I am rereading Wuthering Heights: To love this miserable book.

[juushika]

It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him; and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more himself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightening, or frost from fire.

—Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë, 63

It seems, to me, that it is almost cool these days to hate Wuthering Heights, to deride it as non-romantic, to argue that it's actually about two miserable people that make each other even more miserable as if that's some sort of revelation.

Wuthering Heights is not a Romeo-and-Juliet romance, star-crossed lovers, the perfect pair thwarted by outside forces; Cathy and Heathcliff thwart themselves, and that's the point. It is a story of soulmates who are horrible lovers, a story of people fated to one another who push each other away, it's a story not of what the world can do to you but what you can do to yourself. And that, to me, is more the tragedy: when you create your own hell, you suffer all the more in it.

You loved me—then what right had you to leave me? What right—answer me—for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart—you have broken it—and in breaking it, you have broken mine.

—Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë, 126

And for all of that I still think it's one of the best love stories ever told—because it is a story about love, a thing as strong and violent and real as a force of nature, a thunderstorm, a hurricane. And it is as awesome, as beautiful, and as heartbreaking as that sort of natural disaster. Catherine is selfish, hurtful, over-dramatic; Heathcliff is as brutal as a beast and equally without conscience. They are as miserable to the rest of the world as they are to one another, and I would want to know neither of them. But they are both vivid, and real, and I admire a soul so strongly blazing, a heart so boldly beating, as can feel that sort of passion and contain that sort of love—even as I pity them for it.

To romanticize it is to miss the point. To dismiss it for being as miserable as it is is to get stuck at Reading Comprehension 101. To see it as both romantic and miserable, as beautiful and tragic, is to appreciate the book.

"Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—Catherine Earnsaw, may you not rest, as long as I am living! You said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe—I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!"

—Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë, 132

The plot is seems sillier this time around than it has in the past—and silly and over-dramatic it certainly is. But it's gothic literature—silly and over-dramatic is half the joy. And behind that silliness, the raw and bleeding heart of this book drives me to tears. It is not simply enough to say "I am rereading Wuthering Heights," although in a way that is all I can say. I wear the statement like a badge, an indicator of all there is behind it, all that I can't quite find the words for. I am rereading Wuthering Heights, and I love it.