Wuthering Heights

[Erika Mailman]

My book club just selected this so it was a very enjoyable re-read for me. One of the members talked about the "overwrought" nature of the storytelling, but I loved the intense visit to the moors!

Another member said that it was Stephenie Meyer's stated inspiration for her series. I haven't yet read the Twilight books, but if Wuthering Heights fueled her, that can only be to the good.

Finally, the book inspired me to download various YouTube videos of Kate Bush's song since I found myself endlessly humming it as I sat down to read. Such a great song!

[Mello]

I’m reading WH too, about two-thirds through. But I’m having problems. I don’t get how it is touted as a great love story. I’m hard pressed to find any redeeming qualities in Heathcliff, so I find it hard to believe he can love and Cathy is so self-absorbed she couldn’t love anyone bar herself! I don’t feel the expanses of the moors. The book feels really claustrophobic to me – the one-on-one conversations are intense.

But, having said all that, I’m still reading it eagerly. It is certainly different having so many unlikeable characters so I can imagine how ground-breaking it was at the time.

[Ludmilla]

Finally, the book inspired me to download various YouTube videos of Kate Bush's song since I found myself endlessly humming it as I sat down to read. Such a great song!

Pat Benatar also covered that song, but I like Kate Bush's version better. :)

[Leo62]

I don’t get how it is touted as a great love story.

That's because it isn't. Think of it more as a Romantic (with a capital "R") psychodrama. There's lots of stuff in there about nature versus society, conformity versus being true to yourself etc etc. It's not really a love story at all IMO, it's about the formation of identity.

The Brontes were very influenced by the Romantic poets and the concerns of the Romantic movement - the "natural" man, the rediscovery of nature, resisting the dehumanising effects of industrialisation. Also, bear in mind when thinking about Heathcliff's objectionable behaviour that Emily was a big fan of Byron. ;)

WH does not mean much if it isn't seen in this context. Unfortunately, the 1940's Hollywood movie version dominates most people's perceptions of this book & it tends to be seen as the original gothic bodice-ripper.

Sorry to go all Lit Crit on you, but it makes me sad that this wonderful book is so misunderstood. :D

[LoveHistory]

It's more about the forces of passion and jealousy than love or romance. And there's nothing else quite like it in the literary world.

Haven't seen any film versions yet.

[Ariadne]

Funny, I picked up Wuthering Heights over the weekend while cleaning out bookshelves and put it on my TBR pile (to reread soon). My copy is a 1940s-era paperback, and it's packaged such that it plays heavily into the "Bronte myth." It certainly attracted my attention when I first read it around age 12!

[Erika Mailman]

I appreciate the lit crit response, and hearing that the Brontes were influenced by Byron and other Romantics is really useful to know.

I also feel the novel really shows the century's differing attitudes towards children. In many ways, it's a book about child abuse (Heathcliff's sad beginning as a completely abandoned --or "exposed" child, as they used to call it; the way the children are left to be reared by Nelly, who loves them but doesn't have the authority to intervene as she might wish; the way Heathcliff is allowed guardianship of Linton although he has overtly stated his malevolent feelings towards him, etc. etc....where was CPS?).

I remember reading in the Mermaid and the Minotaur that our current feelings of affection and nurturing that are the current paradigm for childrearing are pretty new concepts, and I see that in action here in WH.

Finally, on the more shallow side, I did find Heathcliff wild, brooding and attractive, up until he hanged Isabella's dog. I had been hoping I misunderstood and that he had created a little "pouch" or "swing" out of the napkin for the dog, but my book club set me straight.

[Erika Mailman]

Thanks for the referral to the Pat Benatar version... I wish she had taken more risks to reinvent it, but there were some spectacular moments of difference.

Also found on YouTube a version of Sarah MacLachlan attempting it... too high for her register.

[Erika Mailman]

YouTube is addictive:

here's Monty Python's version of Wuthering Heights, the Semaphore Version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqiUGjghlzU&feature=related

[Leo62]

I also feel the novel really shows the century's differing attitudes towards children. In many ways, it's a book about child abuse (Heathcliff's sad beginning as a completely abandoned --or "exposed" child, as they used to call it; the way the children are left to be reared by Nelly, who loves them but doesn't have the authority to intervene as she might wish; the way Heathcliff is allowed guardianship of Linton although he has overtly stated his malevolent feelings towards him, etc. etc....where was CPS?).

I remember reading in the Mermaid and the Minotaur that our current feelings of affection and nurturing that are the current paradigm for childrearing are pretty new concepts, and I see that in action here in WH.


Good point. Mistreated and/or abandoned children crop up in all the Bronte novels - remember Jane Eyre getting locked in the red room, then being sent off to that awful school? I think they had a couple of siblings that died in childhood, and then they were all packed off to some school with a very harsh regime. I remember reading in a biography of Charlotte that she was haunted by the death of her sisters and felt her sending away to school as an abandonment - not surprisingly, perhaps.

[Leo62]

YouTube is addictive:

here's Monty Python's version of Wuthering Heights, the Semaphore Version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqiUGjghlzU&feature=related

LOL the Julius Ceaser lamp thing was even funnier. :D

And yes, it is.

[Erika Mailman]

I just recently read something--wish I could remember what it was in reference to--about someone's siblings being sent off to a boarding school (1700s England, I think) and they actually DIED there of STARVATION...that's how horribly these "schools" were run.

okay... duh.... I walked away from my keyboard b/c I was thinking "what have I read 18th century recently BESIDES Wuthering Heights.... nothing!"

soooooo....that reference was actually IN the Wuthering Heights intro by Alice Hoffman. I quote, "Emily's mother died when she was three, two older sisters died of malnutrition while away at boarding school (the cruelty of such schools echoes throughout Charlotte Bronte's own extraordinary novel Jane Eyre)."

[Mello]

Sorry to go all Lit Crit on you, but it makes me sad that this wonderful book is so misunderstood. :D

Hey, "lit crit" all you want, but are you inferring that I misunderstood the book?

[Ludmilla]

soooooo....that reference was actually IN the Wuthering Heights intro by Alice Hoffman. I quote, "Emily's mother died when she was three, two older sisters died of malnutrition while away at boarding school (the cruelty of such schools echoes throughout Charlotte Bronte's own extraordinary novel Jane Eyre)."

Speaking of Alice Hoffman, has anyone read Here on Earth? I think it's a contemporary spin on WH. I've thought about reading it seveal times, but just never got around to it.

[Leo62]

Hey, "lit crit" all you want, but are you inferring that I misunderstood the book?

Absolutely not :) I meant in general the book has the image of being the original gothic-romantic bodice-ripper.

[Leo62]

Speaking of Alice Hoffman, has anyone read Here on Earth? I think it's a contemporary spin on WH. I've thought about reading it seveal times, but just never got around to it.

Haven't heard of that - sounds intriguing. There was a series a few years ago on the BBC called Sparkhouse, which was a gender-switched (i.e. Heathcliff was a girl) contemporary version of WH. It was pretty good.

[princess garnet]

I've read this novel twice and saw the adaptation on PBS earlier this year. Definitely not cheery!

[EC2]

Never read it - and probably won't just down to pressures of so many other books calling out to me. Son read it for GCSE's and loathed it, but then a 15/16yr old teenage boy probably isn't the best audience!

[Lauryn]

I have tried to read it. Several times, in fact. Cannot somehow get into it. Then again, I find that the atmosphere in the books I am reading tends to affect me away from the book, and it is possible I just have no desire to go where WH is likely to take me.

However, I have read a fair bit of other 18c authors' works, so I'm not a total philistine. :D

[Margaret]

I could never understand why people found Wuthering Heights so overwhelmingly romantic, because Heathcliff is so unpleasant. I probably would have enjoyed the novel a lot more if I hadn't been expecting a romance. It's true that people who are mistreated as children are more likely to behave badly as adults.

Yes, the Brontë girls were sent away to a truly awful boarding school. It was operated for the children of clerics, who didn't generally have a lot of money, so it was run on an extremely small budget. They cut corners by feeding the children substandard food and not much of it. The heating was almost non-existent. And the people who ran the school were unpleasant and punitive to the children, although some of the individual teachers were nice. One of the Brontë sisters died - from an illness, but her condition of near-starvation was certainly a factor. After that, the other girls were taken out of the school. The early chapters of Jane Eyre about the school and Helen's death are autobiographical.

[Sheramy]

I first read WH in high school and loved it. So intense!!

It is fascinating to compare the two best known film versions--the 1930s one with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon (which leaves out half the book!) and the 1990s one with Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes. Ralph Fiennes NAILS IT, and Binoche's Cathy is on the money. I love me some Laurence, but the later WH is less stylized and truer to the novel.

[Suzanne Crowley]

There's a fairly new Masterpiece Theater version that I bought recently on DVD. It's pretty good!

[Christina]

To 'get' this book, I think, you really have to 'get' Emily :-). I love it! It's not about romance and the film versions don't get it at all. Although the later film version is closer to the book in some ways, the French Cathy is way off the mark! The closest to it, to my mind, is Kate Bush's frenetic rendering of it!

Emily lived in her head. It wasn't about being starved to death physically in boarding schools (as Charlotte's books are), it was about starving her soul. Charlotte wrote of Emily's despair when she was among other people and compelled to either study in Brussels or be a teacher closer to home. Her world, I think, was filled with passion and trauma; adventure and angst and it all comes out in the book. The - much skimmed-over - incenstuous notions raised by this book were about (and I am only saying my view and might be wrong!) her inner conflicts - the narrow world in which she lived and which she loved; the sense of many lifetimes (reincarnation - and she was the daughter of an Anglican clergyman, raised in that religion which doesn't accept reincarnation); the whole almost 'witchy' aspects of nature that ,meant so much to her...

Hollywood has narrowed down this book to turn it into either a romance or a Gothic horror novel....They just don't get Emily's 'wily windy moors...' Maybe you have to come and see the bleakness of those Moors - the parsonage, overlooking the graveyard (and the average life expectancy in Haworth at that time was 19 years??); the wildness of it all...It's a strange place and, reading Emily's poetry alongside the book, it explains a lot more than can be taken at face value...

[RoxiS.C.]

I first read Wuthering Heights when I was about 14, after hearing Kate Bush's song which I still adore. I didn't actually know what it was about when I started reading it, so I was never under this preconception that it was a love story. Even though it isn't a love story, the connection between Heathcliff and Cathy was always my favourite part - essentially the rebellion against traditional society/views. I always felt it wasn't an equal relationship, Cathy most certainly held the reins and I thought that even in her wanting Heathcliff in her life she was being selfish, it was not so much because of who Heathcliff was, but because she had decided that was what she wanted. That might just be me, I'm not sure. The fact that she was selfish and spiteful, and he destructive and vengeful, it's difficult to like either of them as people but it's impossible to dislike the connection they have.

It is a very dark novel, but I always found Heathcliff to be fascinating in his destructive nature, and I must also admit I liked the teeny hints at the more supernatural/metaphysical/I-don't-know-the-right-word-for-it elements. When he curses her soul and in doing so begs it never to leave him, and obviously the bit which Kate Bush's song is centered about, as well as the mention of the spectres supposedly seen by people on the moors at the end. I'm rambling. :D

[Lady Macbeth]

I really do adore Wuthering Heights and I can bore for Britain on the subject. It's one of my most read novels and I find something new and feel differently every time I read it. As a teen, I thought this was a romance but I feel quite differently about it now.

In the classic stakes, I think WH is probably the second best known novel in English Literature second only to P&P. Everyone has heard of Darcy and Heathcliff even if they don't know the stories. I wonder how much influence Kate Bush's song had on the national awareness of WH back in the 70's - can anyone comment on that?

WH is a complex, thought provoking and deeply moving story of an intricate love affair. This is a genuine love affair - one that surpasses matrimony, social status and all physical barriers. This is a completely binding bond far greater than any sexual union. This is far from a glamourised love (like most victorian novels) - this is boundless, obsessive love that is ultimately destructive.

Heathcliff is a most enigmatic character - I don't think it is ever possible to understand his reasoning, his psyche. He seems driven by jealousy, bitterness and guilt and remorse to the point of self-destruction. I wonder how much of this character was present in the men in EB's real life? In particular, her father and brother? He's a one-off, a force of nature, a truly frightening creation. Only Catherine, who is mentally unstable herself, could possibly cling to him as a soulmate. And therein lies the fascination. Even after her death, she continues to dominate Heathcliff and the story. She is there, in the background, all the time. And, of course, at the end, it is Catherine - either a real or imagined ghostly presence - who drives Heathcliff to his exhausted death.

I've also read issues raised about the incestuous nature of relationships within Bronte novels but I think Heathcliff and Cathy aren't so much incestuous but identical. They actually seem to be the same person and to think and talk about each other in this way. There is of course the famous "I am Heathcliff" speech from Cathy but also Heathcliff's cry that he cannot live without his soul. They don't seem to have any separate identity at all. Heathcliff mourns Cathy not so much as a separate individual whose life has been cruelly cut short but more as a loss of part of himself. Cathy's betrayal is so horrendously damaging because, in effect, she splits her own personality. In fact, since she says that it will degrade her to marry Heathcliff, it's almost a statement of self-loathing, as if he represents a part of her psyche that she's afraid of and seeks to escape by rushing off to the 'normality' of Edgar and Thrushcross Grange.

This strange, highly claustrophobic, state of affairs is further dramatised by the comparison which can be made with Hareton and young Catherine's relationship. Hareton too has been 'degraded' but young Catherine doesn't feel the need to escape from this - she decides to do something about it. She loves Hareton but he is separate from her. Their relationship is described in much more 'romantic' terms and ultimately satisfies the reader with a half way happy ending.

The peripheral characters are great - the hypocritical, religious zealot Joseph is a tour de force!

I am struck by the recurrent absent mother theme in Bronte novels and always feel saddened by it.

Wuthering Heights is a great novel for hunkering down with the cat during inclement weather - the darkening evenings of autumn always make me feel rather Wuthering Heightsish and the novel gets dragged out for another reread.

I've walked extensively in the area (walking on English fells being a bit of a passion of mine) and, when the wind is blowing mournfully across the moors, the same sense of mind I get when reading the novel is recreated.

:)

[LoveHistory]

Wow, Lady MacBeth! I may have to read it again. You're comments are way beyond anything I've thought of but in considering them now I have to say I agree with most of them.

Heathcliff and Cathy were some really damaged people.

[cw gortner]

Two of my favorite novels in the English language are Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights and Daphne DuMaurier's My Cousin Rachel.

In subtle ways, the books remind me of each other in their portrayals of passion and obsession.

[alice]

I really do adore Wuthering Heights and I can bore for Britain on the subject. It's one of my most read novels and I find something new and feel differently every time I read it. As a teen, I thought this was a romance but I feel quite differently about it now.

In the classic stakes, I think WH is probably the second best known novel in English Literature second only to P&P. Everyone has heard of Darcy and Heathcliff even if they don't know the stories. I wonder how much influence Kate Bush's song had on the national awareness of WH back in the 70's - can anyone comment on that?

WH is a complex, thought provoking and deeply moving story of an intricate love affair. This is a genuine love affair - one that surpasses matrimony, social status and all physical barriers. This is a completely binding bond far greater than any sexual union. This is far from a glamourised love (like most victorian novels) - this is boundless, obsessive love that is ultimately destructive.

Heathcliff is a most enigmatic character - I don't think it is ever possible to understand his reasoning, his psyche. He seems driven by jealousy, bitterness and guilt and remorse to the point of self-destruction. I wonder how much of this character was present in the men in EB's real life? In particular, her father and brother? He's a one-off, a force of nature, a truly frightening creation. Only Catherine, who is mentally unstable herself, could possibly cling to him as a soulmate. And therein lies the fascination. Even after her death, she continues to dominate Heathcliff and the story. She is there, in the background, all the time. And, of course, at the end, it is Catherine - either a real or imagined ghostly presence - who drives Heathcliff to his exhausted death.

I've also read issues raised about the incestuous nature of relationships within Bronte novels but I think Heathcliff and Cathy aren't so much incestuous but identical. They actually seem to be the same person and to think and talk about each other in this way. There is of course the famous "I am Heathcliff" speech from Cathy but also Heathcliff's cry that he cannot live without his soul. They don't seem to have any separate identity at all. Heathcliff mourns Cathy not so much as a separate individual whose life has been cruelly cut short but more as a loss of part of himself. Cathy's betrayal is so horrendously damaging because, in effect, she splits her own personality. In fact, since she says that it will degrade her to marry Heathcliff, it's almost a statement of self-loathing, as if he represents a part of her psyche that she's afraid of and seeks to escape by rushing off to the 'normality' of Edgar and Thrushcross Grange.

This strange, highly claustrophobic, state of affairs is further dramatised by the comparison which can be made with Hareton and young Catherine's relationship. Hareton too has been 'degraded' but young Catherine doesn't feel the need to escape from this - she decides to do something about it. She loves Hareton but he is separate from her. Their relationship is described in much more 'romantic' terms and ultimately satisfies the reader with a half way happy ending.

The peripheral characters are great - the hypocritical, religious zealot Joseph is a tour de force!

I am struck by the recurrent absent mother theme in Bronte novels and always feel saddened by it.

Wuthering Heights is a great novel for hunkering down with the cat during inclement weather - the darkening evenings of autumn always make me feel rather Wuthering Heightsish and the novel gets dragged out for another reread.

I've walked extensively in the area (walking on English fells being a bit of a passion of mine) and, when the wind is blowing mournfully across the moors, the same sense of mind I get when reading the novel is recreated.

:)

Great post LM. I love this book, and I always think how so many people misinterpret it. Emily Bronte was really a one-off, unique individual. Much as I like Jane Eyre, I think it pales into comparison with WH. The characters are definitely unlikeable, tortured souls, but wow, it's such a compelling book. I live in the UK, but have never visited Haworth, (I would love to), but I think I can imagine the sensation of being on those bleak, windswept moors. I get quite over-awed in wide, open spaces, and I think anyone of a sensitive nature can get where Emily's coming from. The landscape she was living in obviously helped with the Romantic nature of the book, (Romantic in the sense of the movement, not the Mills and Swoon, bodice-ripping style :D). A truly great book, much misunderstood, but a deserved member of the literary greats.

[Marc]

Hi,


Wuthering Heights is one of my favorite novels. It has a class of its own. amazing story that has love, romance, jealousy, and passion. The visit to the moors was amazing. This is an all time favorite book of mine.


Marc Cool

[Michy]

I have read Wuthering Heights a couple of times and listened to an audio version, but I am through with it and probably won't read it again. The things that others have said they liked about it are precisely what I didn't like; the extremeness of the passions and emotions, the overwrought and claustrophobic feel of it, the main characters all being so tortured and warped. What is remarkable about it to me, though, is that it was written by a young English girl who led a pretty narrow and sheltered life and died young. To think that she had all of this pent up inside of her is pretty amazing.

Now Jane Eyre, on the other hand, is one of my absolute favorite books.