A Dark night's Work and Other Stories by Elizabeth Gaskell

The Case of the Phantom Cat

The other night Josh and I were in our front room.  We have two living rooms; the front room has a bay window that faces the street.  This is where I keep my piano and where we watch TV.



I give you a brief description of our house to understand what happened next.  We heard a noise like something falling down.  I ran out of the front room, through the back room past the dining room and into the kitchen.  There used to be a way from the front room directly into the dining room but we made a wall out of bookshelves that now separates the two rooms.

 All that to say that I lost precious seconds getting to the kitchen to find out what the noise was.  I assumed it was Breeya our little geriatric dog who often wanders aimlessly around the house, neither seeing nor hearing nor knowing where she is (sad).

I went through the kitchen to the utility room and out the back door where the motion sensor light was on.  I looked around for Breeya but couldn't find her.  When I returned to the front room, she was there lying under the piano, peacefully sleeping.

That could only mean one thing.

It was the cat!  We have a cat that is sneaking into our house through the doggie door at night.  She is helping herself to Breeya's food dish and pushing things off our kitchen counters for her personal amusement.

I don't know for a fact it is a cat.  It could be a 'possum or a raccoon, but I doubt it.  Either of those animals probably wouldn't be able to tear out of our house with the lightening speed of this animal.  I have not seen it yet.  

But I know you're there, cat, and if you're reading this, know you will be discovered and face the due penalty of your sins.  I'm not sure what that penalty will be, that's between you and God, but know that the wicked do not prosper.

Les Oiseaux  Tristes by Maurice Ravel is playing. The composer is also the performer in this vintage recording. Les Oiseaux Tristes is French for sad birds. I think that this is how my little Hercaloo is feeling because I now have to keep her in the cage when I go out for fear Senor don Gato eats her.



A Dark Night's Work and Other Stories by Elizabeth Gaskell

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A Dark Night's Work and Other Stories are a small collection of short stories by the Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell.

Gaskell was close friends with Charlotte Bronte, or at least as close as anyone could get with a recluse in five years, which was how long they knew each other before Bronte died.

Her work does not come near the power of Bronte's but still deserves a place in British and world literature.

Her work can often be dark and suspenseful as is the first and longest story in this anthology. This affected the way I read the other stories, reading them in fearful suspense, waiting for something dreadful to happen to the protagonists who were so vulnerable.

In A Dark Night's Work, a man does something criminal which is witnessed by his man servant and his daughter. They all agree to cover it up to preserve his tenuous standing in his social circles. They all pay a price however that permanently alters their lives.

The next story, Libbie Marsh's Three Eras, is about a poor homeless girl and her relationship with a crippled, lonely boy who she first sees through her window lying in bed next to the window of the house opposite.

In Six Weeks at Heppenheim a British man touring Germany becomes ill and is bedridden in an inn for several weeks in a small German village. While there he gets to know the inmates of the inn and their inner dramas, finding himself drawn in and finally a participant in their lives.

Cumberland Sheep-Shearers is without much plot and is mainly an observation of farm life during sheep-shearing time, although there is a slight story of romance between a man and woman which is hardly referred to but nevertheless makes a strong social statement, a statement that is prevalent in all Gaskell's stories.

The piece de resistance, however, is the last story. What the Grey Woman lacks in length, it more than makes up for in horror and suspense. A young, inexperienced girl is swept off her feet by a French count who carries her away to his remote and isolated chateau in the Swiss mountains. The terrifying discoveries awaiting her there induce her to finally escape with a loyal maid. What follows is a suspenseful chase scene that kept my stomach in knots to the end.

None of Gaskell's stories can be called profound and certainly don't hold a candle to the great's of the 19th century such as Jane Austin, the Bronte sisters, Trollope, or her good friend Thackery. She can rightly be accused of sentimentality at times approaching the maudlin. In Hollywood, she would be a "B" actor. Incidentally, the BBC has created several fine productions of her novels, my favorite being the Cranford series.

However she ably paints the English landscape in a way that reminds one of a Hudson School painting. Perhaps the others made clearer exposes of human character, but Gaskell showed the complicated social strata that afflicted a class conscious society and that by itself makes her books worth reading.

View all my reviews

The Warden by Anthony Trollope

Things have come to a head in the Wilfong household.  The wife knows she has a problem, but the husband is sympathetic.  The wife has wanted a parrot for a long time.  The husband says she can have a parrot if they give away three guinea pigs.  Wife simply can't.  Wife thinks.

What if wife abstains from buying another book until she has read every single book already in the house?

Husband calculates.  That would actually save money, the parrot's initial cost and maintenance costing less each month than wife's book budget.  

Result:

I haven't come up with a name yet.  He's an Indian Ringneck Parrot.  My sister has been suggesting Bagheera, Baloo, Kaa and Shere Khan but I'm not feeling it.

Maybe something bookish?  Hercule Parroh kind of appeals to me.  I'm open to suggestions.


The Warden by Anthony Trollope

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The Warden is the first of of six books called the Chronicles of Barsetshire. At 157 pages it is the shortest but extremely interesting.

Septimus Harding is the warden of an almshouse for twelve bedesmen. Bedesmen are elderly retired men who are payed to pray for their benefactor.

A medieval bequest allotted a certain sum of money for the living of these twelve men and also the warden. At this time the twelve men were living off of a paltry sum that barely paid for their room and board while the warden was living in luxury in a large house, spending his evenings playing his beloved instruments and socializing.

John Bold, a zealous young man, sees the disparity and decides to take legal action against the warden so that the money can be more equitably distributed.

The Archdeacon, Mr. Grantly, who is also Harding's son-in-law, browbeats the bedesmen and also his father-in-law, insisting that the money is distributed at it should and the elderly men should be grateful for their living.

The story gets into the press because Bold has mentioned the lawsuit to a friend who writes for the Jupiter. The public takes a dim view of what they see as exploitation of the poor and abuse of authority by the Warden. The Church in Barchester begins to receive bad publicity.

Surprisingly, the Warden himself is guilt-ridden and worries that the bequest has not been carried out as intended. A further complication is that John Bold is in love with Harding's daughter.

I won't retell the story, that's just to get the ball rolling. What makes this story interesting is how well Trollope dresses his characters. There are no cartoonish parodies as in a Dickens or Austin novel. Even the Archdeacon, who is quite a blowhard, has his vulnerable side, as manifested in his relationship to his wife.

As in other Trollope novels I find myself asking, "How is this going to turn out?" The Warden is not a story of high action and suspense, yet there is a certain amount of "pressure" if you will, that urges one on to the end towards the resolution.

Another quality I enjoy in Trollope's novels like this one is that he shows how people think. Especially people who are doing things they know they should not be doing. It's insightful to see how they justify to themselves and their world why they are acting the way they are. Surprisingly, some don't try to justify themselves and honestly enjoy what they are doing for the sake of it being bad.

I only have the sixth in the series after this and since I am currently on a book buying fast, I don't know if I should read the last book or wait.





View all my reviews

Finishing up the year with eleven books on my Kindle

Hello to all!  Miss me?  I have just returned from ten days traveling in Paris.  The journey was arduous, not on the scale of trekking to a mountain and fighting a dragon for jewels, but still very tiring.  

My journey started with my husband and I arising on December 11 at four a.m. We drove three hours to Dallas, deposited our car at a hotel and took the shuttle to the airport.  We flew three hours to JFK in New York,  and endured a four hour layover made worthwhile with good conversation over dinner with a very nice young man from San Fransisco on his way to scuba dive in the Canary Islands.  Eric and Josh and I disagreed on everything we talked about from religion to politics but developed a firm, if temporary friendship.  We hugged goodbye and I told him I was going to pray for him and he said, "Good!  I want you to!"

And I am.  Josh said that Eric fulfilled his man hug quota for the year, but I think he enjoyed the conversation as well.

The flight to Paris was eight hours.  I read several books on my Kindle.  I will be writing more on my adventures in Paris (the most magical week of my life-that's your teaser!) but suffice to say, that after walking over eight hours a day sight seeing, I fell asleep every evening around seven p.m., woke up wide awake at midnight, read for two or three hours before finally falling asleep around three a.m. then waking up again around six a.m. starving.  Unfortunately Paris does not wake up before nine.  More reading since I can't sleep with my stomach growling.

At the end of our trip we flew back, with all the hours of flying and driving in reverse.

In conclusion, I read eleven books in ten days on my Kindle.  None of them were very long, and my reviews here will be quite short as well.



Trivia by Logan Pearsall Smith

This is a collection of essays by Smith about his personal observations about his life, society in London, religion, and socio-political thought from the eyes of a Victorian/early Twentieth century man.

I thought his essays, were lucid, thought-provoking and charming.  I recommend this short book to anyone who likes to read the inner thoughts of a man who combines humor with realism.




The Mouse and the Moonbeam by Eugene Field

This very short book is a Christmas story told by a mouse and then a moonbeam.  A good children's book that has a moral about the consequences of the lack of faith as well as the actual purpose of Christmas.

My one complaint:  I know that at one time (perhaps still is), it was popular to take some license with Bible stories. In this story the moonbeam shares something he saw many years ago.  Jesus as a child is friends with another boy who winds up being the thief on the cross who finally remembers Jesus and surrenders his heart and soul to spend eternity with Him. 

This never happened, the author just thought it would make a nice story.

To me, reducing  profound Biblical history to a children's story trivializes it into some sort of sentimental tale and robs it of its true power.



The Story of My Heart:  an Autobiography by Richard Jefferies

I don't know much about Jefferies, I'm not sure how this book ended up on my Kindle.  Probably an impulse buy since it was public domain and free.

Apparently Jefferies is one of the transcendentalist writers.  His reflections basically consider our aesthetic reaction to nature as the ultimate experience.  The supernatural is only the ecstasy our senses receive as they drink in the wonder the sky, the stars, earth, trees, etc blah, blah blah...breath into us.

There is no God, no metaphysical.  Anything created by man...art, books, architecture, whatever... amount to nothing and living as a jungle beast alone in the forest is vastly to be preferred.

Whatever.  I read this in one setting, which is a good thing for the author because I wouldn't have bothered to pick the book up again.

Three stars for the quality of writing, not the substance.





Perpetual Light:  a Memorial by William Rose Benet

Benet wrote the poems throughout his lifetime for his beloved wife whose life was cut tragically short.

Hence the evolution of these poems are wonderful to read, beginning with the ones he wrote in his youth, expressing the first giddy excitement of being in love, mellowing with a rich enjoyment of being married to the love of his life and ending finally with the stark and barren wilderness that he finds himself thrust into as he endures his loss and loneliness.

Even in his darkest moments, there are undercurrents of strength and hope.  I enjoyed these poems and yes, I also read these in one sitting, which allowed me to better appreciate the transition of his life journey.





Poems and Ballads of Heinrich Heine

Our first morning in Paris, which was very early because the sun hadn't risen and our hostel room wasn't available yet, we walked to Montmartre Cemetery.  It was peaceful, though cold, as the sun rose, slowly illuminating the gravestones and chapels.  

 
While we walked among the tombs looking for famous graves a French woman walked up to us and pointed to a grave we were standing near.

"That is Anrish Ann. He is a German poet."

We looked at the grave which had a bust of the poet on top. The poet's name was Heinrich Heine, which I would pronounce differently than the French woman, but who am I to correct others?

When I woke up the next morning around two a.m due to Jet Lag, I opened up my Kindle and discovered that I had a collection of Heine's poems.

This is a beautiful set of poems by a preeminent 19th century German poet. He writes of love, of longing, of spiritual fulfillment in excellent verse. Another book I refused to put down and read in one sitting. 

The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories by Algernon Blackwood

I started this collection earlier in the year but finished it one early Parisian morning.

This is a fine collection of scary, suspenseful short stories, reminding me of Lovecraft, Steam Punk and other mystery/supernatural stories of the turn of the last century.

The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers

Another book I'd been reading for several months but finished in Paris.  

The King in Yellow is a series of short stories written in H.P. Lovecraft style.  The common thread is horror and a mysterious set of letters, documents, or other metaphysical phenomena that leads to the death or tragic conclusion involving the narrator.

The stories are in turn suspenseful, scary and sometimes funny as a few of them turn out to be merely dreams.

The writing is style can be a little archaic and after the fashion of a lot of Steam Punk or lesser known authors of the time period, which can be seen now as somewhat melodramatic and sentimental.

Women are described after the fashion of many late Victorian writers in poetical turns.  There are often depicted as goddesses, often unattainable or if attainable, not sustainable because of a tragic ending.  Oh, those Victorian writers.

 

Fables for Children, Stories for Children, Natural Science Stories, Popular Education, Decembrists, Moral Tales by Leo Tolstoy 

I don't know if Tolstoy wrote these stories or compiled them.  They are small moral tales like Aesop's Fables, each only a paragraph long.  Still they are interesting and worth reading.

The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley

This book started out very interesting and written in a lively style.  It quickly turned into a story of imagination with a tremendous amount of detail.  I suppose for a child of the Victorian age who has not suffered the modern child's affliction of information overload, it would be a magical journey.

In a nutshell, a little chimney sweep who experiences nothing but abuse and neglect finally, in a panic, runs away but finally collapses at the edge of a spring.  There the Queen of the Fairies turns him into a Water Baby. 

When he wakes up, he finds himself only a few inches high with gills on the sides of his neck.  The rest of the story is filled with his new discoveries of his environment and the various animals and sea life.

There is also a moral tale of the wrongness of child abuse and also redemption for even the most hardened heart.

 

Fast and Loose by Edith Wharton

This is the first story in the Complete Edith Wharton I have on my Kindle.

It is very short and I read it in a few sittings shortly before I left Paris.  (I had quite a few early morning readings. 

It was written when Wharton was fourteen years old and though has much that is tragic about it, there is none of the cynical "modern realism" that readers expect from Wharton.  I was surprised to see how positive and even moralistic the story ended.

A young girl, Georgie, breaks off her engagement to her cousin Guy, because, even though she loves him, she would rather be the wife of a Baron.  

She marries the Baron and has a brilliant career among the rich and elite who find her brazen sauciness both shocking and irresistibly attractive.

As the story progresses we see how the jilted Guy lives under heartbreak and also how Georgie eventually comes to repent of her selfishness.

Overall, I thought the story transpired rather nicely even if it ended on a rather melodramatic, if not typically Victorian moralistic tone.

A worthy read for Wharton fans.

The Christmas Child by Hesba Stretton

Miss Priscilla Parry adopts a young girl Rhoda and later an even younger girl, Joan.  She has plans for the girls, none of which includes getting married.  She firmly believes that women should stay single, be strong and independent.  When Rhoda runs off and gets married, Priscilla can't forgive her.

Filled with rage and hatred, she shuts herself up and neglects  poor little Joan.

Every Christmas Eve Joan and Rhoda would go into the barn to look for the Christmas child.  After Rhoda is gone, Joan continues to look by herself.

One Christmas Eve, much to Joan's surprise and delight, there is a child in the manger!

This is a sweet Christmas story, very old fashioned and Victorian but also a timeless message of how hard-heartedness can impact the ones we should love the most, the need for forgiveness as well as to forgive.

On the flight home I was sitting next to a young woman from Tunisia.  She was staying in New Jersey for a couple of months with relatives.  She asked where we were going.

I told her how many hours we had before us.  I added that the day after we arrived, my in laws were coming in from North Carolina.  When they left, the day after Christmas, my parents would be arriving.

After New Year's my son and I will drive them back to Florida and stay with them a week.

So it is lively at the Wilfong home. 

 Which is how I like it!

I pray you all have a similarly blessed time.  Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! 

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

When I was in high school I saw a drawing of a beautiful young girl looking innocently out at the viewer.  The sub title read, "Rebecca of Vanity Fair with her claws sheathed."  That little comment kept me from reading Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray for the next thirty years.  I thought, "Oh, another story about some femme fatale who leaves a score of victims in her wake.  Blah."

The photo of Rebecca that accompanied the article that discouraged me from reading Thackeray

So why did I pick up the book now?  I was at a book fair and a copy of the book was available for a quarter.  It wasn't just the cheap price, although that always carries a seductive charm for me, it was something even less profound:  the book cover and the shape and feel of the book.  I cannot explain why I am tempted to buy books solely for their looks and texture but I am.  Usually I can successfully overcome the urge- especially if the book is by an unknown.  But I did know about Thackeray and something in me said, it is time to read this book.

I do believe that we read types of books in different seasons.  Probably I would not have understood or enjoyed Thackeray as a teenager.  I do now.

Vanity Fair is Thackeray's social commentary on British society.  He's not the only British author to do so.  The British upper class is a common theme among many if not most writers of the United Kingdom, especially during the 19th and early 20th centuries.  What is interesting is how each good writer is able to stamp the same theme with their own imprint.

Thackeray achieves this.  Rebecca isn't much different than Lizzy Eustace in Trollope's novel, The Eustace Diamonds.  But yet the stories and the characters are still very different.  The only commonality is the stories' foundation.

In Vanity Fair, two young girls, Amelia Sedley and Rebecca Sharp leave school to begin their lives as adult women.  For Amelia this is to return to the home of her well- to- do parents and wait for her fiance, George Osbourne-also from a wealthy family- to marry her.  For Rebecca, who is the daughter of a poor artist and French dance hall girl-both now dead, it is to become a governess to a family of aristocrats.

Before heading off to her job as a governess, Amelia insists that "her dear friend" stay for a while with her and her family.  Rebecca agrees to this and while there sets herself to the task of seducing Amelia's older brother and marrying him before her time to leave.

She almost succeeds because Amelia's brother, Joseph, home from India is a chubby buffoon with very little sense.  What saves him is Amelia's fiance, George Osbourne, who makes it clear that Joseph can't marry a girl, no matter how pretty and charming, who is low class.

So eventually Rebecca moves on to her aristocratic family, the Crawleys.  Here she absolutely charms everyone and succeeds in getting a nephew, Rawden Crawley, to marry her.

It's interesting because, on the one hand, everyone seems to be at Rebecca's mercy.  She's so mean and nasty and cunning and yet is able to win everyone over, often through backstabbing the others.  Yet she also fails so miserably because as much as the rich people enjoy her company, they never  forget that she is beneath them socially.

For instance, all the Crawleys spend a great deal of energy fawning and pandering to an elderly spinister aunt because she has all the money and they don't. Another point of interest:  being an aristocrat doesn't mean you have any money.

Rebecca completely ingratiates herself to this aunt who keeps her as a constant companion.  Rebecca amuses her by mocking all the other members of the Crawley family, whom the aunt detests. She only loves Rawdon Crawley, a hedonistic young soldier because he is a hedonist, and she plans to bequeath all her money to him.

This Rebecca knows, so she wins Rawdon over and they marry in secret.  Rebecca hopes to keep this a secret but is unable to when an elderly decrepit  Crawley, Sir Pitt, proposes to her after the death of his wife.  As much as the aunt enjoyed Rebecca's company she is outraged that she would presume to marry into her family and disinherits Rawdon.

And that is pretty much how the whole story goes.  Rebecca flirts and charms and seduces men, usually married men, of rank and importance, falls, gets back up and continues on.  On the one hand you'd like to see her get her just desserts, but on the other hand, one figures she's punished enough by having to live with herself.  There's nothing about Rebecca that would induce anyone to envy her.  Her whole life is consumed with being the center of attention, getting money, and hurting other women.

Thackery shows human weakness on every level but he is not devoid of humor or compassion which saves the plot from becoming drab.  Rebecca never changes, she never repents, who knows what'll happen when she grows too old to attract anyone.  Probably she'll have to settle on being a Madam at a house of ill repute.

The other characters that surround Rebecca, however, do change.  And they change for the better.  Rebecca seems to be the refining fire that burns off the slough.

Amelia turns from being a simple-minded naive girl to one who finally understands true love and devotion.  But not through her husband who gambled away his fortune plus lost it after his father disinherited him for marrying Amelia.  

What, you say?  Wasn't Amelia part of the privileged class?  She most certainly was, until her father lost his money through a series of bad investments.  Amelia's family lost their wealth, their social standing, their friends, everyone.  

George's father was in favor of the marriage until Amelia became poor.  The sad part is that Mr. Osbourne's investments caused Mr. Sedley's misfortune. This is doubly sad as Mr. Osbourne's wealth is due to Amelia's father's initial financial help.  Because Mr. Osbourne knows this, he runs from his guilt  by demonizing Amelia's father.

The story shows how fickle life is when one's identity is wrapped up in how much money you make or your aristocratic name.  There are many other plots of this nature throughout the novel.

The biggest change comes from Rawdon who, after being falsely imprisoned by the Marquis Steyne, is able to free himself and return home to find Rebecca dancing and flirting with the Marquis.  His eyes are finally opened and he leaves and returns home to his family.  Rebecca is left with nothing.  No money, because she and Rawdon had none.  They were living on credit, much to the disadvantage of their creditors, which cause at least two of them to go bankrupt.

That was another interesting point.  How, if one has a name,  can one live as a rich person without any money?  Who gets the shaft?  The people renting to you, supplying you with groceries, and everyone else you hire.

Rebecca finds herself alone, penniless, in a house owned by someone she financially destroyed.  The house servants now mock her and refuse to help her.  Why should they?  She owes them over a years' salary.

Rebecca disappears for awhile from the story and we get to witness the transformation of the other characters who all have fairly happy endings.

Except for Joseph, Amelia's brother.  He ends up on the continent where he discovers Rebecca again.  This time he is completely seduced, financially destroyed and possibly even murdered by her through poison.

I have not mentioned our hero, William Dobbin (even though Thackeray insists there is no hero).  He is the backbone to the whole story.  He is the strength, the moral hero, the one man who always sees through Rebecca, the only man not tempted by her.  The one who truly loves Amelia and cares for her and her son after George is killed in the war.  

It would take too long to portray him.  Know that he weaves in and out of the whole story and touches each character in a way that causes them to rise above themselves.  I won't call him a Christ character, but certainly one with Christ like attributes.

At 753 pages, Vanity Fair is not a short read, but definitely a worthwhile one.  I can only sum up the story line.  I can't imitate Thackeray's wit and insight.  You have to read his story for that.  I especially enjoyed how Thackeray would insert himself into the story.  His characters are so strong that they become real from the first page.  You forget that they are fictitious.  Thackeray knows this so he playfully makes little comments throughout the novel to remind you that he is only making the story up ("For novelists have the great privilege of knowing everything.")

And Thackeray is very playful and funny.  My outline makes it look a pathetic story indeed and one really can't help hating Rebecca, but Thackeray takes a light-hearted approach while making serious observations about a society that can be merciless to its citizens. This allows the reader to enjoy the book without becoming depressed.

I'll end with the final words on page 753:

ah! Vanitas Vanitatum!  Which of us is happy in this world?  Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?-Come children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Like my review of Jane Eyre, I give everything away because I assume most of you have read the book.  However, if you like surprises, read no further.  I would point out that the story of Heathcliff and Katherine is much more complicated than what any of the movies show.  They simply don’t do justice to the many sides and colors of the characters in this novel.

Wuthering Heights is one of my favorite novels, one that I’ve read many times and just recently read again.

It wasn’t always my favorite. The first time I read it I was in high school.  I didn’t enjoy reading it; I was only waiting for Katherine and Heathcliff to die so they could burn in hell as they so richly deserved.  Why does evil always seem to overpower good in so many books?  I thought.  Why can’t goodness put up a fight?

Later in my twenties I picked the book up again and skimmed through some of the passages.  I came across certain parts that I saw in a new light.  I saw that the people who seemed so weak and ineffectual at my first read were not quite so helpless after all. In fact, good does win out and it does in a way that is less obvious but closer to real life than is portrayed in many Victorian novels.

The events in Wuthering Heights start during the American Revolutionary War, even though this contemporary historical event is never alluded to.  It ends thirty years later in 1801.  Part of this lack of any reference to important historical events may or may not have been intentional on Ms. Bronte’s part but it certainly reinforces the sense of isolation that surrounded the Moorish wilderness and the people who inhabited it.

Katherine Earnshaw and her brother, Hareton are young children waiting for their father to return from a distant town.  They are eagerly awaiting the presents their father has promised them.  Their father finally returns, but instead of receiving presents, they are presented with a little foreigner, an abandoned gypsy child. 

The orphan is named Heathcliff and the name serves as both his first and last name for the rest of the story.  The father dotes on Heathcliff, Hareton develops a maniacal hatred for him and Katherine, after her first angry outburst (she spits on him) over the loss of her presents, develops with Heathcliff a close friendship.

While the father is alive, Hareton barely tolerates Heathcliff and physically abuses him as much as he is able to get away with.  Unfortunately for Heathcliff the father dies and Hareton, who is now a young man, is head of Wuthering Heights (which is the name of the estate).

Heathcliff and Katherine endure a living hell at the hands of her brother.  Heathcliff loses his place as a member of the family and is made to work as a servant.  Hareton leaves both Heathcliff and Katherine’s upbringing to the oppressive Joseph, an old servant who is as harsh and merciless a Pharisee that ever blighted the earth.  When he wasn’t boring them with long sermons, he was pouring venomous proclamations over their head, informing them of what horrible sinners they were that ever blazoned a trail to hell.

Hareton had a flighty little wife whom he adored and who kept him preoccupied.  She tragically dies of tuberculosis while still a young woman.  Tragically for Heathcliff and Katherine that is.  Hareton never recovers from his grief and sinks into a life of alcoholism, depravity and abuse.  If he was cruel to Heathcliff before, he works at outdoing himself now.

All Heathcliff and Katherine have are each other.  They escape to the Moors where they spend most of their days rambling about. Their common experience of abuse and neglect bond them tightly together. This is how they spend their childhood and adolesence.

Then a circumstance happens that changes everything. Katherine becomes friends with the children from a neighboring estate.  Edgar and Isabella Linton are introduced into Katherine’s life and for the first time she learns to become a lady and relatively civilized.  Linton falls in love with Katherine, who is by this time a teenager and extremely beautiful.  He proposes and Katherine agrees to marry him.

Nellie, the housekeeper of Wuthering Heights, and incidentally the narrator of the story, chides Katherine for so blithely abandoning Heathcliff.  Katherine explains to Nellie that she is marrying Edgar for Heathcliff’s sake.  She insists the money and status she will acquire through marrying Edgar will be used to elevate Heathcliff from his degraded state.

This is a naive, if not outright dimwitted, attitude on Katherine’s part.  Edgar and Isabella have shown nothing but disdain and contempt for Heathcliff.  They cannot look beyond his slovenly appearance, coarse manners, or the fact that he belongs to a different and what was considered back then to be an inferior race.

When Katherine confides her plans to Nellie, she doesn’t realize that Heathcliff has overheard her.  He runs away and disappears for three years.

When he returns, Katherine is married to Edgar and living at Thrushcross Grange, the Linton’s estate.  The Lintons’ parents have died by this time, leaving a group of very young and inexperienced people living by themselves.  Woe to them.

Here the tale turns into what could be titled, “The Revenge of Heathcliff.”  Heathcliff presents himself to Katherine and the Lintons and a pretty formidable picture he makes.  No longer the ragamuffin servant, Heathcliff is dressed and talking like a cultivated gentleman.  His accent is slightly foreign, maybe American, which leaves Nellie and the reader to wonder where he has spent his time, maybe fighting in the American wars?

Katherine immediately renews her friendship with Heathcliff and doesn’t bother hiding not only her affection but her passionate love for him, much to Edgar’s consternation.  This leads to a final confrontation between the two men that ends with Heathcliff being banished from Thrushcross Grange.

How does Heathcliff spend this time?  By gambling with the by now, permanently drunk and half-crazed Hareton.  Heathcliff eventually wins all of the Earnshaw property and wealth and perhaps even helps quickens Hareton’s death, although Hareton carved a pretty brilliant path to self-destruction and hardly needed anyone’s help.  This leaves Hareton’s son, also named Hareton, a pauper and ward of Heathcliff.  Although Heathcliff keeps young Hareton illiterate and works him as servant (as he was treated by the father) he nevertheless develops an affection for him, perhaps because Hareton, who also suffered abuse and neglect from his father had developed a similar fierce fearlessness as Heathcliff did. 

Possessing Wuthering Heights is not enough for Heathcliff and he determines also to possess Thrushcross Grange.  He does this by wooing Isabella.  He manages to persuade the innocent and very, very naive Isabella to run away with him.  She soon learns to regret her decision.  If Wuthering Heights was written today I’ve no doubt the readers would be treated to more graphic descriptions of just how badly Isabella was treated a la Fifty Shades of Gray.  Being a Victorian writer, Bronte kept things subtle so as to clearly convey to the reader that Isabella’s plight was a grim one without robbing us of our imaginations.

Katherine cannot cope with the conflict between her husband and Heathcliff.  She throws herself into a passion which leads to a brain fever and eventual death.  Before she dies she gives birth to a baby girl, also called Katherine.  Bronte doesn’t inform us of Katherine’s pregnancy until after she has died.

Katherine dies half way through the novel.  The rest of the novel involves Heathcliff as a cruel and tyrannical overlord to the people at Wuthering Heights and eventually at Thrushcross Grange which comes into his possession after Isabella bears him a son.

Isabella and Edgar both die young which leaves Heathcliff with everyone’s children.

Again, this is where the story begins to turn around again.  At first when I read this book I could not see it, but now I clearly see how Emily Bronte created wheels inside of wheels. 

Heathcliff has wreaked revenge on everyone.  So he should be satisfied, right? 

Actually, no.  With the exception of his own son, called Linton, the children of Hareton, and Katherine and Edgar show that they have strength of character after all.  They just needed trial and tribulation to bring it out.  Interestingly, Heathcliff’s own son is sick and weakly but just as hateful and spiteful as Heathcliff is.  He is selfish and peevish to the point where Heathcliff can’t bear to be around him.

I must confess I also enjoyed Isabella and the way she learned to enrage Heathcliff with her tongue.  He could degrade her, imprison her, verbally and physically abuse her, but the one thing he couldn’t do was shut her up.  She made herself such a thorn in his side that when she eventually ran away, he didn’t pursue her.

The other children, young Hareton and Katherine, overcome their initial degradation at the hands of Heathcliff and rise to surpass him, even though they are still in his power. 

Heathcliff, in the end, realizes that even though he can take away their money, wealth and names, he can’t conquer their spirit. 

More than that, he realizes that all he ever wanted was Katherine.  For the twenty years following her death, Heathcliff believes that her ghost has been haunting him.  In the end he dies in the prime of health and still young but no cause of death can be found.

The story ends with Nellie affirming to her listener (a young man who only comes into the novel at the beginning and the end and serves no purpose other than to be the audience who listens to Nellie’s story) that many people have witnessed the ghosts of Heathcliff and Katherine wandering the Moors together.

I take that back.  The man does serve a purpose because he offers another first person narrator in addition to Nellie, who really provides more of a third person narrative even though we know it is she who is telling the story.  This man presents the characters to us from his own point of view, having met Heathcliff, young Hareton and Katherine at the beginning of the book when they are having a rough time of it, and at the very end, after Heathcliff’s death. 

And, come to think of it, he provides another purpose because he is a typical 19th century dandy.  His cultivated, aristocratic person throws into sharp relief the remoteness of the characters in the story as well as the desolateness of their surroundings.  Next to him, Heathcliff and the rest seem even more strange.

This has led some to wonder if Emily Bronte was making it questionable if Nellie was telling the truth.  After all, she’s just a maid, whiling away the time by spinning yarns and sharing gossip about the people she works for to a bored visitor who is laid up with the flu.  We only have her word for it.

 Personally, I don’t think so.  I think it was simply a narrating device that Emily chose.  She wanted to tell the story in the first person so she needed a first account witness and she wanted an audience member who is marginally a part of the story so Nellie could tell the story to him rather then speaking directly to the reader.  It also allows her to give two different “camera angles,” if you will, of her main characters.

Another attribute of this novel is the psychology involved.  I suppose one could explain Katherine’s wildness and Heathcliff’s almost psychotic behavior to the unprincipled and abusive lives they lead under Hareton Earnshaw. But why isn’t the same true for the young Hareton when he was raised the same way under Heathcliff?

That is another aspect of the novel that I found thought-provoking.  There were those, such as Heathcliff and Katherine, and to a lesser extent Isabella, who became hardened, strong willed and selfish due to their treatment.  Then there were Edgar Linton, young Hareton and young Katherine whose trials caused them to rise to the occasion and become better people than they were when their lives were easy (even though Hareton’s life didn’t become easy until after Heathcliff’s death.).  Why is that?  What was Emily Bronte trying to say?

She gives some clues in her descriptions of each of her characters before bad things happen to them.  Emily conveys each person’s attributes and how they blossom to their full potential when they undergo hardship.  One has to read the book to fully appreciate this. Bronte would have made a great behavioral scientist.

Later, after Heathcliff’s death, Hareton’s property returns to him as does young Katherine’s to her.  I’ve told you everything else.  Should I also tell you that Hareton and young Katherine fall in love?  Their relationship starts out stormy but turns to devoted friendship-while still under Heathcliff’s iron fist, mind you-and eventual marriage which finally  returns and unites Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange under their rightful owners.

Really what makes this such a great novel?  Is it the story line?  Maybe.  To me what makes the story enduring are the vividly drawn characters and their richly constructed dialogue, something I can’t recreate in this review. Bronte uses beautiful vocabulary and a delicious style of speech that doesn’t exist today. I enjoy reading certain passages over and over again just to let the words roll around in my mouth.  I relish her tart wit and dry humor. It sparks my imagination. Our language has devolved over time.  Compared to then, today we talk like a bunch of monkeys.

I could go on but this story really supplies the reader with so many different angles and topics to consider that I think I could continue to read it every year and still discover some other nugget that Emily Bronte was trying to show through her one and only novel.  It was published a year before her death at the age of thirty-one. Wuthering Heights is credited with being the first Gothic novel and introducing the concept of the “anti-hero.”

My copy is an old 1943 hardback that is illustrated with the original woodcut drawings.  It is part of a boxed set with my Jane Eyre copy.  It has an introduction by Emily’s sister, Charlotte, that offers insight into her sister as well as her own clearly expressed opinions of Emily’s masterpiece.  (Hint:  she didn’t think it should have been written.)

I hope my review has encouraged its readers to get a copy (or dust off your old copy) and read one of the most brilliant books written in the English language.

.99 on Kindle