Wuthering Twi-Heights
8:12 PM
“What were you reading?” I muttered, not really awake at all.
“Wuthering Heights,” he said.
I frowned sleepily. “I thought you didn’t like that book.”
“You left it out,” he murmured, his soft voice lulling me toward unconsciousness. “Besides…the more time I spend with you, the more human emotions seem comprehensible to me. I’m discovering that I can sympathize with Heathcliff in ways I didn’t think possible before.”
“Wuthering Heights,” he said.
I frowned sleepily. “I thought you didn’t like that book.”
“You left it out,” he murmured, his soft voice lulling me toward unconsciousness. “Besides…the more time I spend with you, the more human emotions seem comprehensible to me. I’m discovering that I can sympathize with Heathcliff in ways I didn’t think possible before.”
- Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer, Chapter 11
_____________________________________________________
For those who
know me, they can testify to my love for the Twilight novels. Picture me, decked out in my favorite Team Jacob
gear, waiting in line at book launches, midnight movie premiers, DVD releases,
and any other event you can think of. Now, having read all four novels many
times, one thing that would often catch my attention was Bella Swan’s affinity
for Wuthering Heights. Stephanie
Meyer would often allude to this text and throw in passages from Brontë’s novel
itself, which ultimately led to my decision to pick up Wuthering Heights for the first time. As a reader, if there is a
word or a phrase that I haven’t heard before, I feel that I have to look it up
to get the full meaning. With each allusion to Brontë’s novel, I felt this same
urge; Meyer mentions this book so often within her own, that it must be
integral to the storyline of Bella and Edward, right?
Many lovers
of the series equate Bella and Edward’s love to that of Romeo and Juliet, however, further inspection reveals parallels
between Wuthering Heights as well.
Bella herself even uses Brontë’s story within Eclipse to convey her range of emotions: “I was selfish. I was
hurtful. I tortured the ones I loved. I was like Cathy, like Wuthering Heights, only my options were
so much better than hers, neither one evil, neither weak.” As I began my
journey into reading this novel for myself, I began to see the many
similarities between the two books and I understood why Meyer felt it
appropriate to reference such a classic within her own work. Although it was
obvious that neither story were identical, there were elements of the two that
intertwined and crossed paths – essentially, parts of it could be one story.
Thanks, Thomas C. Foster. In his book How to Read Literature Like a Professor, he points out that, “What happens, if
the writer is good, is usually not that the work seems derivative or trivial
but just the opposite: the work actually acquires depth and resonance from the
echoes and chimes it sets up with prior texts…” As all readers of Emily Brontë
are aware, she is brilliant with crafting such raw emotion into eloquent
diction; the humanity she conveys is not always kind, but it is honest. That
being said, parallels can be drawn as Meyer creates a similar atmosphere with
her characters. I think we can all agree that Twilight is not as eloquently worded as the 19th century
novel, yet the effect is still there.
Backtracking
to Foster’s book, he makes another point that I felt applied to both of the
aforementioned novels. He writes, “So
vampirism isn’t just about vampires? Oh, it is. It is. But it’s also about
things other than literal vampirism: selfishness, exploitation, a refusal to
respect the autonomy of other people, just for starters.” He continues on with
his point to add, “This principle also applies to other scary favorites, such
as ghosts and doppelgängers (ghost doubles or evils twins).” Ghosts might sound
familiar, perhaps because Wuthering Heights
is crawling with them. While Meyer was jumping on the bandwagon with YA fiction
and writing about vampires, Brontë was doing the same thing back in her day as
she borrowed elements from the gothic novel and integrated them with romance.
The way in which supernatural characters harbor underlying meaning creates
another parallel between both Wuthering
Heights and Twilight. In Wuthering Heights, Catherine says, "We've
braved its ghosts often together, and dared each other to stand among the
graves and ask them to come. But, Heathcliff, if I dare you now, will you
venture? If you do, I'll keep you. I'll not lie there by myself: they may bury
me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me, but I won't rest till
you are with me.” Meyer borrows this idea of eternal love as Bella vies for
Edward’s agreement to turn her into a vampire; she longs for this everlasting
love so they can be together forever. Foster points out that many taboo
subjects were often able to be discussed through the use of the supernatural,
such as ghosts and vampires, and I believe it is fair to say that both authors
write about such.
Now that I
have developed as a reader, I have come to realize the significant impact Brontë’s
work has on us. As I sat down to write this post, I found myself pondering how
this comparison is an example of how Wuthering
Heights displays literary merit. Almost 170 years later, we can still find
relevance within Emily Brontë’s writing, enough so that it served as
inspiration for a more modernized adaptation. In all honesty, Wuthering Heights has become one of my
favorites over the years, and being able to see the modern day connections that
it bears is truly a fascinating experience.
7 comments
Team Edward for the win!
ReplyDeleteRobert Pattinson is only acceptable as Cedric Diggory!!
DeleteI'm actually glad Cedric Diggory died! I feel that he was such a minor character and no one would have noticed if he was in the movie in the first place. Aside from that, one must keep in mind that I am Voldemort in the muggle world. I can personally say that murdering Cedric Diggory was such a great accomplishment of mine. Granted, it was not that hard to take him down considering he was an unsuspecting, immature man-child. But you know, a murder is a murder.
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DeleteEvery time we have a blog post assignment for English you always have interesting things to say. Your blog posts are never boring and they seem so eloquent, but effortless at the same time. One thing that I must compliment you is how you used a variety of different sources to respond to the text. You connect Wuthering Heights to Twilight, which I found interesting since I myself had not seen the correlation between the two. It is funny though because I was a huge fan of Twilight and read every book in the series, however I did not think of the connection between these two books. You not only just simply stated that they were alike, you back up your claims with evidence from the Twilight book itself while connecting it to Wuthering Heights. I honestly give you a round of applause for your ability to think outside the box and use knowledge that you have outside the class to connect to what we are doing in school. I read the book by Foster but again I did not think to make that connection. His explanation of vampirism fit very well with the claims that you made in your post. It has been a while since I picked up that book and it looks like I must go back because there is a lot of valuable information in there that I could use in later assignments that we have in this class. When you made the point about vampirism including, “selfishness, exploitation, a refusal to respect the autonomy of other people” from that description alone I immediately thought of Heathcliff. From what I have read from critics as well as the video we were assigned to watch for extra credit, there was a common hatred for Catherine but mostly Heathcliff. He is seen by many as an evil horrible person, but I have come to realize that he is exactly just like everyone else. He acts the way any human would if they got their heartbroken. Nowadays when someone hurts you in any way it is almost like a reflex to want that person who hurt you to feel how you did. And that is where revenge comes from. Now I see that Heathcliff was the authors way of showing her audience how mankind really is. She reteaches the reader the truth about what it means to be human.
ReplyDeleteWhen I read your posts, they never fail to make me smile. I always look forward to reading them because they have such insight and intelligence to them. With that being said, when I read the title of the post, it made me smile because it made me flash back to 5th grade when I loved twilight. I really like how you opened it with that connection to draw the audience in more. I give you applause for actually remembering that part of Twilight, because I had no idea they even mentioned Wuthering Heights in the novel. Your blog posts are so eloquently written and creative, that reading through this was so interesting. I like the connection to Foster’s How To Read Literature Like A Professor too, because I have not gone back on that book in a very long time but I remember enjoying it as I read it because the information made me realize a lot of things that I hadn’t realized before. Also, at the end you acknowledge how far you’ve come as a reader and how you are now understanding how things correlate, and I really like the honesty you put into your blog posts and they feel very effortless. Overall it was a great read, you never fail to make me smile.
ReplyDeleteThe connection to twilight was interesting and pretty cool if you ask me. Did excellent job and I am always happy to read your blog posts because you never have boring blogs they always want me to read more. you didn't just simply state that they were alike, you back up your claims with evidence from the Twilight book itself while connecting it to Wuthering Heights which was incredible. All and all , I love to read your blog posts and that wont change. great job
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