One-shots of fascinating, tragic, beautiful and little-known true love stories. Most are from history. Some are from legends and myths. All of them have touched my heart in some way, and I hope they touch yours too.
Oh, and I've also made a graphic...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Time Period: 1847, Rural England Source: Emily Bronte's Novel Song: Soundtrack and clips from a great movie adaptation *video can be found above*
•·················•·················•
"Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being."
•·················•·················•
Yes, yes, this is not a historical couple, but damn did their love ever inspire some of the greatest lines ever written. Thank you, Emily Bronte.
Now, to me this is not exactly a beautiful, inspiration love story but rather a story about two things: (1) a destructive, obsessive love that ruins their lives, and at the same time (2) a life that's too uptight and 'civilized' to allow for passion to be expressed, only to be bottled up, which feeds right back into (1). You'll see what I mean.
It's a classic work of literature, so it's full of big literary themes that are absolutely central to the love story at hand and, I think, make it all the more beautiful.
So let's begin.
The story begins in a peculiar way, because a random Mr. Lockwood is a new tenant at Thrushcross Grange, a big estate out in the English moors. Nearby is the neighboring estate called Wuthering Heights, where his new landlord, Heathcliff, lives. The vibes are off over there. Heathcliff is really mean, and there are two weird kids hanging out and looking terrified. It's gothic literature - everything is just really creepy.
There's even this room he stumbles upon, where "Catherine Heathcliff" has been inscribed into the ledge of the bed. The room is a bit of a weird shrine for someone named Catherine, and Lockwood falls asleep while he's reading her diary. He is awoken by some branch tapping at the window, but when he opens it to push the branch away, a ghost's hand reaches up and grabs his. He screams, and Heathcliff runs upstairs furious that Lockwood entered his Catherine-shrine. Lockwood says it's haunted, and Heathcliff says he knows. When you're reading this part, you just hate Heathcliff. He is cruel and rough but then, as Lockwood is leaving the room, he hears Heathcliff crying to Cathy, asking her to come back.
Lockwood, curious of course, wants to know why things are so off over at Wuthering Heights. He asks Nelly, the servant who knew Heathcliff growing up, what happened to him to make him like this. The story he gets is something he was not expecting.
The story is actually told from Nelly's point of view, because she was there right from the beginning and saw it all unfold. Nelly was also trusted many times with both Catherine and Heathcliff's innermost feelings, even when they wouldn't confess them to each other. So she's a perfect narrator.
