Wuthering Heights: Hot Toddy

The characters are cold, the location is cold, and there's something about Wuthering Heights as a whole that reminds me of one of those gray November days where the chill seems to actually get inside you. I was drawn to this drink for its comforting and warming qualities. It was exactly what I needed while reading this book.

Ingredients
1-2 ounces of whiskey or bourbon
2 teaspoons honey
1 tea bag

Directions
Boil water to use in the tea. Add honey and whiskey/bourbon to a mug. Add the tea bag and boiling water to fill the mug and allow to steep.

I used a caramel herbal tea for my hot toddy and it was a really nice combination with the bourbon I used and the honey. I was pleasantly surprised with how the flavors played together. I really wanted to stay curled up under my blanket with this book and this drink.

Wuthering Heights

This book is not everyone's cup of tea, but I like it. There's also something about it that makes me want to curl up under a soft, cozy blanket with an actual steaming cup of tea. It's the description of the moors- it's like I can feel the winds. I have to admit I also feel a little cold because of the relationships in this book.

I know that a lot of people consider this to be a romance, and while I do see some aspects of a romance, it strikes me more as a power struggle. Heathcliff and Cathy are more interested in getting their way without compromising than actually finding a way to be together. They spend so much time and energy trying to win and then punish the other that they miss out on so much. They're mutual obsession becomes the source of so much unnecessary pain and torment not to only to themselves but to everyone around them. No one in this world is allowed to experience happiness.

Everyone is inextricably linked, and as much as they might want to break away from each other and from this place, they can't. Or they won't. I think that distinction is different for each character and is something that changes throughout the story.

Healthcliff goes from being welcomed into the Earnshaw household by Cathy's father, eventually being preferred by the older man to his own son, Hindley. It takes some time, but he wins Cathy over as well and sets himself up as the target for Hindley's rage when her returns home with a wife and son of his own. He remains close with Cathy, though their friendship is challenged from many directions. I think there's a time when they do truly love each other, but it doesn't last, or maybe it can't.

While she is staying at Thruscross Grange, the house closest to Wuthering Heights, recovering from a dog bite, some readers will say that she becomes infatuated with Edgar Linton. I think it's more likely that she becomes infatuated with the Linton's lifestyle. Cathy is materialistic. She wants to be surrounded by luxury and pretty things. Edgar is a means to an end; a very different end than one she could ever hope to have with Healthcliff.

Heathcliff can't take being second best to Cathy after spending so much of his life being so far below second best in everyone else's. He runs away, and stays away for three years. He returns after Cathy and Edgar are married, and embarks upon a series of actions that are motivated by revenge and a desire to prove that he's become the gentleman no one thought he could be.

He lends money to Hindley to cover the other man's debts and becomes the owner of Wuthering Heights, stealing it out from under the other man, who is far too drunk to realize what's actually going on. He marries Isabella, Edgar's sister, and treats her so horribly she takes their son, Linton, and leaves Heathcliff, spending her remaining days as far away from Heathcliff and Wuthering Heights as she dared to go. Upon her death, Linton returns to his father where he is unloved and forced into marriage with Cathy and Edgar's daughter, Catherine. Edgar dies without his daughter, as she's basically being held prisoner at Wuthering Heights, and shortly after Linton dies as well. Catherine stays at Wuthering Heights and slowly finds herself in love with Hindley's son Hareton, who has in many ways been brought up exactly as Heathcliff was.

It's interesting to consider how hard Heathcliff fights to gain control over Wuthering Heights, and in the process over Cathy and perhaps most importantly himself. While he ultimately achieves that control, it's fleeting. He won't be able to keep Wuthering Heights forever, memories of Cathy haunt his days, and he slowly reverts to the animal he tried so hard to prove that he no longer was.

All of this is driven from his need for revenge and his need to control everything and everyone around him. In the end all of that control was just an illusion. He fought for the legal right to both Wuthering Heights and Thruscross Grange, and both fall to Cathy's daughter and Hindley's son upon Heathcliff's death and their marriage.

In the end there is a small sense of hope that Catherine and Hareton will find some true happiness in their lives. There's so much loss and hurt in the story, it's hard to imagine anyone finding something that makes them happy, but there has to be some hope. The two of them are almost a second chance, they can see what might have been for Cathy and Heathcliff if they'd only given their love a chance.

Spooky Books

One of the things I love about decorating for Halloween is getting our mantle all gussied up. Halloween is the first in a series of holidays that I decorate for over the next few months. I tend to keep things pretty simple with lots of black and a little sparkle.

We usually have some books on our mantle, but I find that those titles aren't quite the right fit for the spooky season. So I went back to the bookshelf and pulled some of the darker titles to add them to the mix. They're darker in story line, and some are very appropriate to the season like Dracula, but they're also darker in color which definitely works with the rest of the items up there.

 

 

 

 

Do you find yourself making any book-related changes to match your holiday décor?

Frankenstein- Marshmallow Brain Hemmorhage

It seemed only appropriate that the drink associated with Frankenstein would have something brain related in it. For this one I did a slight variation on the traditional brain hemorrhage shot. Usually the drink calls for peach Schnapps, but since we didn't have any on hand, I used marshmallow flavored vodka instead. Very tasty substitution.

Ingredients
Bailey's Irish Cream
Marshmallow flavored vodka

Directions
Pour one part vodka into a shot glass. Add the one part Bailey's by pouring slowly to prevent the Bailey's from mixing in with the vodka. This is what makes the Bailey's look like a little bit of brain matter in the glass. This part sounds easy, but I found it to be a bit harder than I expected. The picture you see here is my third attempt. Not that the first two were wasted, no worries there, but it's good that the third one worked out ok. I have to work in the morning.

Frankenstein

I read this book while we were on the plane. It's short, so very doable even on a flight that lasts less than nine hours. I'd never read it before, but was pretty familiar with the story through the many Hollywood adaptations. Even with some familiarity there were a few things that surprised me.

I didn't find Victor Frankenstein to be a very sympathetic character. He spent more time than I would have expected hiding from or whining about his creation rather than dealing with the problems he created head on. I had more sympathy for the monster, though even there not as much as I thought I would. That makes it sound as though I didn't enjoy the book when I did.

I was pleasantly surprised by the intelligence of the monster. I expected a slow, lumbering giant, but instead the monster is incredibly agile, fast, and smarter than I think even Frankenstein could have imagined while he was working in his lab.

There are a variety of things that I think are smartly addressed, though not with completely answered questions, that make this a good read. The first is the most obvious- bioethics. At what point should Frankenstein have stopped himself? At what point should he have stopped trying to figure out if he could complete the experiment and asked whether it should be attempted at all? What responsibility did he have to the monster after it's creation? Surely there had to be a better reaction to the monster than hiding from it and leaving it to find its own way through the world.

That brings me to the next topic addressed, and one that's been covered many times before. There are so many things that we see in the way the monster is treated and repeatedly rejected that tell us about the negative effects of isolation. It's human nature to want acceptance, to want to have a. Place in society. I'm not sure that you can call the monster human, but I think the same basic desires apply to his nature.

One of the things that strikes me in the story is how cowardly Frankenstein really. Is. He never tells anyone about his connection to and his role in so much senseless violence. I think the argument can be made that in some way he is the cause for everything that happens, but I don't think you can remove all the blame from the monster. Making Frankenstein the cause implies that the monster couldn't be accountable for his own actions, and I think he's too smart for that. It would be like absolving all of us for what we do and instead punishing our parents for our actions. It's unfair to them and offensive to us.

There are a lot of things not to like about the characters in this book, and a lot of questions that may or may not be answered to every readers satisfaction. With that in mind, I think it's worth the read, especially if there's an opportunity to discuss the ideas presented and the implications that something written nearly 200 years ago still has today.

The Turn of the Screw: Screwdriver

I'm sure no one is shocked that the drink I chose for The Turn of the Screw is a screwdriver. I wanted to stick with a classic drink to go with this classic novel. Since there's a twist in the story, I added a subtle twist to the recipe.

Ingredients
Orange Juice
Cranberry-Orange Vodka

Directions
Add ice to a tall glass. Pour in 1 to 2 ounces of the vodka. Fill with orange juice.

 

It's not terribly strong, but the flavor was great. A bit richer than the normal screwdriver, it was almost a blood-orange flavor. Very appropriate for a scary story leading up to Halloween. Our cranberry-orange vodka was made by some friends. I'd make a variation of this with regular vodka, orange juice and cranberry juice. You'd get the same flavor with that blend.

The Turn of the Screw

There's something about October that makes me want to read scary stories. I love Halloween and I find that I get in a spooky sort of mood pretty early on in the month. Since I was also in the middle of prepping for a trip to the UK, it made sense that I'd be drawn to a story that took place in England.

A man has been given charge of his niece and nephew, Flora and Miles, after their parents die. He hires a governess to look after them at an estate in Essex. He leaves them completely in her care and makes it very clear that he doesn't want to be disturbed with the details of their care. She meets the children and is quickly charmed by both of them. The boy has returned from boarding school along with notice that he's actually been expelled. This is the first of several situations that has no full explanation. The governess develops a theory that it must be a horrible circumstance leading up to the expulsion, and she begins to look at the children differently.

The governess begins to see and hear things that don't make sense. Figures appear at windows and in hallways, even on the balconies of the house. they seem  to have some sinister connection to the children. What makes them sinister is their ordinariness. It's the every day nature of the ghosts that makes them frightening. The ghosts are the previous governess and one of the male employees who had a relationship with each other, and both passed away. Again, nothing is spelled out entirely, but there are many implications made about these two people, their relationship with each other, and their conduct towards the children and the other members of the household.

The governess convinces herself that these ghosts are after the children and mean to take them away. She confronts Flora about seeing her with the ghost of the former governess and Flora denies any sort of contact with or existence of a ghost. She turns against the governess and says she never wants to see her again. The governess and the housekeeper agree that the girl should go be with her uncle for a time. The governess and Miles are alone later that night and the other ghost appears. The governess tries to persuade the boy that he's not under the ghost's control only to find that he has died in her arms.

The thing I enjoyed most about The turn of the Screw by Henry James is the same thing that many readers don't like. You just never know if what the governess sees is real. There's no explanation at the end, there's no nice tying up of the loose ends, there's no tidy closure. You as the reader are left guessing whether everything the governess thinks she saw actually happened or if she had some sort of breakdown and put the children in danger herself.

I have to be honest when I say that I'm not sure which answer I think is real. I like the idea of the governess going insane or even just starting off that way. The more I think about it, the more I like that it isn't completely answered. I think what makes the work stand out from so many other stories and still interesting over 100 years after it was written is that the mystery is left unsolved. Solving it would take away something essential to the story.