Wuthering Heights - Just read for the first time. ANyone care to discuss

Heathcliff is supposed to be some sort of dashing, brooding romantic hero. Instead of the abusive tit he really is.

True expat, but that you say that like that is a bad thing

Heathcliff was a twat and Catherine was a bitch.

I did Wuthering Heights for A level and remember being blown away by it - mind you anything was better than Jude the Obscure. I have it somewhere and might be tempted to reread. Read Jane Eyre recently and have to say it was the first book in years that made me cry.

Read a number of 'classics' but found this one hard going - so gave up.

Hatwoman, thats a nice story I remember thinking that I had my own Heathcliff when i was 17, god he was downright abusive looking back on it
NineunlikelyTales - hope you enjoy it

I read it aged 17 when I had (or thought I had) my own Heathcliff. obviously I loved the book and it shaped my perceptions of this particular relationship. Out of interest I re-read it a couple of years ago, partly to see if, in all these years of claiming it as my favourite book, I'd been depending more on my teenage passion than the book itself. I was pleasantly suprised to find not. of course my attitude to Heathcliff - or rather to the reality of life and love - was not quite what it was when I was 17. but I still think it's a great book. it's a rip-roaring story of incredible passion and - like the characters or not - I've never read anything that can touch it. it leaves me, 20 years on, with so much. interesting to read some of the more educated comments on it.

Thanks overrun, I will see if I can get it from the library....yes they have it. I'll pop in tomorrow to reserve.

Pointydog

I got foxed with the Catherine and Cathys but I think that most people can relate to the awful despair that H & C (senior) go through. It's not one of my favourite books from the Brontes though.

FOUND IT It is called "The Bronte Myth" and is by Lucasta Miller. I am afraid I am no good at doing links to Amazon or similar.
"A sharp witted study in literary reputation...Miller supplies a deft and immaculately detailed tracing of the many'constructions' of Charlotte Bronte.
It does look at the other two as well, esp Emily, but it concentrates on Charlotte as the survivor not necesscarily as the better Author, but as the Bronte who most contributed to their to the "Myth"

Prefer the song.

The book got tedious as far as I remember.

Yes I think I would like that book and would love to have the details if you can remember! I read loads of Bronte biographies about 10 years ago and none of them said anything like that...I wonder where she got her material from?

NineunlikelyTales, you would like this book, if I only I could remember the damm name It makes that point, although it is not anti Chalotte

I have read and re-read WH several times and always get something new about it (like the idea of the Russian dolls).

I think what spoils Charlotte Bronte for me is that she edited her sister Emily's poems after her death and toned some of it down, adding some of her own (vastly inferior) words instead. So I have a grudge against her.

There is a really good book about the brontes, by Lucinda .... I think it is called the Bronte Myth, i will try and find it.
It deals with Mrs Gaskells autibiography and her whitewashing of certain aspects of Charlotte, Charlottes own attempts to defend Emily and her writing after her death, which actually were probably disloyal as she talkeda about Emily as being an Innocent who had unwittingly written something contentious. She played the "Oh we all live on the Moors, never meet any one" card, which Gaskell then took up, and some would argue that this same Myth has been kept alive today.
People end up romantising the Brontes, and actually they did meet other people and go to Leeds and read a lot (of course) and didn't spend all their time playing amongst the grave stones.
Its a brilliant book, so will try and remember for any one who might be interested

Message withdrawn

It was published - pseudonymously obviously - during her lifetime! Got some quite variable reviews IRCC. CB's first novel, The Professor, was turned down by contrast and she wrote JE after that.

She did know men, obviously. There was brother Branwell, for starters. There were the men who lived in the houses where she worked as a governess. There was also, of course, the husband of the woman who ran the school in Brussels which she and Charlotte attended, with whom C was so lastingly smitten.

but isn't h such a powerful character that you end up admiring, if not liking him? that's the point, he IS the ultimate tall dark handsome stranger that wants to sweep the girl off her feet ... then what would happen? the fact that their link continues even after death is just a nother convention of romantic imagery run amock.

BUt don't you just LONG for c & h to end up together. they may not be nice, but their spirits are entwined. if society hadn't interfered but allowed them to be true to themselves, they would have been happy together.

I love Vilette

MrsJohnCusack, you are doing well just to be typing if it is one handed and in the middle of the night, don't you fret now

oh look you;re all writing proper stuff and I',
m typing cack in thr middle of thi night

ignore me. i need some sleep

I was meant to be doing housework but I can't resist. I love WH (much more than Jane Eyre FWIW ) I agree, I don't understand why H is a romantic hero, he is a bully and a thug. There isn't one likable character in the novel except perhaps for Hareton and he is a study in rudeness but that is part of what makes it great. It's how vividly Emily writes the characters, their passions and the landscape that makes it such a wonderful read. It is quite amazing to involve people in a story with no obvious hero, no one to root for.

i loooove wh.
heathcliffe is more of a romantic anti-hero & it makes a refreshing change from all the girly nightrobes & faiting damsels kind of stuff. yet it is so truly gothic, not a castle in sight, but the pathetic imagery & how h epitomises all that the family signified.
somehow, emily bronte manages to both condemn & redeem him. he is the not-so-noble saveg who brings destruction to the smug middle classes. they were trying to tame nature by papering up their houses & having manners at table. it highlights the dichotomy of humanity - civilisation v primal, with neither side winning. you can't shut him out of your house - that would destroy the civised world you've worked to create, but bringing him in from the cold does the same anyway. cathy being shut out as a ghost is just as symbolic - you can't leaver her there, but you musn't let her in. so what do you do with the primal side of humanity? put it in a frock coat & send it to church on a sunday?
amazing that sucha young girl had such insight, but then, look at where she grew up.

Interesting MOtherinferior, I think that Vilette is my favourite of those 3 books

Wuthering Heights is a startling piece of prose that was considered shocking at the time of publication (after Emily's death, I believe). No one would mention the child abuse because it was fairly normal behaviour in the era within which it was written - and Emily Bronte did not have the popularist touch which enabled Dickens to focus the public's attention on social malfunction.

It is extremely powerful, but much like Jane Eyre, does tend to meander a bit towards the end.

What's intriguing is that Emily Bronte led a seemingly very sheltered upbringing at Haworth on the Yorkshire Moors, and much has been made of how she came to invent the wild and brooding character of Heathcliffe, (obviously there was much of the Cathy in her). She would go off on the moors for hours on her own, which probably didn't help her consumption, but as far as her sister Charlotte was aware, she had no male influence in her life other than her father.

Anyway, bit of a long post. But great book, and it's good to know that people are still taking time to read Victorian novels. There's a lot of good stuff in them if you can get past the difference in prose style.