Post Written By: Chris Stein
In class this week, we've been reading Emily Brontë's 1874 novel Wuthering Heights and analyzing it section by section. The book itself has many parallels to music, but most obviously the theme of love and life struggle. For your convenience, I have included a family tree that includes the two major families in the book. You're Welcome
In Wuthering Heights, Brontë portrays the struggle of two young children as life and "growing up" changes their feelings for one another. In the early stages of their childhood, Catherine and Heathcliff are the best of friends and stick together against the will of the abusive, patriarchal Mr. Earnshaw. As the two children mature, their friendship becomes an unspoken -or seemingly unspoken- love for each other. But when Edgar proposes to Catherine, Heathcliff is emotionally destroyed by her decision to accept and follow through with the marriage. Catherine admits to a servant that she loves Heathcliff but cannot marry him because of his low social status and lack of formal education, so she resorts to marrying a wealthy, well educated man she does not love (a perfect example of what Kanye would call "a woman so heartless").
To get even, Heathcliff marries Isabella, who he has no feelings for whatsoever and now the whole world is being heartless. Kanye would approve. To take the connection further than just a single mediocre hip-hop song, many artists -particularly in the hip-hop/rap world- have recorded songs about love and breakup and life struggles. Songs such as this portray the struggle of the singer's childhood and how they were constantly disappointed and let down. Often times this is entirely false, they did not start at the bottom and now they are not here. Even outside of hip-hop, love and struggle plays a key role in the music and lyrics of many artists, for example Taylor Swift. Known as the queen of breakups, T. Swizzle has more than her fair share of experience in the relationship department and it certainly shows in her songs. Her song "Dear John" about her 2010 plaything John Mayer not so discretely tells how she felt about him in the lyrics "Don't you think I was too young to be messed with? The girl in the dress cried the whole way home. I should've known." Two years, and 4 boyfriends later, Swift comes out with a song on her album RED called I Knew You Were Trouble about One Direction's Harry Styles.
Obviously, T Swizzle is one promiscuous tramp, but she's attractive and she can sing so we'll let her do whatever she wants. Unfortunately, this book isn't quite the same. Wuthering Heights is the epitome of all the unfortunate things that could happen in life. It takes themes from 4th grade relationships, Romeo and Juliet, the greedy nature of society and all Russian novels that begin with struggle, elaborate on the agony of the struggle and end in death, surely causing depression and lasting unhappiness.
