Erin Dorsey: The Last Book I Loved, Wuthering Heights

I picked up this classic as one of my “Top Books to Read Before I Die.”

One thing this list is teaching me is that you should banish all preconceived notions of what a book is going to be about until you’ve read it.

I always thought Wuthering Heights was more of a “Little Women” kind of story, romantic and flighty, with a weak passion more like Anna Karenina (my opinion, I’m sure some will disagree).  I was so wrong! For some reason I expected Emily Bronte to be childish in her description of love, but she really captured the bare bones, inside out, gut wrenching torture of true love.

Wuthering Heights is a perverse, twisted, abusive love story, full of real heartache and desire.  It’s the story of Catherine Earnshaw and her undying, unstoppable love for and with a man named Heathcliff.  Their love was without question; their souls were bound in life and eventually in death.  Part of the story is of the madness of both people when their love was denied each other.  Without spoiling it, at some point one of them dies, and the rest of the book is about the devastation and heartache of the remaining person (though not as depressing as that sounds).

One strange feeling I had when I finished this book is that it never really ended.  I still find myself thinking, “I gotta go finish Wuthering Heights.”  Oh wait, I did that!  It didn’t end abruptly, and didn’t leave any loose ends, it just felt unfinished, which I think in many ways speaks to its classic nature, as it really brings you into the lives of the characters, so much that it’s hard to put them to rest.  Bronte did an amazing job of creating another world, very much like in The Secret Garden, where Wuthering Heights became a place to escape to.