Wuthering Heights (idea)

Since it was first published in the 1840's, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights has received much consideration in the media and from the academic world. While there has been much attention given to the now considered classic, when it was published it was negatively reviewed and considered to be a below average work of literature. One anonymous author reviewed the book saying:

It is the province of an artist to modify and in some cases refine what he beholds in the ordinary world. There never was a man whose daily life (that is to say, all his deeds and sayings, entire and without exception) constituted fit materials for a book of fiction.

Though what the reviewer says, that the dullness of ordinary, life is too monotonous for a work of fiction, Wuthering Heights surpasses the ordinary and embodies developed characters, a simply based story line and a narration that includes many different voices, retold through one.

No matter what the medium - canvas, paper, clay, or an instrument - the artist working with it must old the everyday and refine it to appease the audience. A painter or sculptor must take a form and make it absolutely perfect, whether in beauty or grotesqueness in order to make the audience take notice of it. If a work of art is too ordinary people pass over it and move onto the next exhibit which does display a twist on their everyday life. With music, the musician uses his or her instrument to recreate emotion and images from their world in their music, but filled with splendour and grace. Without the contrasts of fortes and pianos, the fluidity of crescendo and decrescendo and the ever changing tempo, a piece of music would again lose the attention of the audience. Both artwork and music need to encompass a changing fluidity in order to captivate their audiences and give them a twist on reality.

Literature works in much the same way in that it must attract the attention of the reader. Both plot and characters must be identifiable to the reader but also encompass a sense of the impossible. If a story is exactly what the reader does every day it becomes boring, yet at the same time if there is no element of the plot that the reader finds feasible than they will become discusted and lose interest. An author needs to exaggerate and exemplify life in order to retain an audience.

When an author tries too hard to imitate life and fit a person's daily life into a book, a biography, autobiography, newspaper or tabloid is created. But differences still remain from a book of fiction: a biography or autobiography deals with summaries of important, exciting or interesting points in the person's life; a newspaper deals with shocking, tragic or happy events briefly summarised without much action; and a tabloid contains scandal and rumour, much of which is questionable "non-fiction." In all of these forms, it is a summary, not all "deeds and sayings, entire and without exception," that form them and spice them up for maximum audience attention and retention.

Though criticised by her contemporary critics, Bronte succeeds in simple exaggeration of reality in Wuthering Heights and dares the reader to compare his or her life to that of the Earnshaw's, the Linton's or of Heathcliff's. The characters are identifiable and each contain elements of reality. Even to the modern reader there are elements contained in all of the characters that are readily recognized and each contains a part of the reader's true personality. When Cathy is young she takes to exploring and as Nelly explains:

Catherine came to me, one morning, at eight o'clock, and said she was that day an Arabian merchant, going to cross the Desert with his caravan; and I must give her plenty of provisions for herself and beasts: a horse, and three camels, personated by a large hound and a couple of pointers.

In this act all readers can remember being young and playing "make believe" whether it be a fairy princess, a cowboy or an Arabian merchant. By placing everyday acts such as a child's imaginary adventures in the story to lead to major and important plot events, the story flows easily and places the story in a more relevant setting. If the characters were all unbelievable with unconnected, coincidental events, then the story would fall short.

The character of Heathcliff at times tends to stretch the limits of many reader's reality, though never does he fall into the Examiner reviewer's criticisms. Heathcliff is a character unlike any other in the novel and leaves much to the readers imagination; never are his motives fully understood, and never is it fully understood why he surrenders in the end of the novel. Through the book it is never Bronte's intent to include all of his "deeds and sayings, entire and without exception," and this is where the critique falls short. Heathcliff's main personality is shown, his quirks and idiosyncrasies, and it is this way that an intriguing and compelling character is created, not an unrefined ordinary character.

The story line of Wuthering Heights is a very simply based one that spans the lives of Catherine and Heathcliff. Unlike as the review comments, the novel follows the main events and important incidents of the story and thus avoids the mediocrity of the everyday. The story moves quickly, giving detailed when needed, though giving brief descriptions when needed. Much of the early history of the story is given in this brief manner as is any time that Nelly is not around. Near the beginning of the story Nelly summarises Heathcliff's childhood saying, "Miss Cathy and he were now very thick; but Hindley hated him: and to say the truth I did the same; and we plagued and went on with him shamefully." Throughout the story it never stops over detailed analysis of a single character's actions and continuously covers the events of both Thrushcross Grange and of Wuthering Heights. As well, the plot has a clear start and end, even if it is not at the beginning of the novel. The reader can tell that the story starts with the introduction of Heathcliff into the Earnshaw family and ends with his death. From this the reader has a true sense of completion while it frees the story form over generalising or over analysing.

The narration of a novel must be objective and leave out trivial information in order to captivate the audience and to give the story a sense of reality. Through the eyes and ears of Nelly Dean, the reader of Wuthering Heights experiences the characters and the settings. Even though primarily told from one woman's point of view (some very small parts are narrated by Mr. Lockwood) other characters have the opportunity to speak through Nelly and therefore the story is broad based and complex. Because of the variety of voices coming through in the book Bronte escapes the error of the trivial points of one persons life, as commented by the critic. If the story was based on the everyday aspects of one characters life, there would not be the great cross section of characters or the quick skips from one event to the next. And while on occasion the story is biased by Nelly's opinion, Bronte counts on the reader's intelligence to deduce his or her own opinion.

While the story of Wuthering Heights is a fairly narrowly confined one, it is not legitimate to declare that it is the simple summary of one character's petty, dull life. Perhaps it is the time difference between the mid-nineteenth century and the end of the twentieth, but the description of a person's life is sometimes intruding to the reader, especially if it includes either something that they could only imagine themselves doing but could never actually do, or if it verbalises their thoughts. The modern author Douglas Coupland has perfected this and in his book Life After God describes a boy prostitute Donny:

But Donny actively invited stabbing into his life. He said that stabbing didn't hurt nearly as much as you'd think and that it was actually kind of cool, and that when it happened, "man, when the blade first digs into you it makes your soul leap out of your body for just a second, like a salmon jumping out of a river."

This passage describes the events of one man's life, "his deeds and sayings," and is yet intriguing to the reader. Although Wuthering Heights is somewhat tamer in language and idea, it follows the same principles as Life After God, that a familiar life with a twist is the easiest to relate to.

Though belittled when first published, Wuthering Heights has found its way into the ranks of classic literature by recent scholars and critics. Filled with relatable characters, a believable story in a realistic setting, it takes the ordinary and modifies it just enough to pass as authentic yet still retaining the magic of fiction. Argued that the story is simply a boring account of menial life, Wuthering Heights has captivated and enchanted generations of readers with a story that far surpasses the average and portrays a tale of beauty.