Need to catch up on previous posts in Coffinmaker's hilarious recap of Wuthering Heights? Click here!— Sparkitors
Chapter V
Last week, I was hugging my copy of Wuthering Heights out of sheer gladness that Lockwood was gone. How times have changed. Currently, I'm glancing at it suspiciously from across the room. Sometimes I'll pick up my fork (I'm eating Cheesy Bacon Waffles at the mo') and wave it threateningly at Wuthering Heights. It's behaving a little strangely. I'm not sure I want it getting too close.
See, I'm glad we've changed narrators from Lockwood to Nelly, but something is making me blink confuzzledly at this new narrator. Sure, we're getting a thorough retelling of all that's gone on in the past, but how the cheese and biscuits does Nelly remember all this? She not only remembers everything that happened on the afternoon Mr. Earnshaw died, but she also remembers everything everyone said. And everything everyone did in the months leading up to that.
After more than thirty years.
Well, Coffinmaker, you say, it's a novel, after all; we have to suspend disbelief a bit.
Yes, I reply, but you're pronouncing my name wrong. It has more umlauts than that. But at least Nelly could be realistic about remembering all this. She could stutter sometimes, or go off on a tangent and start talking about something totally unrelated, like I do when I tell random family sagas to people.
If Coffinmaker Were Narrating to Lockwood: And so Mr. Earnshaw died, and Catherine cried a lot, and so did the mailman, whose niece just got married to a guy who got cholera, and have you heard about that Alexander Graham Bell guy, DUUUUUUDE, he totally revolutionized long-distance communications, but I prefer the telegraph, it has more apps, and anyway this "telephone" thing is probably just a fad, kind of like skinny breeches, and MAN, SKINNY BREECHES ARE TOTALLY RIDIC, seriously, I'm rockin' baggy breeches 'till I die, and I would go so far as to sag my breeches, but nobody wears underwear in this century, so I think I might end up scandalizing my family, which is never hot, you know?
So at the start of this chapter, Hindley is going off to college. It's like Toy Story 3, but without the talking toys or Mr. Potato Head. (Mr. Potato Head was always my favorite character. Of the cast, he seemed the most down-to-earth. Zing! Sorry, that was awful. Without the zing, at least.)
Mr. Earnshaw is getting older, and becoming more and more protective of Heathcliff. He starts to suspect that everyone hates the not-so-little, not-so-gypsy child, and if he sees anyone saying anything amiss to Heathcliff, he immediately gets angry. This leads Heathcliff to become more and more prideful and petty, because no matter how selfish he acts, Nelly and the others won't stop him—after all, they don't want to vex the master.
"Vex" is such a cool word. It really deserves more than meaning "to make angry." It'd be better if it meant "to slap people with a slab of rock that you found inside a volcano."
Now that Hindley is gone, Nelly is hoping things will settle down. But there are still problems in the house, namely because of Joseph the servant.
I had been operating under the misconception, in the last few chapters, that Joseph was Scottish. But several people have set me straight and told me that he's actually from Yorkshire. These Brits and all their silly accents. Is it okay if I just go back to assuming that he speaks gibberish?
Gah! Stop hurling e-cabbages at me! Okay, OKAY! His accent is Yorkshire! YEESH!
Joseph, even at this younger age, is already sermonizing all over the place, and while most of his words fall on deaf ears, Mr. Earnshaw seems to listen to him. Joseph tries to turn Mr. Earnshaw's heart against his daughter Catherine by revealing how unladylike and sinful she is.
However, Mr. Earnshaw's heart is already hard toward Catherine, simply due to the face that Heathcliff loves her more than he loves Mr. Earnshaw. Smartie-pants literary backup quote comin' atcha: "The boy [Heathcliff] would do her bidding in anything, and his [Earnshaw] only when it suited his own inclination."
Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff Heathcliff are very fond of each other. (And by the by, I bet I know what Heathcliff's middle name is. That's right, folks. We've got a Heathcliff H. Heathcliff on our hands.)
Then, one afternoon, Mr. Earnshaw dies. The afternoon is a perfect one, so you know somebody is going to die. Authors only spring bad events on perfect days. Did you know that this was the original scene in the first draft of Tolkien's The Return of the King?
Frodo: Yay, it's a perfect day! Let's board this ship from the Grey Havens and live forever!
Sam: I'm going to miss you, Frodo.
Frodo: I'm going to miss you too, Sam. For the first thousand years or so, at least.
Sam: What?
Frodo: I mean, I can't miss you forever. That would be asking a little too much, don't you think?
Sam: *Sobbing* I wanna live forever! Can't you persuade Gandalf to let me come too? And Pippin and Merry?
Frodo: No way! Gandalf said, while stroking his beard, that only elves and wizards and people who have held the ring and people with blue eyes and blonde hair can go.
Sam: Can you sneak me on board, then? It wouldn't be hard!
Frodo: You silly hobbit! You know if Gandalf found out he would give me a Talking-To.
Sam: Who cares?! I'm going to DIE.
Frodo: He might even call me a fool. Would you like that, Samwise? Would you really like me to get called a fool, just so you can freakin' live forever?
Sam: Frodo—
(The Black Riders gallop up.)
Black Rider: S'up. So, the Ring was actually fake and we're still alive and we still have big lizards.
Frodo: What?
Sam: Oh God.
Black Rider: I mean, seriously, you didn't think that Sauron would actually carry all his power into battle on his ring finger, did you? Right where it could get cut off? He lost the real ring under the couch for a few millennia. He found it on Tuesday.
Sam: That's a bit disappointing.
Black Rider: Now. Who wants to get stabbed first?
What was my point? Oh, yeah. Bad things always happen on perfect days.
So Mr. Earnshaw dies with his daughter Catherine in his lap, and Joseph comes and carries away the body. Now that Mr. Earnshaw is dead, Hindley is the master of Wuthering Heights, and he'll be coming home from college soon with a wife...
Smeyer's thoughts after reading this chapter: In the first draft of Twilight, Stephenie Meyer is inspired by the way Joseph speaks, and decides to have both Edward and Bella speak with Yorkshire accents. This would have been a lot cooler, but her editor said he'd rather Mrs. Meyer have the two lovers speak in strange sappy code-language that only basketcases can understand. Stephenie complied with a giggle.
My thoughts after reading this chapter: I'm wondering how long Nelly can reminisce before she starts getting off track. One person can only remember so much. It's inevitable that she'll start talking about her favorite recipe for yogurt pie in the next chapter.
In Chapter VI: You know, after Twilight, Dan should blog The Lord of the Rings. That would be awesome.
Oh, sorry. In Chapter VI, I will accidentally glue all the pages of the book together and the rest of my blogs will look like this:
gluey gluey gluey gluey gluey gluey glueDAMMMITglueyglueygluey
Topics: Books
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