Wuthering Heights

Overall, I really did enjoy Wuthering Heights.  I thought that it would have been a more Jane Austen-esque book, but I was pleasantly surprised.  I seemed like a slightly darker, more twisted version of a Jane Austen novel, which reminded me why I like creepier stories (hello We Have Always Lived in the Castle).  

Heathcliff was one of the more interesting characters.  He tried so hard to be with the first Catherine only to have her choose Edgar.  I mean, you have to feel bad for the guy.  The only girl he loved threw him away for a guy that could give her a few shiny trinkets.  But, he did become pretty mean after Catherine tossed him aside.  He became harsh, cruel.  Even after he took revenge through Hareton, Edgar, Isabella, his son Linton, and even the second Catherine, he loved the first Catherine just as much as ever.  

Throughout the novel, Emily Brontë mentions ghosts multiple times.  The spirits give an uneasy effect.  Ghosts are usually thought of as souls who are uneasy and are unable to move past the land of the living for one reason or another.  Perhaps Catherine's ghost did not want to leave the land of the living, or Heathcliff demanding that she has to stay and wouldn't care if she haunted him. Though it is nice to see that Heathcliff and Catherine are together in death, even though they were unable to while they were alive. 

Through the novel, Brontë gave the impression that love is a destructive force that almost always leads to hurting people.  In the triangle between Heathcliff, Catherine, and Edgar, all three parties are hurt by Catherine's love for Heathcliff and her decision to marry Edgar instead.  

After Hindley's wife died, he turned to alcohol for comfort (which probably wasn't the best idea with everything that he did while drunk).  Hind key must have really cared about his wife, because it was her death that made him begin to loose his sanity.

I do feel sympathy toward Linton, Hareton, and the second Catherine.  While Linton was not one of my favorites, his own father forced him to marry Catherine just so that Heathcliff could finish out his revenge against Edgar for taking Catherine away from him [Heathcliff].  The three of them are only tools in Heathcliff's master plan.  The relationships between Hareton, Linton, and Catherine are almost like the relationships between Edgar, Heathcliff, and the first Catherine, and as I was reading about them, I was just hoping that their lives wouldn't turn out like Edgar, Heathcliff, and the first Catherine.

Personally, Edgar was my least favorite character in the novel, along with Isabella.  The Lintons were too scared to stand up for themselves, it was actually quite sad.  I think that I would have liked them more had Edgar and Isabella actually stood up for themselves, or at least Edgar against Heathcliff.