Happy Birthday Emily Bronte

Today, July 30^th, is Emily Bronte’s birthday. She was born in 1818 in Thornton, Yorkshire. I’ve compiled a list of suggestions for celebrating the great English novelist’s special day.

1. Read Wuthering Heights, of course.
2. Watch Wuthering Heights, preferably the version with Tom Hardy hotness.
3. Write a story in the tiniest handwriting you can manage.
4. Go for a long, long, long walk.
5. If the weather cooperates, stand in the rain.
6. Act obsessive and morose to your significant other.
7. Stand in a graveyard at night and pound your chest.
8. Ponder digging up a grave.
9. Decide against it and make an impassioned speech.
10. Tap on windows and creep out hapless occupants within.

 In all seriousness, thank you Emily, for the genius that is Wuthering Heights. For daring to write about arguably unlikable characters who nevertheless claim our hearts in their struggle to hold on to love.

If you can’t get enough Wuthering Heights, here’s a link to some covet-worthy WH swag.

Wuthering Wednesdays

For some time I’ve wanted to incorporate a weekly post sharing fun and interesting Brontë quotes and facts with you, my hapless blog readers. In order to give you fair warning, I’ve come up with the tidy moniker Wuthering Wednesdays. So when you see Wuthering Wednesday in your inbox or on your blog feed, you’ll know the post will be Brontë related.

As I said, I hope to make Wuthering Wednesday a regular thing here on Breathe In Breathe Out. Naturally this means it will be hit and miss, half the entries will show up on Thursday because I’ve forgotten whereabouts in the week Wednesday is, and I will likely go off on tangents about footwear or cheese.

As an introduction, the Brontës were a nineteenth-century family living in Yorkshire where Patrick Brontë was a curate. The siblings’ creativity is legendary, with Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights hailed as classics of English literature. I’m sure most of you are familiar with this extraordinary, tragic family so I’m not going to give you a history lesson or rehash any of my college essays. I’d rather give a brief background or relevant info with each quote, so let’s get to it.

“A person who has not done one half his day's work by ten o’ clock, runs a chance of leaving the other half undone.”

This quote is from Wuthering Heights. Nelly, who plays many roles in the novel—from nurse, to servant, to confidant—is chiding Mr. Lockwood, renter of Thrushcross Grange, for staying up late and sleeping in come morning.

In the scene, Lockwood begs Nelly to continue her story—that of Heathcliff and Catherine—even though it’s eleven o’clock and Nelly wants to go to bed. After all, she’s the housekeeper and she probably gets up before everyone else.

I have to say, I have sympathy for both the characters. Like Nelly, I’ve been on the receiving end of pleading eyes and “it’s not that late really,” and “please, just one more chapter.” Of course, those requests come from my kids, not from a grown man who is also my employer. But I feel for whiney ol’ Lockwood, too. I’ve become engrossed in a story and stayed up way too late greedily consuming every word. Last night was one of those nights. I blame Lisa Bergren and her River of Time series for that.

The difference, of course, is that Lockwood can sleep in, and neither Nelly nor I can. We have work to do. And a ten o’clock deadline, apparently.

Stuck Alive

Is it selfish to go to church because it inspires you to write? That’s not the only reason I go to church, but I confess I often find myself walking down the aisle on Sunday morning (late as usual) and thinking, “Man, I need this.” And it never fails. Something in the music or the pastor’s sermon starts my brain whirring with ideas on character, plot, or theme. Then I have to struggle not to zone out, thinking about my Work In Progress, for the rest of service.

Last Sunday was no different, but who would have suspected I’d find a correlation to my WIP in Luke 2, the Christmas story? And who would have suspected that we’d be studying Luke 2, the Christmas story, in October?

Despite my church’s apparent calendar confusion, the following passage was very timely for me:

At that time there was a man in Jerusalem named Simeon. He was righteous and devout and was eagerly waiting for the Messiah to come and rescue Israel. The Holy Spirit was upon him and had revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. That day the Spirit led him to the Temple. So when Mary and Joseph came to present the baby Jesus to the Lord as the law required, Simeon was there. He took the child in his arms and praised God, saying,
“Sovereign Lord, now let your servant die in peace,
as you have promised.
I have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared for all people.
He is a light to reveal God to the nations,
and he is the glory of your people Israel!”
Luke 2:25-32

Cool, huh? God would not allow Simeon to die until he saw salvation, the Messiah. I wonder how old Simeon was. Did he wake up every morning and wonder if that day was the day he would see Christ…and die? Did he get tired of waiting? Did he ever feel like going to look for redemption instead of waiting for the promise to come to him?

We get the sense from the passage in Luke that Simeon was a good guy, and the promise of living to see the Messiah was a gift, even if somedays he woke up cursing his arthritic knees.

But what if you resolutely refused to see the Messiah, as many do, and God decided to keep you alive until your stubbornness ran out? Talk about extreme octogenarians!

That--minus the gray hair and degenerating joints--is the concept of my book, The Immortal Heathcliff. Although at the end of Emily Brontë's classic tale, Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff recognizes that his elaborate revenge has left him hollow, he still goes to the grave unrepentant. In my novel, he climbs out of the grave still unrepentant and wanting nothing more than to die for good like normal folks. Instead he’s stuck in an immortal state, searching for deliverance, atonement, and release from his unnatural life.

But what he views as a curse is actually a gift. He will not die until he sees redemption. He sets about looking for it, trying to earn it, instead of waiting for it to come to him. After two hundred years of failing to obtain his freedom, grace breaks down the barriers he's constructed. Now all that remains, is for him to finally open his eyes and see his salvation.

The idea of being stuck alive fascinates me, and I hope it will fascinate readers as well.

Question: What would you do with immortality on earth? Would you accumulate wealth? Visit every corner of the globe?

Me? I'd read. Everything.