Just finished Wuthering Heights - my thoughts.

The most prominent thing that struck me as I was reading was the societal conditioning that wasn't even presented as particularly problematic. Nelly wasn't the perfect caretaker, despite her genuine love for Cathy, and doubtless played into some of what drove Heathcliff and Catherine to their early deaths. Not to pick out Nelly in particular, obviously everyone else was a lot worse. All of the "shoulds" and "shouldn'ts" directed at the children and teens in the story are traumatizing and (by modern standards) abusive in their own right, even without the physical and outright abuse. The way that the women of the book were guilted into accepting the men's behavior was especially disturbing. My thoughts don't go too deep generally, so I'll just skip through them here. In the first generation, I found myself (and probably most people) rooting for Catherine and Heathcliff to give a big ol middle finger to everyone and their English stuffiness, and be free and happy together, apart from the restrictive and seemingly shallow nature of everything around them. In the second half of the book, which came more from Cathy's perspective, the same previously frustrating societal standards become something that I felt was good, right, moral, and I wanted heathcliffs plans to fall apart in every way. I read a bit online about the society versus wilderness of human nature in this book, ego/id if you will, and I would classify myself as someone who firmly believes in letting people be themselves and connect with each other in a way that is fiercely personal, and not influenced by what society demands. Embrace the imperfection of intense relationships, love people despite their faults and rely on intuition to determine when things have gone too far awry. I still feel this way- heathcliff went too far, but I think it was better for him and Catherine to have died early together than to have lived lives that weren't really them. Catherine in particular is interesting to me in this way. She seems to balance both worlds at once, the fierce independence in choosing to love heathcliff, and also the societal tempering in her marriage and life with Edgar. Catherine is a very relatable character to me because of this double life she walks. I had a heathcliff/catherine type relationship a long time ago, in the intensity and trauma (though not to the same degree), and all the wildness it took me through resulted in me making a thorough effort at embracing normalcy, setting boundaries around what's healthy, self control and restraint - accountability. There are still instances where something will trigger me, and it will send me through a month of resenting all that's normal, all that's impersonal and shallow, all that's correct, and I imagine Catherine as going through similar swings in her marriage to Edgar. There is comfort to be found in conformity and normalcy, but it feels like you've just buried the real, undiluted You very deep down, and it is guaranteed to cause a lasting sense of deep seated discomfort. I relate very personally to the books I read, if you couldn't tell.

Parting thought is that Lockwood is such a tool, and I hate that Cathy ends up with Hareton. Cathy and Nelly should've abandoned the moors entirely, gone somewhere new where they could be in an environment that represented their own persons, not the ghosts of heathcliff and Catherine haunting their personalities manifested into a landscape. The moors were perfect for heathcliff and Catherine. It was them, and they were the moors. Cathy is a different person entirely, and she deserves better than the moors.