Emily Bronte
Cime Tempestose

The definition of 'novel' has been enriched over time with various meanings and nuances: whether it's the tale of a journey, actual or metaphorical, or the development of a character in a certain historical and social context, or even, simply, the adventures that lead to the start of a love story, it ultimately indicates a journey, an evolution, towards reaching a goal, a purpose.

This is not entirely true for "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte, a work that, although it deviates from the narrative mechanisms of the novel in the strictest sense, fully embodies the concept of the 'romantic'. The analysis of the individual characters clearly clarifies the premise: none of them complete a journey, but all, even after years, remain bound to a situation of stasis, either as victims or as perpetrators. Heathcliff, who appears to be the true protagonist of the novel, returns suddenly, seems changed, but nothing is known of this change, and his subsequent actions are still determined by the ancient offense and his unchanged feeling for Catherine. Catherine herself, although married and immersed in the comforts of Thrushcross Grange, has true dignity as a character only in relation to Heathcliff. And so Edgar, Isabella, Hareton: their condition is once again determined by the bond between Heathcliff and Catherine, which stands out as the only undisputed hero protagonist of the novel. A hero who withstands time, conventions, life, and death and who denies himself, transforming into hatred, just to affirm his strength and uniqueness.

However, love, this hero violently described by Bronte, as a hero and protagonist of a novel is itself exposed to the risks of incredulity and romantic idealization, which is, by definition, fiction, unreality. One might wonder, therefore, what a novel can truly serve given the Platonic discrepancy between idea and reality. Only if I go to Wuthering Heights do I see the moorland, and amidst the wind, I seem to hear that faint voice, ideal, real, claiming to be Cathy and that she has returned home, and it manages to haunt me, as it haunts Heathcliff. Because that voice is pure, incorrupt, and is so, as it should be, but as it often is not.

Only Literature gives us the privilege of contemplating the essence of that voice, beyond the contingencies and corruption of reality. And this cannot be useless or meaningless. In this regard, reference could be made to the Aristotelian catharsis, which views poetry as a source of purification of emotion and therefore, as such, can effectively change the life of the individual. But, being in the Romantic era, I prefer to remember Mr. Shelley, author of a fundamental piece for Romanticism, "A Defense of Poetry", in which he exalts the power of genius and imagination, stating that Poetry, yes, can change the world, because it renders epic, exceptional, and, we might say, romantic, the everyday life.