Wuthering Heights

This most unexpected of enforced periods at home has set challenges and opportunities.

Rather than clear that cupboard or storage area I thought I might read a neglected classic and chose Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.

I was motivated by an insightful discussion on the novel by academics of English literature on the Radio 4 programme presented by Melvvyn Bragg In Our Time.

I thought I may have read it 50 years ago but could not be sure.

The relationship between Heathcliff and Cathy has been immortalised in song by Kate Bush.

I found it a very tough read.

The first problem is the time line.

Lockwood visits Wuthering Heights and falls ill.

Returning to his home he asks his servant Nellie Dean who had worked at Wuthering Heights about the owner Heathcliff and she narrates the story.

The time line is difficult  to follow and this is made no easier by too many characters being called Cathy. Added to this stilted Victorian language.

Thus, as a reader, I was not just confused but alienated especially as that world of class and service is so foreign to ours.

Reading is also a question of mood and in lock down I could do without all those rages.

Just as my colleague Alice Mansfield has a problem of identification with biblical art, so have I with rambling Victorian novels.