up with a small idea.  2020 has been SO brutal to everyone, we thought, if we could do nothing else, we could at least give some recognition and a shout-out to small entrepenuers out there who are braving our 2020 storm, opening their businesses, serving their communities and connecting people.  So, this is what we want to propose, if you are a small business or if you have one you love and want to support- email us a picture or a shout out at garry@howtolovelitpodcast.com- and that is garry with two R’s not one R G-A-R-R-Y.   

 

Or just go to our website.  We will promote your business and your community on our social media accounts, recognizing and giving respect to all of us pulling together this year in a unique way.

 

Okay- back to the story- let’s give a little recap as how we’ve tried to organize this book.  In episode one, we covered chapters 1-3 as we were introduced to the estate and residents of WH.  Episode 2 we made it into chapter ten- discussing the childhood years of Catherine and Heathcliff and reading out that most famous, “I am Heathcliff” speech Catheirne gives as she decides to marry Edgar.  This is the speech Heathcliff doesn’t hear because after hearing that she thinks it would degrade her to marry him he runs away.

 

Yes- in Episode 3- we’ve jumped three years.  Edgar and Catherine are married and then six months later, Heathcliff is back- a changed man- he’s good-looking and rich.  He’s also a man on a mission- and it seems as the story develops this mission is revenge.  In episode 3, Heathcliff moves back into Wuthering heights. Hindley degrades himself through alcoholism and gambling, and HC begins the process of buying WH from Hindley while at the same time seeking to destroy Hindley’s son Hareton by treating him the same way Hindley treated Heathcliff as a child- an obvious and perhaps understandable revenge sequence.

 

Yes- and while this is going on in the background- the focus of this section of the book is not on HC’s revenge towards Hindley- Episode 3 really centers of the deterioration of Catherine and the love triangle between her, HC and Edgar.  She wants to have both Edgar and HC in her life, and when it becomes evident this absolutely will not happen, she dies in this bizarre way- perhaps suicide, perhaps insanity- perhaps both.  Right before dying however, Catherine gives birth to a child, also named Catherine.  But Heathcliff also gets married and has a child with his wife, Edgar’s sister, Isabella, a young woman who he also deliberately and viciously abuses.  Eventually after throwing a knife at her head, she leaves him, moves to London and raises a child six months younger than little baby Cathy.  Her son’s name is Linton Heathcliff.  Linton being her maiden name, and obviously Heathcliff being her married name.

 

There are so many plot twists, but the main thing to notice is all the parallels and doubles in the story.  Eveyrhting everything is happening twice.  Everything has a double- everything has an opposite too- from the weather- storm versus calm- to the houses- WH- chaotic to TG- peaceful- to most importantly the characters – of generation one to generation 2- they paralle but they are not the same.  And of course, today we will juxtapose outcome number one to outcome number 2.

 

Let’s not forget last week’s episode, before we jump to today- in that we leave generation one for the most part- and focus on this second generation.  The generation of little Cathy, little Linton and hareton-all three victims of abuse.  Arguably Hareton, the most abused of them all- no one in his life has loved him- unlike the other two.

 

 One a child of Edgar, one a child of Hindley, one a child of Heathcliff.  Is that confusing enough for you?

 

It really does require me to slow down in my thinking and draw the family tree in my head or I’ll get lost.

 

Last episode I think focuses on the most difficult chapters of the book to read- even though I’ve found this book difficult to read from the beginning.  We see so much abuse and evil at the hand of Heathcliff. 

 

Where there is no doubt that Heathcliff and even Catherine suffered a great deal of abuse, neglect and trauma in their childhood, Heathcliff takes his childhood pain and seeks to inflict it in a grotesequely magnified way on helpless innocent children.  In this section, Heathcliff is all powerful.  He manipulates his son Linton.  He physically hurts all three children.  He dominates Edgar, Catherine One’s husband, Catherine Two’s father, by stealing his property through the manipulation of property law of Victorian England, but also by seeking to deny him his daughter’s presence at Edgar’s moment of death.  The revenge of Heathcliff birthed out of childhood abuse drives the action, destroys everything in its wake, and progresses to the third generation in the person of his own son, Linton, who is also abusive to his wife Catherine TWO. 

 

Yes- that is all true- yet, I want to point out a subtly of technique that is very important to understand- if we want to get to where Emily Bronte is taking us in the conclusion of her novel.  We, as readers, are very much aware the entire time that Heathcliff’s cruelty rises from his personal misery.  His hatred is destructive to everyone and that includes himself.  It’s not that he hates everyone else, he hates himself and that’s what’s driving his indiscriminate hatred outward.  The self-hatred is there to see, but also it’s there for readers to feel, and thus we don’t entirely ever stop sympathizing with him- even at his cruelest moments. 

 

Of which there are many- the cruelest perhaps is where we start this episode with the death of his son Linton here in chapter 29.  Edgar Linton is dead.  He’s  buried with his wife Catherine- although Heathcliff does try to block that, nelly interjects herself and makes sure his will is legally followed.  But little Linton Heathcliff has done something at the end of chapter 28, pretty much the only kind thing he ever does in his entire miserable life, but this one act of kindness and bravery, will turn the rest of his life into an even greater living hell than he is already experiencing.  He gives Catherine 2 the key and lets her escape to be with her father on his death bed- foiling Heathcliff’s attempt to keep Catherine from Edgar at his moment of death, and this will not go unpunished by his father. 

 

No- and speaking of revenge, HC’s not done revenging himself on Edgar, even though Edgar is in the grave. The evening after the funeral, he marches over to Thurshcross Grange and demands that Catherine come to live with him- not because he wants her for any reason other than to make her miserable.  And it is in this exchange between Catherine TWO and HC that we see the starkest contrast Bronte has made yet between Catherine the mother and Catherine the daughter.  HC announces that she has to return with him and stay with linton who everyone knows is a horrible person.  Catherine says this, “I shall.  Linton is all I have to love in this world, and though you have done what you could to make him hateful to me, and me to him, you cannot make us hate each other!  And I defy you to hurt him when I am by, and I defy you to frighten me!” 

 

Heathcliff doesn’t take her threat of defiance seriously.  He answers her by saying, you are a boastful champion but I don’t like you well enough to hurt him- you shall get the full benefit of the torment as long as it lasts.  It is not I who will make him hateful to you- it is his own sweet spirit.  He’s as bitter as gall at your desertion, and its consequences- don’t expect thanks for this noble devotion”. It seems HC has been abusing Linton for letting Csthy out, and Linton’s blamed Cathy for the abuse and even has been telling Zillah everything he’d like to do to Cathy if he were strong enough to do it, and it apparently is horrible stuff.

 

Yes- but Cathy makes the point defiantly and bravely to HC that he has no control over her spirit- no matter what he can do to her body- and she calls him out again- and hear we’re going to see Bronte begin to use some language we’ve only seen a couple of times first in Lockwood’s first dream in chapter one on the night he shows up at WH- but than again in episode 2 in a conversation we read between Nelly and HC- and it is the language of forgiveness.  Here towards the end of the book, Catherine responds to HC’s assessment of Linton by  saying this, “I know he has a bad nature, he’s your son.  But I’m glad I’ve a better, to forgive it; and I know he loves me, and for that reason I love him.  Mr Heathcliff, you have nobody to love you; and however miserasble you make us, we shall still have the revenge of thinking that your cruelty arises from your greater misery!  You are miserable, are you not?  Lonely, like the devil, and envious like him?  Nobody loves you- nobody will cry for you, when you die!  I wouldn’t be you!  - she’s a little wrong because Hareton actually does love HC and will cry, but this language is truly remarkable. It absolutely parallels and contrasts sharply with HC’s own experience as a little boy.  If you recall, Hindley had been so abusive to HC- he’d degraded him, embarrassed him in front of Edgar and Isabella.  HC goes downstairs and says this to Nelly, “I’m trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back.  I don’t care how long I wait, if I can only do it, at last.  I hope he will not die before I do.  To which Nelly says, “For Shame, HC, it is for God to punish wicked people, we should learn to forgive.  And do you remember what he said to that:

 

I absolutely remember- he says this, “God won’t have the satisfaction that I shall.  I only wish I knew the best way!  Let me alone, and I’ll plan it out, while I’m thinking of that, I don’t feel pain..and we understand this truth that there is a numbness to revenge..and numbness is better than pain. 

 

True- and maybe that’s some solace, but watching the experience of HC, makes it quite clear that it is Bronte’s contention that over time that the solace or numbness of revenge still is quite empty- and that’s even if you get it.  We ended last week with this idea that Catherine TWO has an ability to empathize with others- to have a love/ a passion if you want to compare it to her mother’s passion that is others-regarding= as opposed to her mother’s love which is self-regarding only.

 

I think we call that compassion.

 

  Yes- that’s it.  In Wuthering Heights, the relationship between passion and compassion is demonstrated by the parallels of the Cathy’s- and compassion gives Cathy a power her mother didn’t possess- even though there is not doubt Catherine ONE has powerful passion, Catherine TWO has fight in her too.  She has strength of will and depth of emotion but she also has the ability to forgive which Bronte links together. Bronte is going to flesh out this difference between passion alone and compassion- we will see what each does for the person- and it really is something that is counter-intuitive, counter-evolutionary really, and doesn’t seem like would really work.    

 

Well, Catherine 2 is certainly no saint- this struggle with Linton takes a toll, and she does turn into a kind of mean person after Linton’s death especially to hareton.  But to her credit, this willingness to sacrifice herself even for worthless Linton prepares us, as readers, for her even greater moral confrontations with Heathcliff- she’s stronger than him- she’s made different choices with her abuse than he made under very similar circumstances.  She’s been abused by TWO Heathcliffs- the father and the son- double the abuse he received at the hand of Hindley.  Yet, where HC takes his abuse, and passes this abuse forward seeking revenge on the next generation- Catherine TWO here reverses this sequence- she gets her revenge back on HC by refusing to allow him to make her hate.  Her revenge rests on the power in her recognition of the causes behind HC’s behavior- and she refuses to hate him (like Isabella and Hindley both did)- and really, what this actually does for her is the completely rob him of any domination over her- I want to point out- because it’s important to make this distinction- she never likes him, she never has any respect for him, she never feels obligated to extend any kindness or mercy on him at all- she doesn’t have to- he doesn’t deserve that-but- she accepts his evil as being on him- and about him- and it does give her a victory of mind for herself. 

 

She stays with Linton until his death- taking care of him in spite of his cruelty to her the whole time.  When Linton finally dies, HC actually asks Cathy how she feels- I’m not sure he’s ever done that to anyone before.  She says this, “He’s safe, and I’m free.  I should feel well- but, you have left me so long to struggle with death, alone, that I feel and see only death!  I feel like death!” 

 

Well, according to Zillah who is telling all this to Nelly, she looks like death too. 

 

Yeah- which I might add just to be confusing- Zillah the housekeepr at WH is now our fourth narrator, sort of.  Nelly, if you remember, is still telling the story to Lockwood after his excusion in chapter 1 to WH, but since HC has sent her back to TH she got the info from Zillah the maid over at WH. 

 

Well, it seems we’ve finally made to present tense- the long story from birth until Lockwood ‘s advent is finished.

 

Yes- and all the players are now in the location they were when Lockwood blunders on the scene.  If you were going to go back and reread chpter 1, the story would make more sense now- we see Catherine, being really rude to Lockwood, yet he describes her as gorgeous (and by the way, this isn’t something I’ve taken the time to develop, but Lockwood has a crush on Catherine 2 the whole book and wants to ask her out.  Another parallel, but one I wont’take the time to really explore it.  Anyway, back to this idea that Cathy has faced abuse, and chosen to Forgive HC by understanding that his hatred is about hating himself and really isn’t about her much at all- and now she has faced death- twice the death of her father and the death of a husband who abused her- and she has stared it down,

 

Don’t forget she’s been robbed of her finances..It’s reasonable to understand why she’s not very pleasant pretty much from here til almost the end of the book.  After Linton dies she goes up to her room for two weeks- the only interaction really is with Zillah who brings her food and then HC to show her the will – telling her that all of linton’s property went to him and not her.  He wanted her to know that and we’ll use Zillah’s (HC’s servant) own words here as she describes the situation to Nelly, “She’s as poor as you, or I- poorer, I’ll be bound- you’re saving- and I’m doing my little all, that road.”  Cathy has nothing.  HC has taken everything.  His revenge is thorough. 

 

And yet, not even this is his entire plan, we skipped this part in chapter 29, but this is the part that is freaky and very gothic- when hc goes to take Catherine to WH to take care of Linton, the day after Edgar’s funeral he tells Nelly his plan-

 

 he tells her this, “I’ll tell you what I did yesterrday….read pge 278”.

 

 He has this plan- First he opens Catherine’s coffin and looks at her corpse then he loosens the side boards on  one side of Catherine’s coffin.  He pays the Sexton to take it off when he dies and not to put a side of wood on his coffin on the side that faces Catherine so that after he’s dead their ashes can blend together in death and he can keep Catherine’s ashes away from Edgar’s ashes. 

 

Yes- and He also thinks he sees Catherine’s face totally as it was the day she died- and notice this is 17 years later.   I think we can say, HC’s stuck 17 years in the past.  Obviously, Catherine’s face is not there.  Psychologically what is happening, as the revenge becomes complete, HC begins to cease to exist- if you want to see a parallel- it’s kind of the way Catherine did as she stood in her window on the night of her death looking back into her past- not moving forward.  HC eventually confesses to Nelly, “I have to remind myself to breathe-almost to remind my heart to beat!  And it is like bending back a stiff spring…it is by compulsion that I do the slightest act, not prompted by one thought, and by compulsion that I notice anything alive, or dead, which is not associated with one universal idea”. And of course the idea is this twisted entanglement with Catherine and his revenge.    What we see is that HC is just as unwilling as Catherine to compromise in life- and now, his identity is going away kind of like hers did.  Even with his total revenge, he could not go back and recapture a “pure past”- it was never going to exist- it’s physically and cosmically impossible.  And he can’t accept this.

 

And so, as we are left with this decomposing image of HC- we are going to see rise out of the ashes- another and better emerging story- which is the fairy tale ending I love about the book.  And yes- Garry, there’s a little harlequin romance here- Hareton’s love is going to rescue Catherine- but reciprocally- Catherine’s love raises Hareton to what the book calls from idiocy- to sophistication. 

 

At the end of chapter 30- here Lockwood is speaking with his own voice- no more Nelly narrative, he decides to leave TG for six months but before heading out he goes one more time to WH to say goodbye- remember his other two experiences weren’t very hospitable.  What he sees is what he saw in chapter one- Catherine is mean to Hareton; Hareton is ignorant and is so frustrated with Catherine that he throws books into the fire after Catherine had shamed him one more time.  Hareton and Catherine literally argue back and forth.  But now Lockwood understands the context and so do we.  Another thing that happens is that Heathcliff happens to mention to Lockwood that when he looks into Hareton’s face, he can never see Hindley- he can only see Catherine.   

 

True- and when he comes back six months later- and here Bronte gives us a year 1802- notice the first word on page one is 1801- but here 1802 we will have some closure.  Lockwood goes back to WH to announce his return and low and behold everything is different.  First of all, the door to the estate is unlocked.    Cathy and Hareton are talking about kissing each other.  Nelly is singing a song.   But more importantly- HC is dead and Cathy is owner of BOTH estates- TG and WH- that’s a nice turn of events.

 

Well, I think the word Bronte uses for how Lockwood reacts is astonished.  And who wouldn’t be?  I notice one more parallel- while nelly and lockwood sit down to tell the story- Catherine and HC are out- I presume maybe on the moors- like those who came before them. 

 

Well, the story is sweet- although it starts with Catherine first comparing Hareton to a dog- that’s really what she thinks he is in the beginning- she sees him as a feral child of HC.  But Hareton not only stands up to her for being rude to him, he confronts her on her mischaracterization of his behavior.  She says, ‘you hate me as muchas Mr. Heathcliff does and more” to which he responds- Garry let’s read that short passage page 303- it’s notable because look here- we have the forgive word again- and forgiveness is referenced multiple times for the next couple of pages.  It becomes evident to them- They have to forgive each other- and although this is really hard for Hareton to do because Cathy has really been bad to him, the text says that he”trembled, and his face glowed, all his rudeness, and all his surly harshness had deserted him- he could not summon courage at first to utter a syllable, in reply (she’d asked him to forgive her”- to which she says again, “Say you forgive me, Hareton, do.” …and after a little more trust building- he does…and as soon as he does Nelly observes, “the intimacy thus commenced and grew rapidly., though it encountered temporary interruptions.  Hareton was not civilized with a wish; and my young lady was no philosopher and no paragon of patience”…one loving and desiring to esteem; and the other loving and desiring to be esteemed.

 

What is noticeable here- and we have to compare this to Catherine ONE- as you recall her marriage to Edgar was described as “not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn. There was no mutual concessions.”  A total contrast- one relationship that is reciprocal compared to another that is about submission of one party to the other. 

 

And this of course leads us to this final moral confrontation we’ve been working toward- the ultimate defeat over generational abuse which is expressed in all sorts of symbolic ways in chapter 33- but here with this ridiculous incident over Joseph’s currant trees.  So, what actually happens is that Hareton has pulled up Joseph’s currant trees because Cathy wants to bring flowers from the Grange to WH (notice a little symbolism here- she’s bringing the calm of TH to the Chaos of WH) – but here we have a confrontation between Cathy and HC- let’s read this page 310.

 

HC has surrendered to Catherine.  Heathcliff for the first time in his life is confounded.  Catherine tries here for a moment to turn Hareton against HC kind of like how her mother would use Heathcliff against her dad- but Hareton won’t do it.  After this part we just read Hareton still stands up FOR HC, although every reader knows HC deserves nothing from Hareton- but Hareton also does not hate- and when Hareton tells Catherine he loved HC- Catherine lets it go.  Nelly says this, “She showed a good heart, thenceforth, in avoiding compalints and expressions of antipathy concerning HC, and confessed to me her sorrow that she had endeavored to raise a bad spirit between him and Hareton; indeed, I don’t believe she ever breathed a syllable, in the latter’s hearing against her oppressor, since. 

 

Now Catherine’s revenge on HC is complete because for the first time when he sees Catherine and Hareton together, their eyes “those of Catherine Earnshaw’ disarm him.  He understands, maybe for the first time, his own responsibility for his own unhappiness and he says this, “he lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction.”

 

 Catherine has proven she’s not afraid of him, and there’s nothing he can do to make her afraid, and Hareton has proven he loves him in spite of every bit of his evil.  There would be no victory in destroying either one of them- he doesn’t have the power to do it.  “I find the will to lift a slate off either roof has vanished!  My old enemies have not beaten me- now would be the precise time to revenge myself on their representatives- I could do it; and none could hinder me- but what is the use? I don’t care for striking.  I can’t take the trouble to raise my hand!  That sounds as if I had been laboring the whole time, only to exhibit a fine traint of magnaminity.  It is far from being the case- I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction, and I too idle to destroy for nothing.”

 

And in this is the final parallel of the story- and the pretty one.  If we see both the parents and the children of having suffered neurotic derangement of the worst kinds- there are two responses- one is to try to go back to the past- to a happy state before the abuse- the other- a much more difficult response and that is to integrate the abuse into your existence and move toward the future.

 

Well, you know I’m going to find this very Freudian.  HC is connected to Catherine ONE, somewhere in the past- and he’s going to find her “out there” as he says.  That really is the only way to make sense of this final death sequence.  Or really even Catherine ONE’s death sequence.  They want their heaven in the grave, HC says this to Nelly, “I dreamt I was sleeping the last sleep, by that sleeper (he means Catherine), with my heart stopped, and my cheek frozen against hers.”  He literally sees Catherine everywhere he looks.  He sees her in the kids but then he sees her every where he literally says, “I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped in the flags.” 

 

Do you think he’s literally going crazy here? 

 

Well, we don’t want to judge- it is a gothic novel so everything is possible, but it seems he has seen Catherine.  Now, the way I see it, and of course, the way its written is very ambiguous- as I’m sure Bronte intended, but remember, that first night that Lockwood came into the house- and had that nightmare- Lockwood is guy that introduced the idea of a ghost at WH.  Maybe, that’s the power of suggestion- HC wants Catherine to be a ghost.  Maybe Bronte has made her a ghost for real- I’m not sure it really matters.  HC, like Catherine ONE before him starves himself to death. 

 

Yes- and he strangely proclaims, also like Catherine- that he’s done nothing wrong.  He says this, “as to repenting of my injustices, I’ve done no injustice, and I repent of nothing…that night he goes into that bedroom, opens the window (there’s your window symbol again) let’s the weather pour in (Wuthering to the end)- he lies down with the open window and dies..just like Catherine said= alone—or not- depending if you think Cathering ONE was there in ghost form. 

 

 

Of course, the irony is that Hareton, the one most wronged by HC from the beginning stayed by his corpse and cried.

 

And then more gothic weirdness….they bury him next to Catherine the way he had wanted.  The book actually ends with Lockwood going up to look at it- the three headstones- Heathcliff’s with only his name and deathdate on it-

 

Again the final contrast because Catherine and Hareton who are married on New Year’s day- a new year and a new beginning- and they even update the inscription over the door from 1500 Earnshaw to 1802 Hareton Earnshaw- we have come full circle from Catherine and Hindley Earnshaw- the broken- to Catherine and Hareton Earnshaw the healed.  To me it’s so inspiring.  Catherine masters the experience that destroyed her mother.  Emily Bronte wrote a religious essay, one of the few things of hers that wasn’t destroyed.  In it she says this, “All creation is equally insane…nature is an inexplicable puzzle, life exists on a principle of destruction; every creature must be relentless instrument of death to the other, or himself cease to live…she goes on to say, “if hypocrisy, cruelty and ingratitude are the characteristics exclusively of mean people, this class includes everyone.”  She sees all of us not only with a great capacity to hurt one another- but likely to exercise it at one point or another. 

 

If that’s true it also seems that Bronte believes everyone is going to get pummelled, betrayed, abused or something by someone or something at some point.

 

 

Yes butut it is the ability to forgive that makes a person win in their own head, It gets us out of the past and into the future.  Bronte wrote a poem that says this, “I know that Justice holds in store reprisals for those days of gore; nor for the blood but for the sin of stifling mercy’s voice within.” This is a strange poem but it means this- even if we face something horrifically vicious- we can’t judge- the only sin that will kill you is the sin of not forgiving.  Or as her Biblical teachings would teach her, “The mercy shall obtain mercy”…or if you remember from Reverend Jabes Branderham’s  sermon from Lockwood’s dream- how many times should you forgive- seventy times seven.  That is her total interpretation of Christianity- although I know Christianity isn’t the only faith that speaks of forgiveness- for Emily it was her Christian roots of her father’s faith that informed this conclusion…and her understanding  and hope in this power to bring healing that is expressed in this novel.

 

Well, Wuthering Heights certainly judges no one.  It dramatizes the psychological trauma of abuse, but instead of judging it- somehow comes to this fairy tale ending of being able to transcend it. 

 

And I like that.  WH gives this us this brutal experience of living through the same abusive treatment not once but twice- we, as readers get a redo in life- a second Catherine- and in the second Catherine we arrive at a place of wholeness and redemption through forgiveness.  I wouldn’t have imagined she could have ever gotten us here, but it’s nice that she did. 

 

 

 

 

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