Blogging Wuthering Heights: Part 6

CoffinMaker is blogging Bella's favorite book, Wuthering Heights. We like Coffin's version better than the original. —Sparkitors

[Sniffles.]

Awww, Hindley grew up fast. Too fast. One chapter he's sadistically throwing things at Heathcliff, the next he's sadistically throwing things at Heathcliff and he has a wife who's helping him.

That's right. Hindley's gotten married while he was away at college, and Nelly immediately begins to dislike the new wife. But she's being a little weird about it. Case in point, this Fancy Pants Quote Numbah One, when Nelly wants to know, "What she was, and where she was born, he never informed us."

When I read "what she was," I scratched my head and chewed my earlobe (bet YOU can't do that) for a few minutes. I suppose Nelly is trying to be all Victorian class system and frown on marrying under one's status and all that, but did she really need Hindley to tell her what his wife was? I mean, obviously she's a human being, unless Hindley's into bestiality. What if Hindley had brought home a pet toad?

Hindley: (At breakfast) Nelly...why did you cook my pet toad a plate of pancakes?

Nelly: What the—oh, your toad! Well, why didn't you tell me it was your toad? I thought it was your new adopted son. Tsk, tsk.

Hindley: No, it's a toad. It needs crickets to eat and a tank to swim in. Not pancakes.

Nelly: Oh, isn't that cute! It's swimming in the syrup!

Another reason Nelly doesn't like the new girl: when the mourners come for Mr. Earnshaw's funeral, the new wife gets really freaked out and says that she's terribly afraid of dying. Nelly answers this in her no-nonsense way, saying that she didn't think Hindley's wife was in any more danger of dying than she was.

I like Nelly. Why didn't Smeyer model Bella after her? Her sensibility would've snapped Edward into shape in no time. (You've been watching me sleep?! Get your sparkly @$$ outta here or I'm getting a restraining order!)

She says she thinks Hindley's wife is "half-silly." Half silly people are no fun. I like whole silly people. It's kind of like how half-dead people aren't really dead. They're just half-dead (and kind of annoying when they bleed on you).

At first, Half-Silly absolutely adores young Catherine, who is old enough to be her sister. But after a while, Half-Silly grows tired (half-tired?) of both Cathy and Heathcliff, and that's when Hindley cracks down.

Do you remember what I said at the beginning of this blog? That one of the only things I know about this novel is that everybody holds a grudge against somebody? It would appear I have not heard wrong, because Hindley's been nursing a big, ugly grudge all these years at college. (I wonder where you nurse a grudge. Does Hindley have man-boobs like Lockwood?)

Hindley makes Heathcliff work long hours on the farm, like the farm boys. It's sort of like a twisted Princess Bride. "Farm boy, work long hours for minimal wage, will you?" "Aaaaaaas yooooooouuuuuuu wiiiiiiiiiiish!"

Hindley doesn't succeed in making Heathcliff's life completely miserable, however, since he can't separate him and Cathy for any substantial period of time. I wonder why not, though. Does Cathy turn into a ravenous HeathBeast (TM) when Heathcliff isn't near her? Does she suffer Heathcliff withdrawal and get puffy bags under her eyes? I know I hate looking at people with puffy bags under their eyes. I keep wondering if the bags are actually...*shudder*...holding something. Ugh. Okay, back to the story.

One day when Cathy and Heathcliff are out past curfew, Hindley locks all the doors and swears he won't let them in. Joseph helps him—he's been having a field day punishing these kids for being so darn sinful.

Nelly stays up, worrying about the two of them. At midnight, Heathcliff shows up, alone. The two begin a conversation, and Nelly's written recollection of the talk seems to be word for word, and DANG. How does Nelly remember all this? I wonder if she inspired the jabberjays in Suzanne Collins' book The Hunger Games. Those things can remember anything they hear, right? Then it's settled. Nelly is a human jabberjay. I wonder how her Heathcliff impression is. (Mine's pretty awesome. It sounds like Barack Obama with strep throat doing his best Lady Gaga impersonation.)

Basically, what happened was that Heath Crunch and Cathy were traipsing out on the moors late. (I'll come up with a good nickname for Cathy later, but right now The Big C will work. Nicknaming tip: if you're ever hard up for a nickname, just take the first letter of the person's name and add "The Big" before it. Works like a charm.) The two decided to pay a visit to the house of the Lintons across the moors, a place called Thrushcross Grange (the same place Lockwood is staying in now). They wanted to see how the Linton children live and how happy they were.

They looked inside the window and saw that the two Linton children were crying. They'd been fighting over who got to hold a puppy. These two are obviously more pampered than Heath Crunch and The Big C, and yet they're crying and pouting. This causes the two to burst out laughing at the silliness of it all.

Good for you, Cathy and Heathcliff, but...bad for you, because the Lintons hear the laughing and sic their dog Skulker on the pair.

See, I've done some research, and I've found that the people of Yorkshire, as a whole, are uncommonly fond of siccing their dogs on foreigners.

Heathcliff sicced his dogs on Lockwood. The Lintons sicced their dogs on Cathy, and she wasn't even a foreigner. It's really just the thrill of the siccing that they do it for. I can assure you that in every hamlet in Yorkshire to this very day, denizens are happily siccing their dogs on every siccable thing in sight. They love siccing. They're sickos. (Zing!)

(A normal Yorkshire day in a normal Yorkshire house.)

Yorkshire Maidservant: Someone at the door, sir.

Yorkshire Landowner: Foreigner?

Yorkshire Maidservant: Foreigner, sir.

Yorkshire Landowner: Right. FFFFFFFFFFFFIDO!!!

(No offense to you if you are from Yorkshire, of course. If you are, please accept my apology and please do not sic your dog on me.)

Heathcliff gets off scot free (this is a Brit lit blog, so I can say that), but Catherine is caught by the dog and dragged back to the Lintons' house. Heathcliff watches as the Linton family finds her and marvels over her wild beauty. He says, to Nelly, as he is recounting this, "I saw they were full of stupid admiration; she is so immeasurably superior to them—to everybody on earth, is she not, Nelly?"

Uh-oh. Looks like we have a little Aryan supremacist on our hands...

And so Heath Crunch says he watched The Big C through the window for a while as they took care of her, but she seemed perfectly happy, so he headed home.

Hindley becomes very vexed when he hears this, because the fact that his sister was caught roaming around the moors like a savage reflects very poorly on him, since he's supposed to be keeping her on the straight and narrow. And "the straight and narrow" does not include the moors.

Smeyer's thoughts after reading: Stephenie Meyer went "Lalalalala!" all throughout this chapter, because of Sensibility Overdose.

Scollins' thoughts after reading: After reading this chapter, Suzanne Collins, author of The Hunger Games, thinks, "Shoot! I should have a creature that can repeat long pieces of information, like Nelly!" She writes the Nellybird into her story. Her editor makes her change its name to jabberjay, because Nellybird sounds silly.

My thoughts after reading: This chapter gave me a hefty blow across the face in the form of a reminder that I'm reading a book, which is a bad thing for any writer to do. If this weren't a book, Heathcliff wouldn't have taken the time to tell the whole long story to Nelly. He would've said "Nelly! Cathy's been captured by the Thrushcross Grangians! Get your dog and follow me!" Also, if this weren't a book, someone would deck Hindley in head with a dead rabbit, because he's a jerk.

In Chapter VII: Nelly realizes that she is the only sensible person in this book, so she promptly leaves it to join the cast of Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen.

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