Many years ago, though not that many years, I made a list of literary monsters. I scribbled it in an exquisite Japanese diary, which had nearly transparent pages, illustrated with delicate flowers. 

 Monsters are not real, I told myself – they stay on the page- and yet the list got longer.  This week I fell ill reading a Gothic novel -there’s always some virus going around – and I tossed and turned, couldn’t sleep, tried to nap in vain, sat on the couch listlessly. Finally I drank a lot of herbal tea and  recovered.

But the illness began while I was rereading Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, a disturbing Gothic novel which I used to read as a romance. But I didn’t always revere Emily as I do now. When I first read Wuthering at 12 I was disappointed. I had expected Emily to be another Charlotte, and Wuthering Heights to be like Jane Eyre.

Years passed. One night, when I was jittery about being alone, and stayed with a friend, one of her roommates gave me her copy of Wuthering Heights.  She pressed it on me because she considered it the greatest English novel, a novel about soulmates, about separated halves of one person, and Catherine leaves her soulmate Heathcliff because she is materialistic and wants the comforts of being a rich man’s wife.. 

I have read Wuthering many, many times. There is an unforgettable scene in which Catherine storms out of the kitchen, and locks herself in her room, furious because her husband Edgar drives away Heathcliff, her childhood friend and would-be lover, who had returned after many years away. Catherine accuses Edgar of cowardice, since he does not drive out Heathcliff himself. Instead, he sets some strong, stocky servants on him. Strong Heathcliff lopes away unscathed.

And then there is illness as metaphor. Because of the violence and the aftermath of her violent emotions, Catherine becomes ill, as tends to happen in Victorian novels.  And no one heeds her until it is almost too late, because the housekeeper does not believe her. So is the housekeeper the real monster?

Catherine and Heathcliff metamorphose into monsters.  Catherine had loved Heathcliff, with whom she grew up, but deserted him to marry rich, soft Edgar Linton. Heathcliff disappears, and returns many years later, never saying where he’d been.  But Heathcliff revenges himself on Edgar and Catherine by marrying, then torturing, Cathy’s sister-in-law, Isabella.  The revenge continues after Catherine’s death.  Yet Heathcliff is truly in hell.  At one point, he digs up Catherine’s grave.  Eerily, she has not discomposed.

There are many monsters in Wuthering Heights. The second generation, however, has a chance of redemption..

So what is a monster? Is it Frankenstein’s monster? Is it a psychological state? The word is derived from the Latin monstrum, which means “a divine omen indicating misfortune, an evil omen, a portent.”

It can also mean “monstrous man” (monstrum hominis) or “monstrous woman” (monstrum mulieris). And in Wuthering Heights, the monsters are human.

The gradual estrangement of Catherine and Heathcliff triggers monstrous behavior. But the arc of their story begins far back in the past.