Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte

An abyss of blackness, child abuse, and misguided souls, with twinkling lights of beauty and peace scattered throughout. The writing is powerful and the resolution stirring and complete. When life is stormy it is hard to see the precious bits of goodness in it, but they are the only thing to get us through.

Mrs. Dean, a housekeeper, is the primary narrator of the story. On page 76 the new master of the house asks her to tell the story, observing that she has

"no marks of the manners which I am habituated to consider as peculiar to your class. I am sure you have thought a great deal more than the generality of servants think. You have been compelled to cultivate your reflective faculties for want of occasions for frittering your life away in silly trifles."  

Mrs. Dean attributes it to having

"undergone sharp discipline, which has taught me wisdom; and then, I have read more than you would fancy ... you could not open a book in this library that I have not looked into, and got something out of also."

As a bit of background for this quote (p183), Edgar Linton really is significantly "less" than Heathcliff, who has depth and breadth that Edgar is neither interested in, nor comprehends. Also, Emily Bronte is sometimes accused of being too flowery or overbearing in these moments when speakers bare their souls, but her characters are larger than life, the epitome of themselves, and I never wanted for belief (or at least, I knew the characters absolutely believed). It may be a disservice to provide this quote to readers who haven't enjoyed the first portion of the novel, for you surely cannot appreciate it nearly as much if you had read it in context, but I include it here for myself too. Heathcliff is speaking:

"You think she has nearly forgotten me?" he said. "Oh, Nelly! you know she has not! You know as well as I do, that for every thought she spends on Linton, she spends a thousand on me! ... And then, Linton would be nothing, nor Hindley, nor all the dreams that ever I dreamt. Two words would comprehend my future--death and hell: existence, after losing her, would be hell. Yet I was a fool to fancy for a moment that she valued Edgar Linton's attachment more than mine. If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn't love as much in eighty years as I could in a day. And Catherine has a heart as deep as I have: the sea could be as readily contained in that horse-trough, as her whole affection be monopolized by him! Tush! He is scarcely a degree dearer to her than her dog, or her horse. It is not in him to be loved like me: how can she love in him what he has not?"

Mrs. Dean has enough respect for both parties, interestingly enough, that on page 207 when she observed

"on the floor a curl of light hair, fastened with a silver thread; which, on examination, I ascertained to have been taken from [Catherine's locket]. Heathcliff had opened the trinket and cast out its contents, replacing them by a black lock of his own. I twisted the two, and enclosed them together."

Again, this quote (p213) is not much exaggerated:

"He's not a human being," she retorted; "and he has no claim on my charity. I gave him my heart and he took and pinched it to death, and flung it back to me. People feel with their heart, Ellen: and since he has destroyed mine, I have not power to feel for him."

I took some time to ponder the truth of this statement, then the power of the atonement. Feeling is only possible again when our heart has been changed by the Savior.

There are several reviews published in the back of the novel. I found this unsigned review (p435) from The Examiner in January 1848 to be meaningful:

We ... willingly trust ourselves with an author who goes at once fearlessly into the moors and desolate places, for his heroes; but we must at the same time stipulate with him that he shall not drag into light all that he discovers, of coarse and loathsome. ... It is the province of the artist to modify and in some case refine what he beholds in the ordinary world.

This again refers to how true the characters are to their own form - nothing is hidden of the alcoholism or the verbal, emotional, and physical abuse doled out. As my first paragraph stated, this book is sometimes an abyss of blackness, child abuse, and misguided souls, but twinkling lights of beauty and peace are scattered throughout, most notably in the form of kind or wise souls and the beauties of nature. Light and goodness are ours for the taking, even while in a storm.