Speaking of the internet, I've always had a strange feeling when posting on the internet. Here I am, I've staked out my little corner of the internet where my words and thoughts can go. But I've never really had the expectation that some one will be interested in what I have to say, or even read it. Every internet blogger builds her own field of dreams, in the hopes that they will come. But with the internet rife with fields of dreams, not to mention hubs of legitimate activity, communication and networking, the expectation for anyone to actually read this is pure vanity. Yes, it is an act of ego to type a blog. But so satisfying.
Well, the point is, besides the tiny, vain bit of my mind that expects this blog to be read by anyone, I mostly feel like I'm sending off these words into a black hole, where they will be devoured and destroyed by obscurity, by the tiny bit of nothingness that is my corner of the internet. Then again, when one considers the vastness of the solar system, one solar system in the vastness of the galaxy, one galaxy in the vastness of the universe, one universe in the vastness of ... well, the point is, if we give into the crushing probable certainty of our own meaninglessness, then what do we have left? I prefer to delude myself that I matter, and, I believe, the more successful you are at self delusion, the more success you'll have in life.
So, just to be clear, I'm a billionaire adventurer who will live forever, has magic powers, is friends with Batman, Superman, Spiderman and Wolverine, has a unicorn friend who flies. I can eat as much junk as I want and remain the most beautiful woman in the entire world. I've also published several hugely popular and critically acclaimed novels, written, directed and starred in an Oscar-winning film, climbed Everest, won two Nobel prizes (one for literature and one for curing cancer, which I've also done), solved world hunger and achieved world peace, prevented a zombie apocalypse, made sure that the world is still an interesting place and achieved immortality.
I win.
Aaaaanyway...
I didn't just wake up one day and think to myself, Hey, I think I'm gonna write a blog post today. Nope. I read Wuthering Heights. And to all you fools who are thinking, She's an English major and she's never read Wuthering Heights? I can say, "Ha! You fools! I have read Wuthering Heights, so there, you sons of a silly person! Na na na na naaaa na!
Ahem, well, now that we got that cleared up...
I am so glad I finally got over my aversion to Victorian Literature. I'm going to attempt to avoid superlatives and give a sober and honest account of my opinions about this novel.
Being a lazy, no-account, good-for-nothing, I'm going to start by quoting a bit of a review Virginia Woolf wrote on WH
She could free life from its dependence of facts; with a few touches indicate the spirit of a face so that it needs no body; by speaking of the moor make the wind blow and the thunder roar.While reading WH, I felt my blood turn electric. It was so vivid, so clear to me who these people are. First off, it simply felt like I was there in the moor. Somehow Wuthering Heights was always stormy and Thrushcross Grange was a disquieting calm, and the entire setting was sickly, as if the dampness in the air seeped into everything, seeped into the buildings and their inhabitants, allowing mold and rot to slowly set in. But you would only need to step outside, to let the sharp wind restore colour to your cheeks and vigour to your soul.
I've also noticed I've started talking and thinking the the Victorian style of speech, so forgive me if I sound anachronistic (ps, is it anachronistic if I'm going backwards? neo-anachronistic? me being a stupid loser like the people that think saying thee and thou and milady makes it sounds like they're talking like Shakespeare?)
Focus, Kori...
The characters. None of that heroic nonsense, not a moment of redemption. Just quasi-incestuous relationships (every single character, excluding the narrators, ends up related somehow), messy love-polygons, larger-than-life characters with larger-than-life personalities and passions ...
Bah, I can't do it justice. Look at me already falling into superlatives. NO SUPERLATIVES.
The emotion is intense. I caught myself wondering if this is what life really is, or if this is some hyperbole that none-the-less exactly emphasizes just how messed up this whole living business is.
Could someone really be a Heathcliff or a Catharine? More than real life, I am recalled to some of my studies in Classics (oh ho! aren't you a hoity-toity little miss name dropper I know this and I know that? Quiet, id). These days, we think about love as a wonderful thing, as the absolute raison d'etre. A wise man once said, "All you need is love." And isn't that a wonderful thing to believe? It sounds so easy, so magical. But the Greeks, they had a different opinion about love. To them, love was dangerous, deadly, destructive, and not in some cool, metaphysical way. No, love started wars.
Just ask Helen and Paris.
And then there's passion, passion, passion. One of those little things I learned in my Classics class. There were these girls called the Bacchae. They followed Dionysus around, mostly getting drunk and having wild orgies. But there was also this thing called sparagmos (crack of thunder). That's where these worshipers of Dionysus would get so worked up into a passion, that they would literally take a man alive and tear him limb from limb and devour him.
Passion, love and especially passionate love were dangerous if not downright deadly.
And that's pretty much what Wuthering Heights is. The force of passionate love between Cathy and Heathcliff becomes this uncontrollable force that destroys everything in its path.
At first it starts off like this sort of family train-wreck that you get a morbid pleasure from watching as the train veers off the tracks, but that slowly turns into outright horror at the overwhelming awfulness of it all.
Imagine you're in a thunderstorm, and one minute you're feeling this thrill from being out in the rain, soaking wet, feeling the wind and the air and the power of nature whirling around you. The next you're running for cover because a lightning bolt crashed only a few yards away and it knocked you right off your feet and now all you can do is fear for your life and hope to get out of the storm.
For me, that was Wuthering Heights.
I hate how many weather metaphors I used. Really? That's all I can come up with?
I guess I just feel stupid praising something that everyone already knows is awesome. There, I said it at last, awesome.
Brilliant, superb, extraordinary, wonderful, amazing, spectacular, fantastic.
Happy?
I remain &tc.,
Kori
