It Certainly Didn’t Have Any Depths

I finished Wuthering Heights at about 1:30 on Saturday morning. I wasn’t desperate to finish it, more like desperate to get it out of the way. The whole thing can be summed up by a single line (sometimes single word) analysis of each of the characters.

Catherine I – Neurotic.

Heathcliff – A Cipher in the sense that 0 is a cipher. Psychotic. He bribes the sexton to open the elder Catherine’s coffin for goodness sake.

Edgar – Effete blank.

Isabella – Blonde and with Ringlets – nuff said.

Hindley – Lush and Jealous

Hareton – The token intellectually challenged one (though I like him best because he overcomes the disadvantages that the author gives him)

Linton – Sick boy – effete – neurotic.

Catherine II – Nicer than her mother and makes a gentleman of Hareton.

Joseph – Token local who speaks nonsense.

Nelly Dean – Dea Ex Machina – the sensible one but then again she does everything that the author tells her to. She would have been sacked from a real job for all her concealments and tale-telling.

Lockwood – Ben Fogle I think.

All the others – I think all the men are Branwell Bronte and all the women either one of the other Bronte sisters or one of the servants.

I actually quite enjoyed the last bit where the younger Catherine makes friends with and educates Hareton. Heathcliff obviously upset the balance of the existence in Wuthering Heights and also obviously was needed to make this an interesting story which I suppose is the reason for writing it but I can’t help feeling that the ending represented a simple return to normality. As I might have suggested up there, I am glad that that’s over and the Earnshaws can get back to the normal scheme of things. Jane Eyre was much better.

Oh and Kenneth the doctor sounded a decent sort of chap.