Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Wuthering Heights

I am currently reading Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.  She died shortly after she wrote this classic, one year in fact, when she was barely 30.  As one reviewer stated, "She poured the secret thoughts of her tormented soul into her one prose creation."

Here's a paragraph I read that I paid close attention to.  The malevolent Heathcliff, speaking to the faithful servant Nellie, the story's main narrator, of the young, practically helpless "whelp" that he created, Heathcliff says of his own son:

"I despise him for himself, and hate him for the memories he revives!  But that consideration is sufficient; he's as safe with me , and shall be tended as carefully as your master tends his own.  . . .  I do regret, however, that he so little deserves the trouble; if I wished any blessing in the world, it was to find him a worthy object of pride, and I'm bitterly disappointed with the whey faced whining wretch!"

A classic passage in a great novel about a disappointed father's reflections on a child of his.

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