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‘'The fields were edged with hawthorn, bare of leaves yet still throwing thorny sprays up to the blue December sky. The haw berries were flat crimson like the dead blood of the year, but the rosehips were a sign of hope, little lamps shining from the hedgerows. A fat robin watched from a fence post, its eye bright with curiosity, and in a thicket of oak, the glossy leaves of the holly gleamed like a secret. When the frost was hard, we slipped and slid across the frozen brown ruts left by the plough and the whole world glittered crazily, buzzards crying overhead. Sometimes the mist hung low, and we walked in silence across the fields, listening to the dripping of the trees, the muffled sound of horse hooves from the lane. Ahead of me, girls rising out of mist like wraiths, then disappearing.''
A girl is running in the moors, under the lowering sky, her hair loose like dark water in the wind. She appears through the fog, a solitary spectre full of the ruggedness of the Yorkshire moors. A ghost girl filled with endless love for her land, her perfect place on Earth.
‘'Sometimes a place imprisons your mind, your spirit, and there is no telling why.''
This girl will not be dissuaded by those who love to narrate their cautionary tales to alter her nature. You could not blame a beast for following its own nature'', she replies as she finds solace in the isolation of the moors, the mystery of the fig, the tender silence of the graveyard as she wanders among the tombstones. The frost at her window is her calmness. Are these fingers tapping? Begging to be let in?
‘'How strange we must seem to God, looking down on us. The earth He gave us stretches in all directions, is full of riches, yet all we do is run around in the same little circles, like poor little mice scratching an existence.''
Emily cannot be cooped up between two walls. She wants to feel the wind on her face, to meet the drifters of the moors, people at the periphery of society. Men like her immortal creation. Heathcliff. The hypocrisy of the affluent, especially against young women who are despised by members of their own sex is repulsive. The fate of a breeding mare who submits to her husband is worse than death. She won't speak unless she has to. Empty talks are not for her. Hers is the gift to create dark wonders.
‘'I have a mind of my own, am not some puppet for you to play with.''‘'I am here.''
Karen Powell creates an ode to the greatest mind in World Literature As Haworth comes alive in front of our eyes, so is Emily's personality unfolded to almost frightening perfection. Her Emily is my Emily. Her Emily is THE Emily to those of us who cannot describe our adoration for her and her masterpiece in plain words. Using the images of windows, candles, branches, abandoned estates, and the haunting presence of a mysterious man who keeps crossing Emily's path, Powell foreshadows the birth of the greatest novel ever written. Wuthering Heights. The Sinister Bible of Literature.
‘'I've always believed that Satan must have set out to be a good angel but could not help himself. It was not in his nature. I want my hero to be just as bad as compelling. If he cannot have what he wants, then the whole world must pay for his suffering, his pain.''
Do you know what Karen Powell's greatest gift is? Yes, she writes in an extraordinarily visceral and lyrical manner. She communicates the character and feelings of the Bronte family to perfection. She paints the Yorkshire land with words to invite us into Emily's world. However, no writer has ever managed to describe Emily's feelings for the creation of Heathcliff with the kind of accuracy and directness that make you believe she has held a seance to converse with the spirit of Emily. In our days, the ones who speak ill of him and Wuthering Heights, who deem him as ‘toxic' - because this is a fashionable word and they know no other- are mainly women serving a political leftist agenda. Unaware of the term ‘anti-hero'. Unaware of how to differentiate between the males they read in one of their sex-crazed romances and thrillers (soon to be turned into a MAJOR MOTION PICTURE...) and two people who loved each other not wisely but too well. The ones whose...sensitivity a.k.a. illiterate and brainless existence need trigger warnings to even read the newspaper. Well, guess what? You'll always be the mindless minority.
This wild, uncompromising woman, this wraith of the moors wrote ONE book. One! And gained immortality by creating THE most beautiful, dark, perplexing, complex, shattering novel in the History of Literature. What exactly have YOU done with your life?
Those who deny her power are advised to leave the marches, have a shower and try to at least finish primary school.
The best novel written about the best writer who ever graced the Earth.
‘'It is late. Hours since Papa would have locked the front door for the night. But look, there is the glow of a candle upstairs, coming from my bedroom window.''
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