Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights: Classic or Dud?

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.

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.