Literary Criticism of Wutherin Essayg Heights Wuthering Heights has proven to be much more than just a silly love story about characters, who, in the end objectify no real thought or emotion from the reader. It appears to be better accepted as a window into the human soul, where one sees the loss, suffering, self discovery, and triumph of the characters in this novel. Both the Image of the Book by Robert McKibben, and Control of Sympathy in Wuthering Heights by John Hagan, strive to prove that neither Catherine nor Heathcliff are to blame for their wrong doings. Catherine and Heathcliffs passionate nature, intolerable frustration, and overwhelming loss have ruined them, and thus stripped them of their humanities. McKibben and Hagan take different approaches to Wuthering Heights, but both approaches work together to form one unified concept.
McKibben speaks of Wuthering Heights as a whole, while Hagan concentrates on only sympathies role in the novel. McKibben and Hagan both touch on the topic of Catherine and Heathcliffs passionate nature. To this, McKibben recalls the scene in the book when Catherine is “in the throes of her self-induced illness” (p38). When asking for her husband, she is told by Nelly Dean that Edgar is “among his books,” and she cries, “What in the name of all that feels has he to do with books when I am dying. ” McKibben shows that while Catherine is making a scene and crying, Edgar is in the library handling Catherines death in the only way he knows how, in a mild mannered approach.
He lacks the passionate ways in which Catherine and Heathcliff handle ordeals. During this scene Catherines mind strays back to childhood and she comes to realize that “the Lintons are alien to her and exemplify a completely foreign mode of perception” (p38). Catherine discovers that she would never belong in Edgars society. On her journey of self-discovery, she realized that she attempted the impossible, which was to live in a world in which she did not belong. This, in the end, lead to her death. Unlike her mother, when Cathy enters The Heights, “those images of unreal security found in her books and Thrushhold Grange are confiscated, thus leading her to scream, “I feel like death!” With the help of Hareton, Cathy learns not to place her love within a self created environment, but in a real life where she will be truly happy.
The characters then reappear as reconciled, and stability and peace once more return to The Heights. Hagan, when commenting on Catherines passionate nature, recalls the same scene when Catherine is near death. Hagan shows, like McKibben, that Catherine has an ability to love with fierce passion, something that only herself and Heathcliff share. “Ill not be there by myself; they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me, but I wont rest til you are with me. I never will” (p108). Hagan shows that by Emily Brontes use of sympathy, the reader cannot pass moral judgment on the characters.
Even though Catherine is committing adultery, and Heathcliff is planning a brutal career of revenge, the reader still carries sympathy for them. Because Catherine chose to marry Edgar, she created a disorder in their souls. Bronte, Hagan says, modifies our hostile response to Catherine and Heathcliff by always finding a way to express their misery. McKibbens and Hagans ideas interlock when commenting on the apparent frustration that both Catherine and Heathcliff face throughout the novel. McKibben concentrates on Catherines frustration and hopelessness when she realizes that she never belonged on Thrushhold Grange.
Hagan recalls the emptiness and frustration Heathcliff encountered when he came back to The Heights to find Catherine married to Edgar. The atmosphere of Thrushhold Grange is that of normalcy and convention. McKibben goes farther to explain that convention is “merely an accepted method of simplifying reality. ” By simplifying her life, Catherine assumes that she will avoid all of the unpleasant aspects of life.
Sadly, she ended up doing just the opposite. Catherine pretended to be something that shes not, and by doing so lead her to a life of hidden frustration. When Heathcliff found out that Catherine was married to .
