I have read many books and articles ,even entered a theatre showing this great novel, before deciding to share my thoughts and feelings towards this novel. Reading Wuthering Heights (WH) by Emily Bronte creates a kind of sentimental feeling and sympathy with its characters, taking the reader to a world of love, affection, revenge, and empathy.Wuthering Heights is really hard to analyze: was it a novel trying to refuse the new world of machine and demolition; a message of love, or an escape from reality, or all of them taken together? It was a romantic passionate novel that ended in the quiet earth “wondered how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth” . It could be a query: will love, compassion, and nature all end in earth and die, or will they forever live in the wild moors? WH was written a year before Emily's death. Through my readings of Wuthering Heights and the life of Emily Bronte, I could conclude of how Emily felt. She knew that she did not belong to that world, where human killed nature with his destructive elements and that she really belonged to the moors, just as Catherine (in the novel). She isolated herself from the world by her poems and her own world of fiction till her death. She was like Catherine, when she felt she could no longer react with the new world, choosing and welcoming death, but still never being at peace because of what she could see will happen to the world around her. Emily thought that nature was betrayed “This feather was picked up from the heath, the bird was not shot: we saw its nest in the winter, full of little skeletons”. It was the metaphor to represent the death of nature by allowing “vast machine constructed solely to produce evil. ” E.B questioned why man was created when all he does was killing, damaging and torturing: Why ask to know what date, what clime? There dwelt our own humanity, Power- worshippers from earliest time, Foot – kissers of triumphant crime Crushers of helpless misery, Crushing down Justice, honouring Wrong: If that be feeble, this be strong. Shedders of blood, shedders of tears: Self – cursers avid of distress; Yet mocking heaven with senseless prayers For mercy on the merciless. She saw humanity a big hypocrisy: they kill but they pray. Not only that: they ask Heaven to help them. What a world, so difficult to live in and communicate with? She stayed all her life refusing it, rarely having any communication with anyone except her family, and was attached to her homeland, where purity was still occupying it. She saw Heaven in earth, “I shall be incomparably beyond and above you all.” They were more like Emily's own beliefs. She refused her father's church, her Aunt's religiousness, and what most Christians usually believed. However, it seems she believed in religion in her own way. She was so much as her own character, Catherine, never went to church and was attached to the moors, seeing in them heaven and liberty. Catherine saw if she went to heaven, then this will be miserable “If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable… heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth...” . Earth had an important role in Emily's life, poems and novel: Indeed, no dazzling land above Can cheat thee of thy children's love. We would not leave our native home For any world beyond the Tomb. No- rather on thy kindly breast Let us be laid in lasting rest; Or waken but to share with thee A mutual Immortality. She considered that earth is true heaven and her native home and anything other than that is nothing but a fantasy which she rejected. She wondered where people go after death “Not THERE - not in heaven - not perished – where” as Heathcliff (in the novel) wondered where Catherine went, Emily herself wondered where her family went after death and where she will go too. Emily Bronte trusted that the Bible was full of contradictions and God's Creation was viewed in her writings as a work of conflict. She asked in her essay “The Butterfly” why man was created and the entire creation was meaningless and still she said that God is God of justice and mercy; everything in the universe that nature suffers from “is only a seed of this divine harvest which will be gathered when sin having expended its last drop of poison, Death having dealt its last stroke, both will expire on the pyre of a universe in flames and will leave their ancient victims to an eternal empire of happiness and Glory” But still if Emily rejected the Bible and many parts of it, she used some of its tracts in her novel. Nelly(in the novel) believed in the Bible and she was the voice of knowledge and wisdom of the novel: “'that from the time you were thirteen years old you have lived a selfish, unchristian life; and probably hardly had a Bible in your hands during all that period. You must have forgotten the contents of the book”. These words were said by Nelly to Heathcliff, as a proof of her belief in the importance of Christian life, the Bible and in God. At the same time, Nelly believed in superstitions which also conflicted with her believe in the Bible and in God. On the other hand, Joseph was “the wearisomest, self-righteous pharisee that ever ransacked a Bible to rake the promises of himself, and fling the curses on his neighbours. By his knack of sermonizing and pious discoursing, he contrived to make a great impression on Mr. Earnshaw, and the more feeble the master became, the more influence he gained”. So mainly, Bronte represented two different figures; both believed in the Bible in their own way and represented it. Emily also questioned the idea of humanity and compared it with animals. Was Heathcliff a human or wolf or ghoul? Catherine; the wild cat who knows how to approach with her gentle ways and how to turn wild when things do not go as she wanted: “Tossing about, she increased her feverish bewilderment to madness, and tore the pillow with her teeth; then raising herself up all burning, desired that I would open the window”. There was, in addition, the issue of gender and sexuality. Emily Bronte secluded herself from love, sexuality and any mental or physical form of it. In spite of that, her novel was full of desire, frustration and affection. Heathcliff and Catherine loved each other dearly; their love was far more than just sexual or desirable thoughts and wishes. In addition, she embodied the feminine strongness and weakness; which she rejected in herself and in the 19th Century women. Isabella and Catherine are two different figures of women; Isabella was the 19th Century ladylike “infantile in manners” and represented what feminine heroines were like in 19th century novels. On the other hand, Catherine was a wild type of character that declined the standard stereotypes of feminism, who chose to be strong and looked at the character of Isabella as a baby. A character like Isabella searched for social security through marriage, in her marriage to a strong character like Heathcliff. On the contrary, Catherine the untamed character who was attached to the moors and wildness saw marriage as a slow way of death which she threw herself into. As a result, Catherine was the real man of the house and all of the people living in it were working according to her mood, she was the real key of it. Emily Bronte also represented men with feminine weakness such as Edgar and Linton, who were calm, weak, easy to control, such as Catherine's control over Edgar, his weakness to face or fight with Heathcliff, Linton's limitation and Heathcliff's control over him. Emily's novel was very much influenced by “Paradise Lost” by Milton. Firstly, the pain Satan felt when he saw Paradise and decided to commit evil on God's creatures and against God. Heathcliff looked at the happiness of Catherine, as mush as he thought, he too decided to revenge and commit his evil on her and all those who were related to her. The Byronic hero of Satan was very much like the Byronic hero, Heathcliff “Do you mark those two lines between your eyes; and those thick brows, that, instead of rising arched, sink in the middle; and that couple of black fiends, so deeply buried, who never open their windows boldly, but lurk glinting under them, like devil's spies?” . Secondly, Raphael the angel in the poem, tells Adam to love Eve purely and spiritually, just like the type of love Emily represented through the love of Catherine and Heathcliff. Thirdly, Catherine and Heathcliff could be considered Adam and Eve who lost the beauty of Heaven and the Grace of God by eating the apple, and Catherine and Heathcliff by Catherine's marriage to Edgar, and so they both suffered. Emily also tried to send a message through the novel by showing the social system that existed in the Victorian Age. The social difference between the two houses of W.H. and T.G. portrayed the wild and cultured images of society. Heathcliff‘s character which was full of hatred and barbarian acts was incapable of being erased by his money or power. True civilization could not be by money or by any authority of any member of the society. The dress that Catherine wore symbolized the wall between her and Heathcliff; the two different social standards could not be denied between them. Social conventions had their powers and ruled over the society and its thinking. Emily in addition showed the change of the social wheels, where people like Heathcliff who had power and authorization was able to fit himself among the middle-class. On the other hand, Hindley became bankrupt and owed money to Heathcliff. There was an extinction of the aristocratic class and the appearing of the middle and working classes in the English society. Again, the appearance of Hareton in the beginning of the novel who was mistakably thought as a servant was simultaneously the rightful owner of the house which returned to him by the death of Heathcliff and his marriage to Young Catherine. Maybe what Mr. Lockwood detected at the beginning of the novel on the door “date '1500,' and the name 'Hareton Earnshaw” symbolised the rightful owner. As such, external appearance does not reflect civilization. In summation, this intellectual peace of writing which represented the moral of ideas, love, affection and refusal to the world of man who ruined the beautiful nature with his machine, is trying to say that love will conquer, in spite of the ruin and destruction. As much as the Victorian readers have rejected Wuthering Heights, it was one of the biggest and most read novels in our world today, and continues to be studied in many universities. And so, Emily Bronte's death was her liberty from the world of destruction; returning to where her heart most wished among the earth and the moors, while leaving behind one of the best works of literature to be read for centuries. Riches I hold in light esteem; And Love I laugh to scorn; And Lust of fame was but a dream That vanished with the morn: And if I pray, the only prayer That moves my lips for me Is, “Leave the heart that now I bear, And give me liberty!” Yes, as my swift days near their goal, ‘Tis all that I implore; In life and death, a chainless soul, With courage to endure.
