Wuthering Wednesday and a Return

Hello everyone,

Sorry for taking a week out, but I do feel so much better for it. I ended up having flu like symptoms on and off all week which I found really draining, so I didn't get to do a lot. It was a bank holiday weekend here as well, so it was nice to have a long weekend with the family.

I managed to catch up on my Wuthering Heights reading and ended up reading six chapters all in one go.
Summary of the six chapters read.

The book moved ahead three years and Heathcliff returns to Wuthering Heights a seemingly different man. Catherine is over the moon as his return, but her new husband Edgar Linton is not so sure. Nelly ( Mrs Dean) is very wary of the new Heathcliff. Edgar's sister Isabella has developed a crush on Heathcliff and Catherine goes out of her way to embarrass her by telling Heathcliff. Not a good move!

A few days on and Heathcliff is caught roughly embracing Isabella on the sly. Catherine is mad and ends up having an awful row with Heathcliff. Nelly tells Edgar of everything that Heathcliff and Catherine has said and steps into the argument, only causing Catherine to turn on him.

The row sends Catherine on the road to insanity. Whilst Heathcliff does a moonlight flit with Isabella. Nelly, a bit bored with the whole Catherine/insanity situation ignores her pleas of ill health until she is really bad. The whole situation turns rather nasty and it takes Catherine a while to return to some kind of normal health, although she never returns to normality.

Nelly receives a letter from Isabella, who pleads with Nelly to help her make peace with her brother Edgar, who refuses to have anything to do with her. The letter informs Nelly how badly Heathcliff is treating her. So Nelly visits Isabella and Heathcliff at Wuthering Heights, only to find them installed their with Earnshaw and his young wayward son. Nelly is appalled by the state of the house and the situation in which Isabella finds herself. Heathcliff turns really nasty whilst she is there and won't let her leave until she agrees to let him visit Catherine.

The next day, unwillingly, Nelly orchestrates a visit to Catherine from Heathcliff. The visit causes Catherine to be pushed over the edge. Is her demise suspected?

General thoughts.

Wow, what a twist. I wasn't expecting Isabella to run off with Heathcliff. I couldn't help but think she was rather naive and should have had someone looking out for her. If her brother had taken better care of her, then perhaps she wouldn't have been so easily led. I also wondered what happened to her parents as they seemed to just disappear from the book.

Heathcliff has really turned out to be a nasty piece of work and I was so rooting for him in the beginning part of the book. The way he treats Isabella is just disgusting and it doesn't seem that he will just let her walk away easily.

I have a feeling that Catherine won't be with us for much longer, but I was very good and didn't read on to find out. I was amazed to realise that she was pregnant, as it seemed to have slipped my notice.

I really don't like any of the characters in the book, but I just can't stop reading the book. If I had known how thrilling this book would be, I would have read it years ago. The book is so bleak and morbid, yet I absolutely love it.

Can't wait to find out what happens next?