Love and Death in Wuthering Heights: Reconsidering Heathcliff Readers of Wuthering Heights tend to fall into two camps. Some admire Heathcliff—his pure, raw, untamed love that endures even beyond death. Others find him deeply troubling, unable to sympathize with or understand his storm-like passion and cruelty. After all, the 19th century feels impossibly distant to us now, and we inhabit an entirely different world. So how should we approach Wuthering Heights today? Are Heathcliff’s admirers simply romantic idealists who chase perfection and love grand emotions? Are his critics pragmatic realists who value reason over passion? Or does each reading offer us a chance to reach beyond our own boundaries and touch the complex, painful core of another person’s love? A Damaged Boy in a...
Early October 1815, in the southern French town of Digne. A stranger—bald, bearded, carrying a worn sack and rough stick—knocked on Bishop Myriel’s door. He had walked twelve leagues that day, enduring insults and threats along the way. The Alpine night wind cut through the holes in his clothes, attacking him from all sides. He carried a yellow passport (the identifying document given to convicts on parole), 109 francs in savings, and a soul writhing in pain and hatred. Bishop Myriel welcomed the stranger. “You need not tell me who you are. This is not my house; it is the house of Jesus Christ. This door does not ask those who enter whether they have a name, but whether they...
Anna’s psychological monologue before her death stands as one of the nineteenth century’s most extraordinary pieces of psychological writing. It’s difficult to imagine what state Tolstoy must have been in while composing these passages. The voice recording these sentences seems to belong to Anna herself—and if we consider Anna’s suicide as the novel’s climax, then the figure standing at this peak, surveying everything below, is not Tolstoy but Death itself. The Shadow of Death The shadow of death hovers over the entire novel from its opening pages. We first encounter it when Anna and Vronsky meet for the first time, at the scene of a railway suicide. This is followed by Anna’s brush with death during childbirth, then Vronsky’s failed...
The night lay heavy and thick, without a trace of starlight. An old man reclined in his armchair, his snow-white hair like a brilliant lamp burning against the darkness. He struggled for breath, his body suffused with an indescribable pain. Death was drawing near, yet he felt no fear, for he could sense something burning hot beside him—that something was love. This old man was Jean Valjean, a “villain” who did good, a convict whose body housed a soul overflowing with compassion. Kind and generous, willing to destroy himself rather than harm his enemy, he saved those who had struck him down. Kneeling at the lofty altar of virtue, he transcended the mundane world and drew close to the angels....
No matter how hard I try to stay balanced and self-aware, I still get anxious sometimes. When those moods hit, my go-to remedy is diving into the heavyweight stuff—Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, those massive books. I just finished rereading Anna Karenina. The masters always leave you with so much to feel, yet somehow words fail you. So here I am again, just rambling through whatever thoughts come to mind. There’s too much to say anyway. I read Anna Karenina once when I was little, skimmed it really. By the time Anna and Vronsky finally got together, I lost patience with the rest. I felt cheated—not even a kiss scene! But even then, I knew Tolstoy was something special, because that famous ball scene...
After Reading
North Ward
