Other Lovers (Love, Sex, Poetry, Peace) by Natalia Rachel, Heathcliff Unbound by Robin Robby

 

Other Lovers (Love, Sex, Poetry Peace) by Natalia Rachel 

I mean this in the best way but Natalia Rachel's novel in verse, Other Lovers (Love, Sex, Poetry, Peace) reads like a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

I mean that it is a raw, unfiltered, emotionally realistic book about a woman's struggles with romance, dating, sex, relationships, and her own self-worth.

The book is told partly through poetry and partly through first person prose about Lena, a woman who goes through various moments in her love life. She discusses bad romances, sexual desires, emotional openness, fixations and obsessions, emotional compatibility, partner violence, heartbreak, and embarking on new relationships. All with a deft, witty, and insightful hand.

The free verse poetry is structured and confessional. It captures the confusion, sadness, anger, and hope of modern romance. “Kiss of Death” details an abusive relationship. Lena tells her former lover “I let you/Kiss me/Into some kind of/Slow soul death.” He enchants her with love bombing and physical affection. She is captivated though her older self knows that she is in for heartbreak.

Later the picture becomes clear when Lena learns that his kisses come with a price tag. “But also with/Incredible demand/Claiming my body/And banishing/My spirit.” The price of this toxic relationship is the banishment of her free will.

She looks for a man to soothe the abused girl that she once was but instead he adds to her trauma. By the end, Lena has no choice but to end her relationship before she loses herself.

Rachel's prose provides immediacy, raw vulnerability, sardonic insight, and a world weary survivor's instinct. 

“Bad Bitch Good Girl” for example is about Lena feeling caught between the two extremes of being a bitch or a good girl. It's similar to the “Madonna-Whore” Complex where women are objectified into various categories either the sweet nurturing virgin or the passionate sexual nymph and the twain are not supposed to meet. Lena questions these roles wondering why men don't see the whole complex woman instead of what they want to see.

This chapter also discusses Lena’s relationship with Leonardo after an unhappy marriage and divorce. Rediscovering her passions, her relationship with Leonardo is strictly erotic, sexual, and without long term commitment. 

It is a relationship that is not bound to last. When Lena has a flashback of abuse, Leonardo says a few platitudes but lets her suffer through them alone. When Leonardo reveals that he has to leave because of a family emergency, Lena just lets him go. A relationship built solely on sex is not one that allows for emotional complications like PTSD and family strife.

Besides relationships and love, Other Lovers also reveals that Lena is on a journey of personal discovery. One of the final chapters, ”Little Gifts in the Sand,” reveals her resilience. 

Even though she had a long string of bad relationships, Lena realized that she emerged stronger through them. She says, "I rise up/Eventually/Glorious/A phoenix returned.” Like a phoenix she emerged from the flames of unhappiness and became a more centered person with a richer heart, wiser bones, a more humbled heart, and sharper wit. She may not have found love, but she is aware of who she is, what she wants, and she is determined to get it.

Lena learned that being in a relationship is fine but the best and strongest relationship one can have is with themselves.

Heathcliff Unbound by Robin Robby 

I admit that I love to read and write fanfiction. I am always curious about the other aspects of my favorite characters. Where they came from, what is in their future, and what goes on when we're not looking. Fanfiction satisfies my curiosity that wants to fill in those unspoken blanks. 

Robin Robby appears to like fanfiction as well. 

After writing two books that focus on Jane Austen as a lead character, Jane Austen’s Totally Unexpected New York Adventure and Dear Emperor, Yours Jane, Robby switched gears to focus on another giant from English Literature. He focused on the world of Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte and the brooding, arrogant, passionate Heathcliff.

In Heathcliff Unbound Robby focuses on Heathcliff’s missing years from when he was exiled from Wuthering Heights and his beloved Catherine Earnshaw to when he returned to the Heights, wealthy, domineering, and seeking revenge on those who wronged him.

This novelette takes Heathcliff to the United States where he works for a shipping merchant named Mercer and catches the eye of his independent intelligent daughter, Victoria. However this location is a mere stepping stone to eventually return to Wuthering Heights and Catherine. 

This gives a more modern analytical look at Heathcliff. He is every bit the brooding toxic Byronic anti-hero that Bronte describes him, which makes him detestable in my eyes but romantic in many others’. 

Most of Heathcliff's time is spent moping about the Heights while working for Mercer. He develops a head for business and is able to earn a decent living. A living which will ultimately fund his return to gloat at the scoffers who called him “a foundling G&_$y brat” and made his early years miserable.

 In fact he is so successful at the business that if it weren't for Heathcliff's preordained fate foretold by Bronte, one would wonder why he doesn't just use his business acumen to become an American tycoon and move on with his life. But he wouldn't be Heathcliff otherwise. 

Victoria is a unique presence because she is the exact opposite from Catherine. Steady to Catherine's vulnerable. Intelligent to Catherine's passion. Sharp wit to Catherine's outbursts and withdrawals. Independent to Catherine's neediness. She entertains a relationship with this newcomer and even though she is attracted to Heathcliff, this relationship is not the be all and end all for either of them.

Victoria is merely transitory, a temporary release of buried passions, flickered briefly and ends just as briefly. Victoria thinks that Heathcliff is unlike anyone she has ever met before. Heathcliff thinks that Victoria is a means to an end. He is saving his strongest and deepest feelings for the girl that he left behind.

This novelette is not meant to change anyone's feelings for Heathcliff. It's more of an additional couple of chapters to a larger story to fill in the blanks until his fated return. It's fanfiction but it's interesting fanfiction.

Classics Corner: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: Romance Classic About the Dangers of Unbridled Passion, Between Unlikable Characters.

Classics Corner : Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: Romance About The Dangers of Unbridled Passion,  Between Unlikable Characters

By Julie Sara Porter,  Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers:There are many who find Wuthering Heights, the standard for classic romance, and Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, the ultimate literary couple: brooding, troubled, passionate but always romantic. I am sure there are many who darn it all, believe they should somehow have been happy ever after. Unfortunately, I am not one of those Readers.

I have such a complicated relationship with the Emily Bronte novel. I like the idea of it, the passion between two outsiders, and I love the Brontes as authors and individuals. They were creative and imaginative women, who because of a fairly isolated childhood, they and their brother created and wrote fantasy worlds and stories. Then as the women matured,  Emily, Anne, and Charlotte co-authored a book of poems and wrote three individual novels that they published as a unit: Emily's Wuthering Heights, Anne's Agnes Grey, and Charlotte's Jane Eyre. I admire their creativity,  tenacity, and Jane Eyre is one of my favorite novels. Period.

 So what I'm saying is that I wish I liked Wuthering Heights better,  but every time I read it,  I find it uncomfortable and not  romantic with characters who are passionate but abusive and possessive in their passion. I find it more about the idea of love than love itself like two teenagers who keep insisting that they are in love, will run off get married and stay happy (ignoring the unfinished education, children born before the parents are ready, and the inevitable divorce that results) and what do Mom and Dad have to say about that. It's about two thoroughly unlikable characters that insist that the only people who matter are themselves and spend most of the novel making the other characters, each other, and themselves suffer.

Catherine and Heathcliff's relationship begins when they are children and Heathcliff is adopted by Catherine's father as a playmate for her in replace of the whip that she asked for. (Though in their insightful analysis The Madwoman in the Attic, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gruber suggest that Heathcliff acts as "whip" exhibiting physical violence such as destroying her older brother Hindley's violin, on Catherine's subconscious behalf.)
Though he is welcomed as a best friend by Catherine, he is disliked by Hindley and after his and Catherine's father's death,  Heathcliff gets treated as a servant.
As Catherine grows older, she is befriended by the Lintons, a more socially acceptable pair of friends. Even though Catherine and Heathcliff begin a passionate affair, Hindley separates them by arranging Catherine's marriage to Edgar Linton. A jealous Heathcliff is sent away and then returns mysteriously wealthy and ready to seek vengeance on the Earnshaw and Linton families for keeping him apart from Catherine.

Heathcliff is a character for which the so-called "Abuse Excuse" was invented.
"I was miserable as a child so I will be miserable as an adult and make everyone else miserable as well," is their credo. He takes over the Earnshaw estate Wuthering Heights and dominates Hindley's son, Hareton so he treats him as a servant in the same manner that Hareton's father treated him.
Heathcliff also receives the attention of Isabella Linton, Edgar's younger sister and then he pushes Isabella to run away with him where he instantly tires of her,  systematically abuses her and destroys her self-worth because her family hurt him. His and Isabella's unhappy marriage ends in  a separation in which Isabella gives birth to a sickly son, Linton, who is also used in Heathcliff's revenge campaign.
 Every time that he hurts someone, particularly Isabella who is more or less an innocent bystander in Heathcliff's passion, this Reader keeps wanting to say "This is the guy who enchanted millions of readers? Is there another Heathcliff that I don't know about?"

Now I admit, I have a fondness for anti-heroes and I don't mind characters with troubled backgrounds. There are some like Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man or Gustave Flaubert's Emma Bovary
(or most recently read Amethyst's Victoria and Tancredi Raven)
 who are certainly victimized by their social status, race, gender, or unfortunate circumstances,
 to the point where the reader knows that things won't end well. They still come across as fascinating even when they are trapped by their circumstances because they at least try to challenge them despite  not because of them. They seem to say, "This stuff is happening to me so I will do this anyway. I may go down but at least I'll be myself while I'm doing so." Not "I am doing this BECAUSE of my background and no other reason." Heathcliff never seems to get beyond the troubled childhood past in a way that makes this Reader root for him.
There are other anti-heroic characters that are fascinating because they are so charming, troubled childhood or not like Vanity Fair's Becky Sharp and What Makes Sammy Run's Sammy Glick (who as many will recall was one of my favorite read books from 2017). They may draw characters
 into their confidence, but only the most foolish of characters would leave before checking
their pockets, purses, and probably their drinks and backs afterward. Even when the anti-heroes are more brooding and serious, they show a dry sense of humor and snarkiness that can be amusing at times.
 However what sets these characters apart from Heathcliff is besides their superficial charm, they also show modicums of humanity and vulnerability to show that they are more than someone who lives a life of gray morality. These characters show loss and some slight emotions for others, that border on human concern, making them more understandable though not always likable.
Heathcliff never goes beyond that brooding persona, constantly railing, abusive and angry.
 Even his affection for Catherine borders more on narcissism than any real concern for her. It seems more like adolescent infatuation that never matured and is instead destructive.

Not that Catherine comes across any better. While Heathcliff manipulates those around him physically and uses his new-found money, Catherine often resorts to verbal abuse constantly yelling and arguing with those around her. She taunts Edgar with her affection for Heathcliff saying that Heathcliff is manlier than he will ever be and derides Isabella seeing her as a rival for Heathcliff's affections. (Though since Isabella married Heathcliff, wouldn't that make Catherine the other woman?)
Even in her passages with  Heathcliff, the two aren't particularly happy together. Instead their dialogue is constant accusations, backbiting, and arguing over who hurt who. They show very little real affection for each other beyond a constant desire to be together physically.
 Catherine does gain some sympathy as she sinks further into a mental breakdown. Many readers who are mentally ill themselves may understand how one's emotions and psyche can overpower them so much that they find it impossible to function. But even that sympathy is at a minimum. Catherine seems more manipulative using her state as a means to attack those around her. She blames her emotions for Heathcliff and her marriage to Edgar putting her in this state. Like Heathcliff, Catherine's affection for him is adolescence becoming unstable to the point where she is unable to live with anyone even herself.

Even as Catherine dies and long afterwards, she and Heathcliff continue to alternate between longing for each other and saying that they were responsible for their decline. They are like that couple in a group of friends, who constantly get separated, insisting that they hate each other, attacking one another on social media, only to reunite again all affection, tenderness, and sex swearing all is forgiven. This couple often leaves their friends sighing in frustration, wondering "Why don't they just get divorced already?"
If they lived today, Catherine and Heathcliff would probably be diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Two people who believe that only their emotions matter, display immaturity with everyone else around them, and manipulate others to get  what they want. Unfortunately, when they have what they want, i.e. each other, they still make each other miserable. Their relationship motto seems to be "If I can't have you no one else can, including ourselves."

There are many Readers who don't like the second half of the book in which the narrative is filled with characters who repeat names of earlier characters: Hareton Earnshaw (son of Hindley), Linton Heathcliff (son of Heathcliff and Isabella), and Cathy Linton (daughter of Catherine Earnshaw and Edgar Linton). Many see the next half as a " sanitized, more censored, and socially acceptable" version of the previous half. However, I actually find the younger generation better characters than the original.
While Linton Heathcliff is extremely sickly and whiny, he is more of a plot device, for Heathcliff to marry him off to the younger, Cathy. However, Cathy Linton and Hareton Earnshaw exhibit many of the negative traits of their forebears: Cathy is snobbish and emotional. (She often mocks Hareton's illiteracy while teaching him to read). Hareton is more cynical and hardened. (He often seeks Cathy purposely to argue with her). However, the two are able to mature and bring out deeper emotions such as love and friendship, rather than constant physical passion bordering on instability like their forebears.
Since this was Emily Bronte's only novel (she died in 1848), she never got the opportunity to develop her craft into another work like her sisters did. Perhaps one could see the second half of Wuthering Heights, less as a retelling of the first half than the work of a maturing writer who developed her characters beyond infatuation. The second half of Wuthering Heights, could be considered Emily Bronte's second novel, the work of an author who grew up and wanted her characters to do so as well even if she didn't live to see it.

This is not a beautiful romance, Wuthering Heights could be more seen as a cautionary tale of unbridled passions. When characters' emotions can't seem to get beyond adolescent infatuation and constant obsession, they end up destroying each other and themselves.