Well, I can't say I wasn't warned. Wuthering Heights is just as confusing as everyone told me. Immediately, I am thrown into confusion as the opening chapters create the mysterious plot line. Without even knowing the complexities of the characters and their relationships, it is obvious that there is no shortage of them. Not only are there numerous characters, but they all introduced as a single blur in my mind. There are three men with names beginning with H (Heathcliff, Hindley, and Hareton) who are all somehow related to each other, two Catherines, multiple Lintons (some with Linton as a last name and some with it as a first name), a lot of marriages, a lot of cousins and nephews, and entirely too many deaths.
To add to all of that, Wuthering Heights is told from as far away from a direct perspective as you can possibly get. Although the story centers around the Earnshaws and the Lintons, the reader is told the story from Lockwood's point of view, a mere third person who is living in one of Heathcliff's properties. Lockwood, though, is just as confused as I am and gets all of his information from his housekeeper Nelly Dean. Before we know it, the entire story has become a game of "he said she said." Nothing is every told straight forwardly; instead, everything seems to be heard through the grape vine. Having to sift through various layers of storytelling to get to the actual action keeps the readers on their toes. With varying perspective, though, comes the ever present dilemma of bias. Lockwood tries to record the saga honestly through what he learns from Nelly Dean. Unfortunately, Lockwood tends to be a bit shallow, and he often mistakenly misunderstands what Nelly Dean tells him. As readers, though, we can often see his naivety and confusion and understand the real meaning. As a dedicated and lifelong housekeeper, Nelly Dean is deeply involved in the affairs of the Wuthering Heights estate. Her connections with the families provides incredible insight to their relationships and provides us as readers with everything we know about the plot of the story, but they also lead to much stronger bias. Nelly tends to brush over sections of her narrative where she specifically does wrong, or will emphasize some events more than others in order to make her own point. This distance between the reader and the main characters forces us to read between the lines in order to discover what is really happening in this complicated story.
Even once the basics of who is who are sorted out, the beginning Wuthering Heights still raises a lot of questions. How are all of these Catherines, Lintons, and H named people related to each other? What has happened to make everyone so brooding and secretive? What's up with Heathcliff and Catherine? I thought they were related. Who is married to who anyway? Why is everyone so emotional? Why, why, why? Emily Bronte does an amazing job of creating an immediately complex and intriguing story, drawing the reader in right away. Clearly something's up with these people, and our good friend Nelly is here to explain it.
Haven't read Wuthering Heights, but it sounds confusing. . Just like you were saying. it seems like you went through the same thing i went through when I was reading To Kill a Mockingbird. Wuthering Heights sounds like a book I would dread reading. But you know what? i might actually check it out although the book sounds more complicated than my independent reading.But sometimes it takes a challenging book to read in order for me to extend my knowledge in understanding long and hard novels. Even at 18 years old I still have trouble reading books that requires you to read deeply. So I know exactly how you feel. As a matter of fact You went a lot deeper in analyzing the story than I did.Like I been saying the beginning of a story can leave you lost and confused. So reading deeper into it will help you in the long run because somebooks aren't made tobe read once. Many are made tobe read multiple times his story and the difficulty of reading really reminds me of many books i've read before. I absolutely hated re-reading like you, but That is needed in order to fully understand certain novels. Wuthering Heights to me seems like a book that I would have to re-read even more than I did To Kill a Mockingbird. And that alone was pretty tough even though I had seen the movie and have gone over the general plot before. But like I said, you created some interest me reading it actually.
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