After reading the Levy novel Ruben Sachs I could not help but look into the life and inspiration of the author. It is clear she is writing her work from a feminist perspective and commenting on the patriarchal nature of the jewish family structure and community. We watch her character Judith live and deal with these circumstance which reminded me of Pip’s journey to become a gentlemen only Pip did not have to face the discrimination based on religion and gender. Because of this I did not want to make the coming of age comparison, but thought of the inspiration of Wilde’s work. When he writes it is with such passion to be understood and I feel the same sense in Levy’s work as well. The two knew each other and Wilde published Levy’s poems and short stories in his publication Women’s World. I find their relation intriguing and picture the two spending days talking about what it is like to be hated and outcast from society because of something fundamental about their existence. It is interesting to me that during the same time two people who face such different form of oppression knew each other and were helping the other create.I wonder if great art has to come from a lace of pain and outsiderness, or is it this lonely feeling that allows writers to reflect on the world around them?

While reading Wilde’s account of prison I could not help but think of Catherine in Withering Heights. I made the connection based on each persons head-space and how they felt about their surroundings. Catherine was a free women technically in the eyes of the law, but once she married Linton she was doomed to live forever in a marriage that reminds me of the prison Wilde describes. For women of that time marriage was a type of prison. They often did not get a large selection of suitable men to marry and one they were legally married the rights of the women were hard to come by. Even if she got out of a bad or unhappy marriage inevitable social and finical consequences existed that lasted a lifetime. the reader sees this in Withering heights where this prison of marriage eventually kills Catherine. Each account is filled with despair and a calling for a different life and circumstance, for example, in Wilde’s account in “De Profundis” he says, “Out of my nature has come wild despair; an abandonment to grief that was piteous even to look at; terrible and impotent rage; bitterness and scorn; anguish that wept aloud; misery that could find no voice; sorrow that was dumb. I have passed through every possible mood of suffering.” when reading those lines i can picture Catherine looking out the widow of her home wishing for her beloved and the life she could have outside the prison she inhabits.

The complex histories and connections to the past these first few chapters describe paired with the appearance of Catherine’s ghost made me wonder about what the novel is trying to say about connections with the past. The scene in which Lockwood encounters the ghost is ambiguous, Lockwood had been dreaming leading up to the encounter and it is not clear to the reader if what he is experiencing is real or another dream. I think this ambiguity adds to the deeper meaning behind the desperation of the figure of Catherine. The stories Lockwood is told about the history of Wuthering Heights and its inhabitants have a melancholy feel. Even the way the physical setting is described invokes an unsettling feeling. Which is mirrored in the appearance of Catherine’s ghost and also in the different poems about child labor we read for last class. In “The Chimney Sweeper” there is a line that reminds me Catherine’s plea to Lockwood, “A little black thing among the snow/Crying weep, weep, in notes of woe!” this is describing a child lost in the starkness of the snow crying because of the labor he is forced to preform. This image coupled with the image of Catherine gives me the same feeling. Desperation. The line that she speaks even echos the child’s weeping, “…but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, ‘Let me in—let me in!” I am looking forward to seeing how this theme of melancholy and the past develops as we learn more about these characters and their stories. Right now i would predict that the ghost represents the characters unwillingness to let got of their trauma and cope with life after tragedy so this leaves them in a perpetual state of unrest and sadness.