In 2000, The New York Times and Reader's Digest and Reader's Digest selected the world's top ten books through a poll of 100,000 readers around the world. And these ten famous books are almost all from the world's most famous writers, such as Leo Tolstoy in Russia, Dickens in Britain, Hugo in France and so on. One book is an exception, even surpassing such representative works as Les Misérables and The Red and the Black, ranking fourth among the top ten masterpieces.
This book is the only book by young female writer Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights. It is considered to be the "most peculiar novel" in the history of English literature, but also a "strange book", emily Brontë herself is a writer who completely expresses herself in disregard of the trend of reality and the aesthetic taste of readers, so she also gives Wuthering Heights an absolute "personality". It is like a peculiar lyric poem, full of rich imagination and fierce emotions between the lines, with a shocking artistic power, contrary to the sentimental sentimental sentiment prevalent in contemporary works, replacing the low sadness and melancholy with a strong love and hate.
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The story of Wuthering Heights begins in a nearly isolated Wuthering Heights in the north of England. One day, Wuthering Heights' owner, Engshaw Sr., adopted a discarded child and named him Heathcliff, while allowing him to live with his children, Hindley and Catherine. For Heathcliff's appearance, Emily Brontë portrayed it as "dark and dull, as if coming out of hell", as if foreshadowing that he had been enveloped in the potential of evil from birth. But gradually, in the course of their time together, Heathcliff was treated very differently by the children of the elder Enshaw: Catherine fell in love with him, and Hindley hated him for taking away his father's love. After the death of the elder Enshaw, Hindley not only forbade Heathcliff to have contact with Catherine, but also abused and insulted him in every way, which intensified Heathcliff's resentment towards Hindley and deepened his love for Catherine. He understood that he could not change his fate by swallowing his anger, so he chose to resist, and on this road Catherine became his most loyal companion.
One day, Heathcliff and Catherine secretly go out on a trip and accidentally meet Edgar Linton, the young owner of the neighboring Thrush Farm. The seemingly mild-mannered rich boy admired Catherine's beauty and proposed to her, and the naïve Catherine was attracted to the elegant life of Thrush Hill, and Heathcliff's social status was much lower than that of Linton. Driven by vanity, she agreed to marry Linton. When Heathcliff learned of Catherine's marriage to someone else, he was distraught and desperate for Catherine's betrayal, so he ran away in anger and was never heard from, which also caused the beginning of this love tragedy.
<b>The 2011</b> <b>British film of the same name, Wuthering Heights</b>
A few years later, Heathcliff returned home and returned to Wuthering Heights. At this time, he was no longer the depressed and gloomy teenager he had been, he had the shrewdness and ability of a businessman on the surface, which was elusive, but in his heart he had already secretly decided to take the fiercest revenge on Hindley and Linton, who had caused him to be forced to flee, and to vent all the pain they had given him.
By this time, the owner of Wuthering Heights had become Hindley, a debauched boy who drank, gambled, squandered his possessions, and eventually became impoverished, and even mortgaged the rest of his possessions to Heathcliff and became his slave. Heathcliff often visits the Thrush Farm, and Linton's sister Isabella, who is obsessed with him, takes the opportunity to seduce her, and Isabella, who is in love, blindly elopes with him, only to be imprisoned by the cruel Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights and subjected to all kinds of torture. And Catherine, who was in love with Heathcliff at the time, did not get the happy life she wanted after marrying Linton, and Edgar Linton did not know her at all, and she herself did not love Linton. Faced with Heathcliff's glorious return, Catherine felt even more remorseful and guilty. So in desperation, she died quickly, leaving behind a premature baby girl, Katie. Imprisoned in Wuthering Heights, Isabella escaped to the outskirts of London and soon gave birth to a boy named Lynton Heathcliff.
<b>Heathcliff's love for Catherine can be summed up in one sentence: "Don't leave me in a hell without you..." Even if there are more entanglements of enmity and resentment than the despair and sorrow of love in the words at this moment. </b>
But the real misfortune has not yet come, nor is Heathcliff's revenge over. Catherine's death made the hatred in Heathcliff's heart rush like a volcanic eruption. Hindrell died of alcoholism less than half a year after Catherine's death, and his son Harrington fell into Heathcliff's hands, and Heathcliff took revenge on Harrington. 12 years later, Isabella fell ill and died, and Heathcliff took back his son, Linton Heathcliff, but hated him terribly. Heathcliff took advantage of Linton's critical illness to take Katie and forced her to marry her son. A few days later, Linton died, and Heathcliff became the true owner of Thrush Farm and Wuthering Heights. However, Heathcliff Jr. also died quietly shortly after their marriage.
At this time, Harrington was 23 years old, and although he was deprived of the right to education and lacked the warmth of the world, he was loyal and personable. Katie fell in love with him. This greatly annoyed Heathcliff, who was determined to break up the lovers. However, when he looked at them more closely, the scene of Catherine and his love in the past reappeared. The revival of humanity gradually faded the bitter hatred in his heart, and he remembered once again his love for Catherine, which made him unable to bear to take revenge. And Catherine's soul never seemed to leave, always wandering in Wuthering Heights, which made Heathcliff miss her even more.
So on a snowy night, he called Catherine's name, walked out of the cottage, and died in the snow. It can be said that the ending of "Wuthering Heights" ended with Heathcliff committing suicide after he achieved his revenge purpose, but in a sense, his death was a martyrdom, his unswerving love for Catherine to the death, just as the few trees that stubbornly survived on the hill were always to be frustrated and destroyed by the roaring wind, Heathcliff's life was destined to be distorted, destroyed, and rebuilt in the power of "evil", and his relationship with Catherine was even more different from ordinary love. Instead of joining together by pleasing each other, they appeal to each other for their suffering, they talk about life but about dying together, they do not eat but on hunger strikes to sustain their lives.
<b>"If you still exist in this world, then whatever the world is, it means something to me. If you are gone, no matter how beautiful the world is, it is just a desert in my eyes. "Although the main body that makes up this story is a long period of darkness and crazy pain, what is even more memorable is the love that constantly shakes the soul behind it. </b>
Emily Brontë describes darkness and violence as real, positive, and inescapable forces in human life. And the reason why this work full of dark explosiveness and vigorous vitality, "Wuthering Heights", can make people feel so strange and eye-catching, perhaps because we see the double characteristics of human nature in these darkness and pain, the sadness of life and time, and the most perfect interpretation of the endless love and hate like the wind.
<b>Further reading:</b>
<b>1</b><b>. About Emily Brontë:</b>
Emily Jane Brontë was a 19th-century British writer and poet, one of the famous "Brontë Sisters", Emily Brontë established her place in the history of English literature and world literature with her only novel in her life, Wuthering Heights. In addition, she wrote 193 poems and is considered a talented female writer in Britain.
2) Why did Emily Brontë write such a unique work as Wuthering Heights?
Emily Brontë was lonely by nature, introverted since childhood, and always had a bit of a male feeling, when she and her sisters made up stories and wrote poems at home, she was very special, and later included in the poetry collection Emily's works were always confused by the theme of "evil" as Baudelaire or Ellen Poe, and there was always a shadow of death between the pure lyrical styles. When she wrote Wuthering Heights, this confusion and uneasiness became more impatient, and she urgently needed to create a fictional world to interpret it, and to vent the near-tearing pain in her heart through the mouths of the novel's characters. Therefore, "Wuthering Heights" is a work full of the author's painstaking efforts and emotions.
3. The Brontë Sisters:
In the history of English literature, the Three Brontë Sisters are a miracle. They shine both as brilliant constellations and as individual superstars. After more than a hundred years of testing, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights have occupied an unshakable place in the treasure house of world literature, and Anne Brontë's novels " Agnes Gray " and "The Tenant at Wildfield House" also occupy a place in the history of English literature.