ENG233/British Women Writers: The last on "Wuthering Heights"

This is something that had not occurred to me until I read the preface to my book - which, as I think I mentioned in an earlier post, is very, very old. Therefore, the guy who wrote the preface was from long, long ago, and he's probably very old himself or dead now. He pointed out that the imagination of the writer is so apparent in the novel because it is a work of imagination - Emily Bronte's imaginative soul is sunk into the cornerstones of this story.

I agree with this, more than I knew until I had it said to me so frankly. So often, a story can be enchanting, intriguing, creative, and explosive, all at once, but in the reading of it and the writing of it, the story has clearly been tamed. This might have been the conscious effort of a writer or his or her editor, but it could just as well have been a failure on the writer's part to dig up the whole story as he or she found it, and the resulting work is not a complete archeological find. This is not to say that this kind of writing is therefore worse or better than the other kind - it's the way most people write, and it's prevalent in literature published today. I know I write that way! It's very rare, and very hard, to write something that goes without those filters that tame and control writing. It becomes as much a mental as a physical effort to force the imagination, whole and alive, through the funnel of one's being and onto a page. I think the incredible life in this novel is due to Emily Bronte's ability to do that - she somehow dug out a story in one piece, and it is an untamed thing. I don't have to like it to adm