Wuthering Heights (novel)/Fridge

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Fridge Brilliance

• So I started reading Wuthering Heights, and for the first half of the book, I couldn't stand it. Heathcliff wasn't a hero. None of the characters were in any way likable. The romance was between Heathcliff and Catherine was creepy and weird. And it wasn't until halfway through that I realized; that's the point. Heathcliff isn't a romantic figure or a hero; he's a corrupting influence that taints and destroys everything he comes into contact with; everything and everyone is so bitter and twisted because he's twisted them such. It's most perfectly illustrated with Cathy Earnshaw, Catherine and Edgar's daughter; when we first meet her, she's a vicious and cruel bitch, but it's because Heathcliff's cruelty and hatred twisted her into being such; we later learn that before she met Heathcliff, she was a sweet and loving young woman, and after Heathcliff dies we see her with the man she has fallen in love with, and freed from Heathcliff's influence she's once again kind and caring. Heathcliff's presence corrupts everyone in the novel, and it's only when he's gone that they can redeem themselves. This is partially the wool that had accumulated after decades of the Misaimed Fandom around Heathcliff and being told he was a romantic hero falling away, but it's now one of my favourite books.
  • An addition, but one which further underscores the original point: Catherine Earnshaw chooses Edgar Linton over Heathcliff. Heathcliff storms away. We're then told that, whilst Catherine might not necessarily have loved Edgar, certainly not with the intensity she felt towards Heathcliff, they nevertheless had a relatively happy marriage together. Then Heathcliff comes back. And all turns to shit again.
• After Heathcliff and Edgar fight, Cathy runs to her room and suffers a fit of madness. At first I hated this, because I despise the Brain Fever trope for its bad science. Then, Cathy tells Nelly she blacked out and fell on the floor, and came to with her "head against that table leg." A concussion actually makes sense. Maybe Emily Bronte's medical knowledge was better than her characters', given that that scene is set in the late 1700s while the book was published in 1847. If so, Fridge Brilliance both for averting the Hard Head trope, where people get knocked out or amnesia without serious injury, and for dramatic irony, as Heathcliff and Edgar blame each other for causing Cathy's brain fever, while it was a purely accidental concussion.
• I recently read Wuthering Heights for the first time, and although I was entranced from it from the beginning, I was lying in bed one morning and was suddenly struck by even another reason to love it: the subtle feminism of the ending! After Linton Heathcliff dies, Nelly Dean laments to Lockwood that she believes the only escape for Cathy from Heathcliff is for some proverbial Knight in Shining Armor to come marry her. But instead, after Lockwood leaves and dashes these hopes, Cathy finally decides one day to take matters into her own hands and make an effort to bring some happiness into her life on her own by reconciling with Hareton. Cathy improves her and Hareton's lives through her own efforts instead of continuing to pine away while waiting for a man to save her! And there is absolutely no commentary or sermonizing about this or pointing it out -- it just happens! Three thumbs up, Emily Bronte!
  • More subtle feminist commentary: characters' problems are caused by lack of legal options for women. Edgar's fortune is inherited by his daughter's husband, instead of Cathy directly. Divorce isn't available to Isabella, and Heathcliff's abuse of her is, as someone said in the Fridge Horror section, "strictly within the limits of the law." As a man, Heathcliff had multiple options after running away, like "education on the Continent," "a sizar's place at college," or "escape to America." Both Cathy's could only hope to marry out. The patriarchal system fails these women consistently. That young Cathy beats that system through compassion and education is absolutely Fridge Brilliance.
  • Also brilliant because it presents Cathy with the same choice as her mother: settle for marrying a rich, nice-enough guy for a chance to escape, or marry the rough poor guy she actually loves? Young Cathy makes the choice her mother should have made.

Fridge Horror

• On Wuthering Heights, Victorian propriety made Emily Brontë not give any details about how the conceptions of young Cathy and Linton happened. Now consider how Heathcliff treated Isabella Linton, and how quickly she came to be disgusted with his viciousness (to the point of running away through the moors while pregnant), and think: how could they POSSIBLY have conceived Linton?
  • That one hit me really, really hard shortly after reading that part. I got so squicked I had to leave the book for a while. There is no way Brontë could have missed the implications of that, right?
  • It's even more strongly implied than that. Healthcliff tells Nelly before Isabella flees that she is consenting to all of his 'experiments' that are 'strictly within the limits of the law' what would Healthcliff have done that made Isabella leave him then?