英文读后感

104202564

Published in 1847, WUTHERING HEIGHTS was not well received by the reading
      public, many of whom condemned it as sordid, vulgar, and unnatural--and
      author Emily Bronte went to her grave in 1848 believing that her only
      novel was a failure. It was not until 1850, when WUTHERING HEIGHTS
      received a second printing with an introduction by Emily's sister
      Charlotte, that it attracted a wide readership. And from that point the
      reputation of the book has never looked back. Today it is widely
      recognized as one of the great novels of English literature.
      Even so, WUTHERING HEIGHTS continues to divide readers. It is not a pretty
      love story; rather, it is swirling tale of largely unlikeable people
      caught up in obsessive love that turns to dark madness. It is cruel,
      violent, dark and brooding, and many people find it extremely unpleasant.
      And yet--it possesses a grandeur of language and design, a sense of
      tremendous pity and great loss that sets it apart from virtually every
      other novel written.
      The novel is told in the form of an extended flashback. After a visit to
      his strange landlord, a newcomer to the area desires to know the history
      of the family--which he receives from Nelly Deans, a servant who
      introduces us to the Earnshaw family who once resided in the house known
      as Wuthering Heights. It was once a cheerful place, but Old Earnshaw
      adopted a "Gipsy" child who he named Heathcliff. And Catherine, daughter
      of the house, found in him the perfect companion: wild, rude, and as proud
      and cruel as she. But although Catherine loves him, even recognizes him as
      her soulmate, she cannot lower herself to marry so far below her social
      station. She instead marries another, and in so doing sets in motion an
      obsession that will destroy them all.
      WUTHERING HEIGHTS is a bit difficult to "get into;" the opening chapters
      are so dark in their portrait of the end result of this obsessive love
      that they are somewhat off-putting. But they feed into the flow of the
      work in a remarkable way, setting the stage for one of the most remarkable
      structures in all of literature, a story that circles upon itself in a
      series of repetitions as it plays out across two generations. Catherine
      and Heathcliff are equally remarkable, both vicious and cruel, and yet
      never able to shed their impossible love no matter how brutally one may
      wound the other.
      As the novel coils further into alcoholism, seduction, and one of the most
      elaborately imagined plans of revenge it gathers into a ghostly tone:
      Heathcliff, driven to madness by a woman who is not there but who seems
      reflected in every part of his world--dragging her corpse from the grave,
      hearing her calling to him from the moors, escalating his brutality not
      for the sake of brutality but so that her memory will never fade, so that
      she may never leave his mind until death itself. Yes, this is madness,
      insanity, and there is no peace this side of the grave or even beyond.
      It is a stunning novel, frightening, inexorable, unsettling, filled with
      unbridled passion that makes one cringe. Even if you do not like it, you
      should read it at least once--and those who do like it will return to it
      again and again