Monday, 2 June 2008

No one mourns the wicked?

A thing I've noticed, in my novel-reading adventures.
The wicked are mourned, they are redeemed, they are missed so wholeheartedly.

In Wuthering Heights, Cathy may lash out at Heathcliff and tell him "nobody loves you - nobody will cry for you when you die", but someone does. Hareton views Heathcliff as more a father than Hindley ever was, and he cries and he mourns when Heathcliff dies - he fills in Heathcliff's grave "with a streaming face", and you can't help but feel sorry for him. Nelly points out that "poor Hareton, the most wronged, was the only one who really suffered much."
For all his wickedness, Heathcliff was a man. Hareton reminds us of that.

...It's in the eyes, in Wuthering Heights. Those Earnshaw eyes, the eyes that save Cathy from Heathcliff's murderous rage, Hareton's eyes, the eyes that haunt Heathcliff until his death - "those infernal eyes", he calls them. They're Catherine's eyes, too, as well as Hindley's.

And he's another one. Hindley may drink himself to distraction, but he aids Isabella as best he can - he's the reason she's able to flee from the Heights, after all.
Hindley tries his best, it must be said. Despite him being a failure of a father to Hareton, of course.

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