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Original poster

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

91 replies

suzywong · 23/04/2007 13:49

My laptop was in the repair shop over the weekend so I read it.

Pretty strong stuff

IMO the key issue is not the romance but the shockingly systematic chld abuse.

And how is it that no one ever mentions the cruelty to Isabella when raving about this novel? Hmmmmm ?

OP posts:
suejonez · 23/04/2007 13:51

long winded boring rubbish - give me Jane Eyre any day.

NineUnlikelyTales · 23/04/2007 13:54

Noooooo Wuthering Heights is a much better book than Jane Eyre IMO.

Isabella is too annoying to be bothered over

LaylaandSethsmum · 23/04/2007 13:57

He is cruel to Isabella to get revenge for her family taking Catherine away from him.

H and C are one person after all,or thats how they feel about it.

Its fabulous , love it to bits!!!

sunnysideup · 23/04/2007 14:00

Agree with suej. Jane Eyre for me. With WH, I just lost interest in the characters - not real enough.

WigWamBam · 23/04/2007 14:02

I'm with Sue too.

Boring, long-winded drivel.

But I don't like Jane Eyre either ...

Original poster
suzywong · 23/04/2007 14:04

but he slaps her about a lot and all the rest of it, I am just a little shocked that he could have become such a romantic hero.

Nelly Dean is a top bird, though.

OP posts:
LittleSarah · 23/04/2007 14:06

I really liked it, but at the same time I was hugely irritated by it as most of the characters were complete arseholes!

suejonez · 23/04/2007 14:07

WWB are you dissing JE?

castlesintheair · 23/04/2007 14:12

Ooh lovely chubbly. Emily Bronte was a Marxist IMO. Agree suzy about Nelly Dean. Have you noticed she (humble serf) has strongest voice in the novel?

LaylaandSethsmum · 23/04/2007 14:13

She has the strongest voice because she narrates it.

WigWamBam · 23/04/2007 14:27

Yep - am dissing JE. Awful novel, badly written, crap plot ...

I'll get me coat.

suejonez · 23/04/2007 15:41

words fail me - and I always thought we were the same person but now I see that you are my evil JE-hating alter ego

Original poster
suzywong · 23/04/2007 15:42

anyway ............................................. WHY is it such a feted and lauded novel? Discuss

OP posts:
Overrun · 23/04/2007 15:46

Wuthering Heights is a really interesting book on several levels. Firstly it has this appeal to romantic adolescents (see Kate Bush), but this give is the unfair rep of being an overwrought teeny romance.
It is actually technically a very tightly written book, some literary critic described it as a bit like a Russian doll or boxes inside boxes as it is so multi layered.
Suzywong, its intersting that you have picked out the theme of child abuse, and there certainly some awful treatment of not just children in the book.
I think that it is a scorching critique of class issues, and self made man, as opposed to be born into good fortune. Savage versus Civilization.
Can't think of any more things now, as it is a long time since I read it, but remember being knocked over by it at Uni. You are right is is pretty powerful stuff

MrsJohnCusack · 23/04/2007 15:47

wow I could have written Sue's post.....

anyhiw Suzy, is always a mystery to me why WH is so lauded and thjink Heathckiff is a violent twat

can't type more as one handed andf it's 2.45am

motherinferior · 23/04/2007 15:50

The point of Heathcliff - or part of it anyway - is that he is in fact the 'romantic hero' taken to logical and very unpleasant extreme. EB doing some very interesting stuff here. CB then writes Jane Eyre which attempts, to some extent, to recoup the conventional idea of the romantic novel/hero which then gets caught up in CB's own preoccupations with realism and feminism - a tension which literally splits CB's later Villette, of course.

I wrote my MA thesis on this.

rabbleraiser · 23/04/2007 15:54

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.

Overrun · 23/04/2007 15:55

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

kickassangel · 23/04/2007 15:56

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.

booge · 23/04/2007 15:57

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.

MrsJohnCusack · 23/04/2007 15:57

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

Overrun · 23/04/2007 15:59

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

MrsJohnCusack · 23/04/2007 16:01

I love Vilette

kickassangel · 23/04/2007 16:01

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.

motherinferior · 23/04/2007 16:09

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.