Skip to main content

Heights of Evil

Illustration by ChatGPT

Evil has a peculiar charm, a charm which seems to belong to an alien world. But somewhere deep in our hearts we know that it is our own world, not an alien world. We romanticise it as Lost Paradise, Rama Rajya, Utopia, or whatever. That ‘romance’ is what I love about Emily Bronte’s novel, Wuthering Heights.

Emily died at the age of 29. Most Romantics died young. But those Romantics like Keats and Shelley imagined beautiful worlds and died because their souls knew that such beautiful worlds were impossible. Emily was born just three years before Keats died and four years before Shelley followed Keats. But the literary age was changing to the more prudish Victorian morality as Emily grew up.

Victorian morality was more than prudish. Women were supposed to be the western counterparts of India’s Satis, women who immolated themselves on their husbands’ funeral pyres. How could a woman like Emily Bronte, daughter of a Christian parson, born and brought up in a parsonage in a very rustic background, write a novel like Wuthering Heights?

Wuthering Heights is the gospel of evil. The satanic Heathcliff is the hero and the angelic characters are all too impotent even to be anything worthwhile. Heathcliff would be a hero with a halo in today’s blockbuster movies. He is driven by bitterness and vindictiveness because history has been heartless towards him. He would have been the most heroic figure in today’s politics that seeks to wreak vengeance on the wrongs of some antique relics.

Angels weep in this novel. Devils carry the sengol, the sceptre. All because of the wrongs of history.

The devils dwell on the hills of the Wuthering Heights. And the angels are confined to the valley of Thrushcross Grange.

Who is above and who is below matters a lot in the moral edifice of the society.

Wuthering Heights suggests that evil is not a singular force but a complex interplay of human motivations, societal pressures, and individual actions. This novel will teach you why goodness is not easy on the earth as long as human beings exist on it. In spite of all religions. In spite of all moral codes. In spite of all gods and gurus.

This novel keeps haunting me with a strange melody that I love for reasons that the devil knows.

PS. This post is a part of Blogchatter Half Marathon


Labels

Labels:

Comments

  1. Anuradha sowmyanarayananAugust 28, 2024 at 9:18 PM

    Wuthering Heights represents human nature at its darkest. It represents the fatal and selfish side of love. Moreover, the good and evil in humanity are outlined through characters like Catherine and Heathcliff. Their love is fatal not only to them but also to everyone around them.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 28, 2024 at 9:21 PM

      Passion reigns supreme there. As in the human world. Up to this day.

      Delete
  2. Yamini MacLeanAugust 28, 2024 at 9:58 PM

    Hari OM
    Here's a confession; I've never read WH. Was forced to read Jane Eyre for English at school. Those Bronte's sure had a bleak opinion of m/f relationships. Goodness struggles in all their characters. YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 29, 2024 at 6:36 AM

      They weren't a happy family apparently. Or maybe there was a streak of crankiness in the family genes.

      Delete
  3. Liz A.August 29, 2024 at 7:26 AM

    I read this when I was about 12. Way too young. I should reread it as I barely remember it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AmbicaAugust 29, 2024 at 9:37 AM

    I listened to the audio book recently, and then decided that I should read it. I did romanticise it when I read it in my 20s, but now, I see the evil that you talk about. However, life has so many shades and we live with our shadows all through.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 29, 2024 at 10:13 AM

      The evil in the novel is so captivating that it's easy to romanticise it.

      Delete
  5. vanderloostAugust 30, 2024 at 4:46 PM

    My favourite classic. I remember we were all drawn to Heathcliff as a devilishly brooding hero.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ayodhya: Kingdom of Sorrows

T he Sarayu carried more tears than water. Ayodhya was a sad kingdom. Dasaratha was a good king. He upheld dharma – justice and morality – as best as he could. The citizens were apparently happy. Then, one day, it all changed. One person is enough to change the destiny of a whole kingdom. Who was that one person? Some say it was Kaikeyi, one of the three official wives of Dasaratha. Some others say it was Manthara, Kaikeyi’s chief maid. Manthara was a hunchback. She was the caretaker of Kaikeyi right from the latter’s childhood; foster mother, so to say, because Kaikeyi had no mother. The absence of maternal influence can distort a girl child’s personality. With a foster mother like Manthara, the distortion can be really bad. Manthara was cunning, selfish, and morally ambiguous. A severe physical deformity can make one worse than all that. Manthara was as devious and manipulative as a woman could be in a men’s world. Add to that all the jealousy and ambition that insecure peo...
31 comments
Read more

Abdullah’s Religion

O Abdulla Renowned Malayalam movie actor Mohanlal recently offered special prayers for Mammootty, another equally renowned actor of Kerala. The ritual was performed at Sabarimala temple, one of the supreme Hindu pilgrimage centres in Kerala. No one in Kerala found anything wrong in Mohanlal, a Hindu, praying for Mammootty, a Muslim, to a Hindu deity. Malayalis were concerned about Mammootty’s wellbeing and were relieved to know that the actor wasn’t suffering from anything as serious as it appeared. Except O Abdulla. Who is this Abdulla? I had never heard of him until he created an unsavoury controversy about a Hindu praying for a Muslim. This man’s Facebook profile describes him as: “Former Professor Islahiaya, Media Critic, Ex-Interpreter of Indian Ambassador, Founder Member MADHYAMAM.” He has 108K followers on FB. As I was reading Malayalam weekly this morning, I came to know that this Abdulla is a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind Kerala , a fundamentalist organisation. ...
10 comments
Read more

Lucifer and some reflections

Let me start with a disclaimer: this is not a review of the Malayalam movie, Lucifer . These are some thoughts that came to my mind as I watched the movie today. However, just to give an idea about the movie: it’s a good entertainer with an engaging plot, Bollywood style settings, superman type violence in which the hero decimates the villains with pomp and show, and a spicy dance that is neatly tucked into the terribly orgasmic climax of the plot. The theme is highly relevant and that is what engaged me more. The role of certain mafia gangs in political governance is a theme that deserves to be examined in a good movie. In the movie, the mafia-politician nexus is busted and, like in our great myths, virtue triumphs over vice. Such a triumph is an artistic requirement. Real life, however, follows the principle of entropy: chaos flourishes with vengeance. Lucifer is the real winner in real life. The title of the movie as well as a final dialogue from the eponymous hero sugg...
4 comments
Read more

Empuraan and Ramayana

Maggie and I will be watching the Malayalam movie Empuraan tomorrow. The tickets are booked. The movie has created a lot of controversy in Kerala and the director has decided to impose no less than 17 censors on it himself. I want to watch it before the jingoistic scissors find its way to the movie. It is surprising that the people of Kerala took such exception to this movie when the same people had no problem with the utterly malicious and mendacious movie The Kerala Story (2023). [My post on that movie, which I didn’t watch, is here .] Empuraan is based partly on the Gujarat riots of 2002. The riots were real and the BJP’s role in it (Mr Modi’s, in fact) is well-known. So, Empuraan isn’t giving the audience any falsehood as The Kerala Story did. Moreover, The Kerala Story maligned the people of Kerala while Empuraan is about something that happened in the faraway Gujarat quite long ago. Why are the people of Kerala then upset with Empuraan ? Because it tells the truth, M...
13 comments
Read more

Empuraan – Review

Revenge is an ancient theme in human narratives. Give a moral rationale for the revenge and make the antagonist look monstrously evil, then you have the material for a good work of art. Add to that some spices from contemporary politics and the recipe is quite right for a hit movie. This is what you get in the Malayalam movie, Empuraan , which is running full houses now despite the trenchant opposition to it from the emergent Hindutva forces in the state. First of all, I fail to understand why so much brouhaha was hollered by the Hindutvans [let me coin that word for sheer convenience] who managed to get some 3 minutes censored from the 3-hour movie. The movie doesn’t make any explicit mention of any of the existing Hindutva political parties or other organisations. On the other hand, Allahu Akbar is shouted menacingly by Islamic terrorists, albeit towards the end. True, the movie begins with an implicit reference to what happened in Gujarat in 2002 after the Godhra train burnin...
8 comments
Read more