Wuthering Heights- Emily Bronte

Since beginning my course on Love Through the Ages, I have read books that I thoroughly enjoyed, and ones which I have loved, but Wuthering Heights is neither of the above. Emily Bronte's Victorian classic was published in 1847, under the pseudonym of Ellis Bell, and although I can see the appeal of the unconventional romance which infuses aspects of the Gothic novel, I must say that the overall message of the novel is somehow lost in it's convoluted narrative and vast time span. Indeed the Wordsworth addition acknowledges in its Introduction that the novel can be viewed as "constructing a play of meanings which always seem to promise a central revelation but never quite manages to do so." Nevertheless, the novel does exhibit many literary devices and even though I did not connect with the story, I cannot deny it's intricacy.

The novel is mostly narrated as a story within a story, as the housemaid Nelly spends hours by the bedside of the original narrator, Lockwood, and tells him the background of the two houses he has visited on the West Yorkshire moors. Nelly can be described as the "moral, rational hub of the tale, holding everything together" and she narrates the relationship between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff from their meeting as children to their eventual death. Although the novel's central characters have a certain amount of respect for our almost omniscient narrator, she doesn't always appear to fully understand the romance she depicts. For example, when Catherine declares "Nelly, I am Heathcliff", she is dismissed as a foolish girl rather than one struck with overwhelming passion. The use of narrative form in the novel is one thing which distinguishes it as unique and is a possible feature for comparison to other texts.

Emily Bronte's character Heathcliff is cemented in history as a romantic hero and even sometimes described as a sex symbol. However, despite some signs of romance, such as his belief that Catherine will return to him as a ghost following her premature death, he is an altogether gruesome character, and one who is wholly deranged. I fail to see how a romantic hero can regularly ejaculate such violent propositions as "I'll crush his ribs in like a rotten hazelnut" or "I would have torn his heart out, and drank his blood", but this is exactly what Heathcliff does. Similarly, many view Catherine Earnshaw as a damsel in distress; a heroine who suffers at the hands of fate; but I often found it hard to look beyond her selfish, spoilt nature.

The presence of the supernatural is evident in the novel: Catherine's ghost seems to attack Lockwood in a nightmare during his stay at Wuthering Heights, and Heathcliff describes a feeling of tranquility in knowing that Catherine's spirit is with him always. Another point of reference is the importance of opposites in  the novel, such as the house in the title and Thrushcross Grange, light and dark, love and hate, life and death, and even and name Heathcliff has both horizontal and vertical associations. Ultimately, the view that the novel is about a "passionate unity with transcends death" seems to be partly true, and although I did not really enjoy or fully connect with the story, it's influence in a course on Love Through the Ages is unquestionable.

An Arundel Tomb- Philip Larkin

This is my first encounter with Larkin's work (apart from being familiar with the opening line of This be the Verse, who isn't?) and I find his open ended pessimism intriguing. The final line of An Arundel Tomb has been quoted as yet another comment on the immortality of love, "what will survive of us is love", but I believe this is exactly what Larkin was criticising.

The poem narrates a visit to the tomb of two old lovers with "faces blurred" who have been visited by "endless altered people" since their burial. The narrator, who may possibly be Larkin himself, describes how with "sharp tender shock" he notices that the man's hand is "withdrawn, holding her hand." The "tender" shock originally suggests a pleasant surprise because seeing the two deceased lovers united in death is touching. However, Larkin continues to suggest that this detail is exactly that, "just a detail", and merely the work of a "sculptor's sweet commissioned grace." On the contrary, the second line of the poem "the earl and countess lie in stone" suggests the love shared isn't genuine, because the word "lie" has a double meaning.

Larkin is making the point that love is not immortal, and ends with death. This could be interpreted as a pessimistic view which differs to the representation of love by the romantics, who emphasised the immortality of love. For example, Shakespeare writes in his Sonnet 18 that as long as his verse survives it will "give life to thee" and "nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade". In other words death cannot claim his loves beauty. Larkin parodies this idea in his final two lines: "and to prove our almost-instinct almost true: what will survive of us is love." Therefore it's our "almost-instinct" to believe that love is eternal, and this is "almost true", but it is not true according to Larkin, which demonstrates his pessimism.