Researcher Margaret Vine left her mark in many books, on all kinds of subjects , art especially , architecture , regional memoirs. In ink, pencil and biro , she wrote comments in margins, underlined text , made corrections . We recently posted a story about her entertaining comments in respect of the prose items prompted by Jeffery Smart's painting, Cahill Expressway, which included three indignant exclamation marks .
On the front free endpaper , Margaret pencilled in a range of now faint comments about the book : gives great consideration to characters , they develop gradually and change ; also plot ; good all round ; c.f. Charlotte's Jane Eyre ; air of supernatural also to some extent in Jane Eyre ; don't like housekeeper at times , she is somewhat cruel in her criticism of Catherine & Heathcliff esp .
The editor's preface to this new edition of Wuthering Heights was scrutinised by her, a spelling error found on the first page . Then followed margin notes and lots of underlining related to the rustic setting of Wuthering Heights , the delineation of the characters , two "great points " about Heathcliff, one connecting him to humanity and his half implied esteem for Nelly Dean .
A large slab of the text on page 87, relating to Catharine warning Isabella about her infatuation for Heathcliff , received the pencil treatment . There is a thin exclamation mark on page 142 , dealing with the death of Catherine Linton , in a passage where Heathcliff asks cruel questions about the way she died . (Margaret died in a Townsville hospice ).
A large slab of the text on page 87, relating to Catharine warning Isabella about her infatuation for Heathcliff , received the pencil treatment . There is a thin exclamation mark on page 142 , dealing with the death of Catherine Linton , in a passage where Heathcliff asks cruel questions about the way she died . (Margaret died in a Townsville hospice ).
On page 227 Margaret wrote "not correct" next to a statement by Heathcliff , acting strangely, telling Nelly he has no fear or hope of death , yet in his condition he has to remind himself to breathe -"almost to remind my heart to beat !" As you are well and truly dead if your heart is not beating, unless you are Kerry Packer or a Wiggle, Margaret may have been prompted to brand it incorrect .
The last two lines of the novel (below) ,set in the graveyard , troublesome Heathcliff recently buried there , going on the Latin expression in the margin, seemingly met with Margaret's approval . She was an opera loving grand dame from whose roof , on the house at the end of the steep track up to her residence , named Rocky Road, an Aussie version of Wuthering Heights, on Magnetic Island, this writer nearly fell while removing dead branches and a large deposit of rock wallaby fertiliser from the gutters.
