Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights: Classic or Dud?

Nick will soon starve, but it won't be because of me. It will be because it's unfeasible to put food on an imaginary table.

I'm not little.

Me, on the other hand - I could last for several months on the reserves under my chin alone.

Last read it some years back -- it's a novel of moments, isn't it? But oh, *such* moments. And I'll gladly take the final paragraph over the collected ramblings of, say, Hemingway.

But while people go mad, no one starves themselves to death. Really, you need people starving themselves to death to make a rockin' novel.

Don't worry though, Josh. It's been a couple years since I last read it. Right now I'm read Anna Karenina. It seems much healthier so far. It's all about . . . oh.

So which film version is the best to watch? i haven't seen any unfortunately

Kate didn't think so - she redid the vocals for her greatest hits.

New opinions, please.

But while people go mad, no one starves themselves to death. Really, you need people starving themselves to death to make a rockin' novel.

Seven years later, I still stand by this claim.

This is the story of a dude so bitter about not getting a girl that he devotes the entire rest of his life to making everyone involved as miserable as possible, even people who weren't born yet and had nothing to do with anything.

It's like the Bronte equivalent of a slasher flick!

What's not to love, right?

it reminded me of a victoria (virginia? the one who wrote flowers in the attic) andrews novel. grim grim grim.

This is the story of a dude so bitter about not getting a girl that he devotes the entire rest of his life to making everyone involved as miserable as possible, even people who weren't born yet and had nothing to do with anything.

Twilight?

I reread it every year.

I've just been made to read this for one of my MA modules. Was expecting to hate it, but I really quite liked it. Mainly because I was expecting the traditional 'oh he's a bit of a bastard but dark and brooding and in love' romance thing, but what you actually get is pages and pages of violent misanthropy with nothing (or very little) to counterbalance them. Which is a bit like life, really.

Also, I love Lockwood -- he's just so clueless.

And Linton is kind of like the Ned Flanders of the story.

^ If I were making a modern dark-comedy film of this, Lockwood would be played by Keanu Reeves, who would sit there the whole time listening to the story and going "Dude. Dude. Whoah, dude!"

It's such a hateful novel. Although Heathcliff, Cathy, and Linton speak the language of love, they only know these Euripidean shades of hate.

I would pay good money to see that. xp

Hindley would be played by Paul Rudd.

Twilight?

― Ned Raggett, Friday, November 21, 2008 7:14 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

now that you've mentioned it, from a recap of the third book:

Edward on Wuthering Heights: "The characters are ghastly people who ruin each others' lives. I don't know how Heathcliff and Cathy ended up being ranked with couples like Romeo and Juliet or Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. It isn't a love story, it's a hate story." See, he totally agrees with me. If this is foreshadowing another couple of romaaaaantic suicide attempts, though, I'm going to reach into this e-book and slap both of them.

Bella: "Well, I hope you're smart enough to stay away from someone so selfish. Catherine is really the source of all the trouble, not Heathcliff." This is probably the most self-aware statement in the entire series so far.

Why do you think I revived this?

ha picturing scores of victorian girls promising themselves to heathcliff. no vampire baseball though.

I read this novel in late 2004. I hated it. It's horrible. It was hard to get through it, but I managed it. I hope I never read any of it again.

Utter Dud.

Utter classic, with the caveat that the more hateful the characters become, the better the book is. I don't give a damn what happens to most of the characters in the second half, but since they are supposed to be the objects of the previous generation's anger and resentment, I'm not sure it matters.

It doesn't actually matter where Heathcliff is from.

the pinefox's hate would make Heathcliff happy.

i thought i would hate this book but i read it last year and i thought it was great, so dark. i remember not liking the end though i don't remember what happened in the end so i guess it wasn't that important.

as a side note, the Bunuel adaptation of this as a Mexican soap opera is pretty terrific, and makes hash of William Wyler's version.

Literary rip-offs in soap operas/other trash TV - S/D

This is the story of a dude so bitter about not getting a girl that he devotes the entire rest of his life to making everyone involved as miserable as possible, even people who weren't born yet and had nothing to do with anything.

― nabisco, Thursday, November 20, 2008 12:02 PM

Twilight?

― Ned Raggett, Friday, November 21, 2008 7:14 AM

now that you've mentioned it, from a recap of the third book:

Edward on Wuthering Heights: "The characters are ghastly people who ruin each others' lives. I don't know how Heathcliff and Cathy ended up being ranked with couples like Romeo and Juliet or Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. It isn't a love story, it's a hate story." See, he totally agrees with me. If this is foreshadowing another couple of romaaaaantic suicide attempts, though, I'm going to reach into this e-book and slap both of them.

Bella: "Well, I hope you're smart enough to stay away from someone so selfish. Catherine is really the source of all the trouble, not Heathcliff." This is probably the most self-aware statement in the entire series so far.

― Disco/Very (Roz), Thursday, November 20, 2008 3:37 PM

Why do you think I revived this?

― nabisco, Thursday, November 20, 2008 3:50 PM

Spot on, all of us:

New 'Wuthering Heights' Gets 'Twilight'ed

"I'd not exchange, for a thousand lives, my condition here for Edgar Linton's at Thrushcross Grange -- not if I might have the privilege of flinging Joseph off the highest gable, and painting the housefront with Hindley's blood."
"Hush, hush!" I interrupted.

i'm about 40 pages in, and it's rather bracing how everyone's kind of an asshole (except the woman servant telling the story to the narrator).

what a coincidence

No Nelly is also an asshole.

Nelly has a nasty side (as you'll see later).

Being the least asshole-ish asshole in Wuthering Heights is kind of an accomplishment tho.

I read it for the first time about a year ago (for a grad course) and was surprised at how something that is often cited as one of literature's greatest romances (and the inspiration for such a lovely Kate Bush song) was so full of malice and ugliness and just plain unlikeable characters.

just like romance in the flesh!

maybe if it took place somewhere less windy maybe the people would be slightly less assholish

i read it a few times as a teen but now as an adult, it's like manipulation city

still love it, it's so grim & angsty & black

great book

masterful nesting of unreliable narrators

It's a Gothic Novel not a 'romance' (in terms of what we have come to think of as meant by that term).

I just love that it is a giant middle finger to the notion that characters in novels have to be "likeable" in order for it to be great fiction.

I was genuinely angry when I got to the end of this book around age 14/15. Lol teenagers.

xpost otm

tbf Yorkshire

Whilst working in Bradford I used to pass through Bronte Country every day and it's stark beauty (especially in the winter) was quite a contrast from the infernal Guardhouse estate we were en route to.

I'm baffled every time I see someone argue they didn't like this book because the characters weren't likeable. That's not a reason. But it happens all the time. The book is its own monster, I wouldn't put any genre label on it. When I first read it, after knowing the basic story for years, I was shocked. It was a harrowing read. The 2nd half is so good because that's when it starts to get really unpleasant.

the three Brontes specialized in this kind of violence. I push The Tenant of Wildfell Hall on anyone who still thinks Victorian fiction is staid.

ooh i haven't read that one yet, i should check it out

xxpost yeah it takes a while to convince ppl that it DOES get awesome, to not quit after the first few chapters

To clarify, I wasn't using "unlikeable" as a criticism against WH; just noting how, for years, my vague understanding of the novel had been as one thing, and how the experience of actually, finally reading it revealed it as something quite different.

I'd second the recommendation of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, btw, for anyone who is digging WH and wants something more of the same.

I read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall recently after our Brontë poll, and it is a wonderful, twisted book.

But it's annoying in that it has an actual happy ending!

I know Anne was the kind of sensible killjoy-of-Gothic of the bunch, but that irks.

Well it has a happy ending because the abusive shithead dies. I think that's ok.

Does he die because syphilis or just general alcoholism?

I think I may be mixing it up in my head with the movie of The Libertine.

Oh yeah, BTW, SPOILERS.

Stopped (after Catherine's death) for about 2-3 months, burning through last third now.

All these characters are masochists. Very kinky.

this is a great book. it should be given to every young person who believes it is a smart or mature idea to hold onto their dreams. they could then decide whether the perverse integrity of heathcliff is really what they want for themselves.

to be a psychopath or not to be a psychopath

you gotta pick

you can be a dick

or

you can be a total dick

i mean, i think part of the idea of the character is that he instantiates the most dangerous element of Romanticism, that is, he abhors compromise. like other writers of her generation bronte was, i guess, attracted to this idea, but she was astute enough to see that it was also completely incompatible with any sort of decency or morality. in then end heathcliff is not a hero or even an antihero: he is a monster.

i don't really buy the critique that the book excuses or rationalizes heathcliff's behavior. the all consuming, self-destructive love he and cathy have for each other is definitely rendered in all its power, but once cathy dies heathcliff's lingering obsession leads him to become a cruel, sordid, and ugly character.

i agree

i think the point is to lead you into believing at first that he is romantic but then pulls the rug out when you realize it’s a cul de sac of blind rage & destructive obsession

also reading it at different ages changed my impression over the years. i first read it as a teen

It's also why I find myself irritated by people who want to expunge the second half of the book.

Not rationalizing his behaviour, but obviously he's exposed to harassment, racism, bullying of all kinds growing up, and both he and Cathy react violently to being told they have to stay in their place in the world, Cathy making a not completely successful choice to suppress that anger, Heathcliff letting it run rampant. He's not a sympathetic character in the end, or a guy you want a heroic end for, but obviously there's a look at society too - not just the literary Romantic hero.

Not a single sympathetic character in the novel. I love it.

agree!

btw I'm a fan of Anne Bronte's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall too.

I love that one too

happy 200th, Em

<3

I'm rereading Wuthering Heights. I can't think of another English Victorian novelist whose prose was as spare as EB's.

I keep forgetting how intense the violence – emotional and physical – is in this novel: Catherine bashing her head against the arm of a chair, Heathcliff calling Isabella a slut, etc.