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Thursday, 31 May 2012
Thursday, 17 May 2012
Wuthering Heights extract: proving that my memory isn't that bad.
Nelly, if I were in heaven, I should be extremely miserable. I dreamed once that I was there, and it did not seem to be my home, and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth, and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath, where I woke sobbing for joy. That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other. I have no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven, and if the wicked man in there hadn't brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now, and so he shall never know how I love him, and that not because he is handsome Nelly but because he is more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton's is as different as lightning from moonbeam of frost from fire.
My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's, and I have watched and felt each from the beginning. My great thought in being is himself. If all else perished and he remained, I should still continue to be. If all else remained and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to an almighty stranger. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods; time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath; a source of little visible delight, but necessary.
Nelly, I am Heathcliff! Not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don't talk of our separating again - it is impracticable.
My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's, and I have watched and felt each from the beginning. My great thought in being is himself. If all else perished and he remained, I should still continue to be. If all else remained and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to an almighty stranger. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods; time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath; a source of little visible delight, but necessary.
Nelly, I am Heathcliff! Not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don't talk of our separating again - it is impracticable.
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