Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights: Classic or Dud?

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.

I didn't like the ending, though. Too light and fluffy. Should have ended with them all killing each other and Lockwood bumbling in to pay his back-rent and finding a bunch of decomposing bodies with Cathy #1's disinterred head on top. Or something.

i like the score of the 1992 telefilm starring ralph fiennes & juliet binoche

it's pretty cynical for its time, and therefore great. if its misanthropic, its because its author *was* misanthropic, not "romantic," (how are dark, countryside reclusive women really ever romantic?) - a common misconception. kind of explores the "love is madness - thwarted love is dangerous," meme well in its violence....while it's really about the sillyness of the incest taboo (as heathcliff & cathy were raised as brother & sister, right?)

Hm, I highly doubt that. Bear in mind that the cousins are getting it together all the time without anyone batting an eyelid, and H & C are not *really* brother and sister, and in fact are not treated as such after the death of Cathy's father. The taboo involved in their 'love' is more about racism than incest.

Wonderful book, one of my favorites. I haven't read it in a few years, though. I should go back.

well cousins and siblings are quite a different beast, and they may not be "really" brother & sister but they definitely had a v. close sibling-like relationship as they grew up as children. ..

>The taboo involved in their 'love' is more about racism than incest. - really? how...I know Heathcliff is described as "swarthy," but how is he racially different? the classist angle is just TOO obvious for us to talk about, so i like how we're speculating here abt everything else haha

also, cathy's character, no matter how you slice and dice it, was always kind of just as hateful to me as his. maybe his actions can be justified in the "love made him mad, desperate," argument - but you never doubt his intentions for her, which is supposed to redeem him a bit

but she knowingly and openly betrays him - and goes into the marriage with edgar knowing she doesn't love him, and that she's "betraying her soul," etc. that kind of knowing deception always bothered me...

see more proof it's a great novel as we can talk about them as 3rd dimensional real characters, as opposed to, oh, mr. hardy's output (or even some of dickens' creations - "Lucy," i'm looking at you)

Yeah, it's obviously about social class and place in society, although Bronte does kinda compound this with Heathcliff -- he's dark and swarthy, yeah, and I feel like there's something in there about how they suspect he's part Indian or Chinese.

(And I'm pretty sure that's not me having a bad memory -- that's actually them speculating that he's Indian or Chinese; I have some vague memory of laughing at that and thinking "hahaha maybe he's Thai.")

Dude, you need to reread the book, the racism directed towards Heathcliff is all over the place, in no uncertain terms.

I wouldn't have liked the book if the two main characters hadn't BOTH been hateful. Neither are redeemed nor redeemable.

xpost

ee more proof it's a great novel as we can talk about them as 3rd dimensional real characters, as opposed to, oh, mr. hardy's output

haha, here we part company. Tess, Jude, Henchard, and Grace Melbury have the vividness of a daguerrotype, which is what Cathy and Heathcliff are. Bronte and Hardy didn't create 'characters' in the James/Flaubert way.

Yeah, it's obviously about social class and place in society, although Bronte does kinda compound this with Heathcliff -- he's dark and swarthy, yeah, and I feel like there's something in there about how they suspect he's part Indian or Chinese

I never thought about his ancestry much (has Edward Said?). I thought the hatred was more a class issue.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3100/2632702707_963d63067b_o.jpg

uh wrong thread

To be honest, I think trying to separate social class from race/racism in this period we're talking about is a fool's game -- they are the same thing

will a mod please move that to the tommy lee jones thread

why is there racism directed towards Heathcliff when he is in fact, not Thai or whatever? I think Nabisco does have a point though: I vaguely remember the paragraph where they are speculating at his origins, and I think the word "Moor" is used, yes? Or someone dark and swarthy *like* a Moor... or was it gypsy ? lol

...but that still doesn't mean he was anything but Anglo, necessarily. it's definitely more a class thing

You mean Heathcliff doesn't look like Lawrence Olivier?

oh btw, Hweathcliff is v. obviously an archetypal afflicted, obsessive Scorpio male, and Cathy is a shrill, headstrong Aries. Poor Edgar is an effete Libra. Linda Goodman confirmed it!

They call him a gypsy type, yeah. Which is a pretty good example of the kind of inextricable class/race thing I mean.

Ignoring the fact that where Heathcliff is from remains a mystery, and therefore he is neither necessarily 'anglo' or 'non-anglo', racism doesn't have to be accurate. If one is discriminated against because people *think* you are from a different race, is that not still racism?

I'm not denying the class angle here, either, but I think the two parts are working in conjunction to look at the wider social picture. (That was an xpost, nabisco otm.)

are allusions to his race brought up after he's an adult? i don't remember them later in the book - but it's been a long time

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.

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.