The situation of Judith Quixano from Reuben Sachs being raised in a wealthier family is similar to Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. As her family gets larger, they grow poorer, so they send their eldest daughter to her rich side of the family to the Leuniger household. Similarly, Heathcliff was taken in by Mr. Earnshaw’s rich family as an orphan. Hence, both of these characters are almost outsiders in their respective families because they have different parents and are poorer than their the children in the house they grow up in. Although, there is a lot more conflict in Heathcliff’s household with feelings of jealousy and hatred becoming apparent. For instance, Hindley shows an obvious disliking to him and tries to make his life miserable. On the other hand, Judith is close with her cousin Rose who she grows up with and there is no evident conflict between them. Evidently, it is important to keep in mind that Heathcliff was brought into a family he didn’t know, but Judith is cousins with Rose. Thus, it was probably easier to have friendlier relations with the people in the Leuniger house because they were family, and when the Earnshaw’s first met Heathcliff he was a stranger to them. Additionally, both Heathcliff and Judith have feelings for someone who they grew up with and it would be scandalous if something romantic actually happened between them. Notably, Judith’s mother was one of the first people, “whom the gossip about Reuben and her daughter had reached.” Hence, the word “gossip” implies that it is talked about by the family and it could be scandalous if something does happen between them. Therefore, Heathcliff’s and Judith’s situations are broadly similar, but the details of the situations vary.

After reading Oscar Wilde’s “The Ballad of the Reading Gaol” I couldn’t help but make connections between the narrator and to Cathy Linton. Both the narrator and Cathy are realists when it comes to love–the narrator saying that when you love something to let it go, and Cathy is also a realist when it comes to love, as she is with Hareton. There are many terms in this poem that remind me of “Wuthering Heights” just in general. For instance, there are several lines that talk about a wife in a coffin and this reminds me of Catherine Earnshaw. Yet, Wilde repeats the stanza, “I never saw a man who looked/With such a wistful eye/Upon that little tend of blue/Which prisoners call the sky,/“ and I think this stanza is referring to those such as Catherine and Heathcliff who do not ask any questions and simply believe what they are told.

In both of Wilde’s works, there are many dark themes surrounding loved ones. In much of the literature we have read, there has been many examples of inflicting violence acts against family members or those close. The descriptions of cutting and killing with a knife “Ballad of Reading Gaol” reminded me of the early imagery of Catherine’s ghost in Wuthering Heights from a visual point of view, but also the later examples of violence between many family members throughout the novel. For example, when Hareton and Linton come into conflict, and Linton ends up bleeding from the nose. Blood is often used to show that a character has been visually injured, and is reoccurring. Through most of the Victorian Literature we have read, there has been a level violence and physical conflict, and it is rarely ever directed at an outsider. Most of the violence occurs within preexisting relationships.

In reading Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis, I noticed the highly emotive language that is used throughout to describe Wilde’s experiences. Words like “suffering”, “sorrow”, “grey”, and “forgotten” pop out to the reader within the first few paragraphs. This transparency of feeling is juxtaposed by the reluctance in Wuthering Heights. Many times, the reader is left to piece together the pain of many of the main characters–particularly Heathcliff and Catherine–as the characters themselves have a difficult time coming to terms with their suffering.

One connection I found particularly interesting this week is between Wilde’s thoughts on sorrow and Tennyson’s thoughts on grief. Wilde’s thoughts on sorrow as “one very long moment” in which “we can only record its moods” sounds strikingly similar to what Tennyson seems to do in “In Memoriam”. Recording his own moods in sorrow. I find this quite interesting, and wonder what prompted Wilde to write his thoughts on Sorrow.

In Oscar Wilde’s poem, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” he writes from the perspective of a man in jail, witnessing another prisoner who’s being put to death for killing his love. He then takes this physical action of the man killing his love and turns it into an abstract idea that I believe suggests all men kill the things they love through toxic masculinity. Wilde writes, “Yet each man kills the thing he loves, By each let this be heard, Some do it with a bitter look, Some with a flattering word, The coward does it with a kiss, The brave man with a sword!”, and goes on to outline other which ways men can go about killing their loves. I believe this is similar to Heathcliff and Catherine in how the issues between Edgar and Heathcliff drove Cathy to breaking. Their hypermasculinity drove the two men to fight over Cathy in a reductionistic sense that negated her validity as a person with autonomy, consequently killing the thing they loved.

Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaols an epic poem that shared many similarities in themes to Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. The first similarity is the descriptions of death between lovers in both texts. This can be seen in the quote, “He did not wear his scarlet coat/For blood and wine are red/And blood and wine were on his hands/When they found him with the dead/The poor dead woman whom he loved/ And murdered in her bed.” This description seemed almost identical to the circumstances of the death of Catherine Earnshaw, who also died in her bed. In addition, Heathcliff asked to be buried next to her, hence the line of being found with the dead.

Further similarities can be found when Wilde discusses how relationships can bring about death in partners during their youth or during old age. He says, “Some kill their love when they are young, / And some when they are old; / Some strangle with the hands of Lust, / Some with the hands of Gold: / The kindest use a knife, because / The dead so soon grow cold.” Catherine was ‘killed’ by Heathcliff when she was young, while Heathcliff died of sadness when he was much older. In addition, when Catherine died, it was snowing, windy, and cold.

A connection I made was between “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”, by Oscar Wilde and Wuthering Heights. The lines “Some kill their love when they are young,

And some when they are old;

Some strangle with the hands of Lust,

Some with the hands of Gold:

The kindest use a knife, because

The dead so soon grow cold.

Some love too little, some too long,

Some sell, and others buy;

Some do the deed with many tears,

And some without a sigh:

For each man kills the thing he loves,

Yet each man does not die.”

remind me of the love battle between Catherine, Heathcliff and Linton. In the end, everybody kills the things they love in different ways. The poem could be used as a representation of how Catherine killed her love for all of the men in her life and in turn ended up killing herself and Heathcliff too. There is a repetition of love killing the people involved.

On this week of “David connects this class with his other Revolutions of the 19th Century class,” David will once again connect this class with his other Revolutions of the 19th Century class! After my discussion about The Picture of Dorian Gray, which was written about five years before his imprisonment, it’s a bit eerie to read Wilde as being so deeply religious and spiritual in “De Profundis”, as Dorian Gray what was a fairly sardonic and cynical novel. As a gay man, no doubt he frequently contended with the notion of his homosexuality and of how it affected his status in nigh-puritanical Victorian England. I wonder then to what extent Wilde’s newfound spirituality was merely a result of severe emotional and physical repression during his imprisonment. With nothing else to turn to, it’s easy to surmise that he was desperate enough to turn to the same God that allegedly hated those like him in order to perhaps ease the suffering he felt. It makes me a little sad, is all.

Between these two texts, there is the notion that to love something is to necessitate a killing of that something. And in both cases, I cannot help but wonder if the love causing death is because the love is always unattainable. Heathcliff is not the direct cause of his love’s death, but he does take part in it, and in especial attention to his lament whence he finds her dead, it seems his love originates, and the death of his love, allows him to turn Catherine into his ideal. He can now say (since she is dead and voiceless) that she was his cure, and he will never be adequately contradicted on this notion. Likewise, the subject of Wilde’s poem kills his wife, whom Wilde repeatedly stated he loved, in what to me seems the interest of preservation. Love is a labor, and Wilde notes this, and it is far easier to kill a love, to keep it safe and idealized, than to recognize that whole and wholly yielding love is but a fantasy. This interpretation for Wilde’s poem is reaffirmed by the continual reference to Christian imagery, and with that reference, Wilde is juxtaposing human love (which is weak and flawed) with God’s love or the love of God (which is full and perfect). However, I do not read this as Wilde supporting Christianity, but rather using that Christian conceptualization of love as a cultural touchpoint for the grander message he is attempting to convey.