Has anyone’s view of a favourite book changed on rereading? Just reread Wuthering Heights

[Duchessofmuchness]

I’ve just finished re reading Wuthering Heights. When I read it at 20 i remember I couldn’t put it down. Read long into the night and cried. (proper uncontrollable sobbing) reading the ending. I would always say was one of books had loved reading most.

This time around (reading 40 years later) I dragged myself through it I couldn’t bring myself to like any of the characters- except the loyal Ellen and Hareton. I felt empathy for Catherine and Cathy - young and impulsive.

I suppose I must have been crying because Heathcliff is determined and happy that he will be reunited with Catherine but I didn’t feel it way I felt at 20. This time I felt such strong dislike for Heathcliff and his anger and control and sorry for the lack of agency Catherine and Cathy have.

I’m actually amazed how differently it hit me this time. Be so interested in whether anyone else has experienced this. Was it just age or also that times have changed?

I'm the same about Wuthering Heights. Totally gripped by it at 25, emotional wreck at the end of it. Tried to read it again 30 years later and couldn't believe I had been so taken by it. I gave up on it this time around. Who needs those kind of toxic relationships?

Yes, I've had similar experiences with once favorite books. William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying really affected me at around the same age, 20 yrs old. I read it at uni and was knocked out by it, fascinated by the twist of a changing narrative voice from chapter to chapter (including the voice of the dead mother in her coffin). But on trying to re-read it very recently I found it overwrought, not naturalistic and frankly, quite boring. I didn't get far. And it wasn't boring because I remembered it too well, it just bored me.

I only read WH for the first time recently (in my 40s) and while I loved the writing I struggled to find a single redeemable character in the whole thing! It made me wish I had read it when I was younger because I couldn’t for the life of me work out how anyone had ever romanticised Heathcliff and Cathy.

you can tell WH was written by a young woman in her twenties who led a very solitary life. Full of naivety about the romance of volatile relationships. Emily is often described as being very socially awkward. She never married and preferred her solitary life on the moors. The novel was her fantasy life explored, I think.

I think you may have misread Nelly Dean a bit.

W.H -one of my comfort reads 😁
Reading it as a teenager i thought it was so romantic , oh to be loved by Heathcliff......
Then reading it numerous times since then i see it completely differently , pretty much every character is flawed and dysfunctional .
To me there is nothing romantic about it.

I love Wuthering Heights and have read as an 18 year old, a twenty something and 40ish - every reading is slightly different.

I never mistook it as a romantic novel, though, always a story about jealousy and cycles of abuse. As a mature adult, that becones even more apparent, as does the trauma bond between Heathcliff and Catherine.

None of the characters are likeable in the least, but I never thought they were - I thought Ellen was horrible and prejudiced against Heathcliff from the off! I do find them all somewhat sympathetic though, except for Hindley. Despite their extreme flaws, they are all bound by convention, class, expectations and their geographical isolation. All of that would he bad enough, but Heathcliff's introduction upsets the natural order.

I hated it as a teenager and thought the protagonists needed a good kick up the arse 😂

I felt the same about A Room With A View, The Great Gatsby, and especially Far From The Madding Crowd. The latter I found to be a dreadful book.

Perhaps I need to read them all again with my 40-something perspective.

I always hated WH. Tried to read it many times and never got past the first chapter. Too much mooning around the moors and not getting off arses and doing something.

same with LOTR now I think about it. Fannying about in forests and banging on about trees.

To Kill a Mocking bird will always be my favourite classic.

I had same reaction to WH. Thought it romantic and passionate at 18 - not so much at 40!

I loved On the Road as a teenager. The freedom....the creativity!

Rereading it in later years, it's clear that Neal Cassady (Dean Moriarty)- although lionised by Jack Kerouac- was a feckless twat.

Ohh, so many of my mother's mid-century to 1970s books where the male author paints his hero as a dashing, witty young man versus a range of bitches, nags, boring mothers, frigid virgins, or desperate but - worst of all - unattractive women who impede his progress with the one-dimensional sex-princess of his dreams. 'Yeah,' Teenage Me would think, 'God forbid I should be one of those terrible women! One should strive always to be attractive, fun and amenable!'

Now I can see the misogyny, hatred and entitlement in those young men, who these days I might touch with a bargepole but only to give them the round clout they rightly deserve...

But that’s entirely normal, for a novel to change on rereading, as the person doing the reading is not the same as they were last time.

I’ve probably read Jane Eyre annually since I was ten or so. The first time, I read it as a story of a bullied and mistreated child, and was far more interested in the Lowood scenes than in the subsequent governessing plotline.

In my midteens, I probably swallowed the idea that Rochester was a maverick more sinned against than sinning, who has genuinely fallen for Jane.

By the time I was at university, I realised Rochester was a bastard, locking up his insane wife (when she could have lived in a humane, well-run asylum with medical help (these did exist)) precisely so as not to wreck his chances of remarrying, planning to seduce his penniless teenage employee and only deciding to marry her bigamously when it’s clear she won’t go for it, and, when his plan is foiled on their wedding day, trying to pressure her into living with him overseas without marrying, swearing he won’t touch her sexually (yeah, right).

I think when I read it now, in my fifties, with no less enjoyment than I ever did, I’m very aware of its Gothic oddities, dream sequences, subplots (especially the Riverses) and how hard the narrative needs to work to raise Jane to independence via her inheritance and discovery of family while ‘lowering’ Rochester via injury to make them, arguably, equals enough for marriage.

I read it first at 16 and then every year ( always in winter) until my mid twenties, and as OP has mentioned, I used to devour it. I’m not sure whether the Lawrence Olivier version of the film influenced me but I yearned to meet a Heathcliff and experience that same meeting of souls.

Read it again recently ( mid 50s) and struggled. To be honest, I still felt sympathy for Heathcliff but couldn’t find the development of his and Cathy’s relationship as young adults which I had previously thought was so profound in the early part of the book. In fact I tried re reading those sections in case I had missed something important. There are descriptions of them hiding from hindley etc but not huge amounts of dialogue between them as such.

I disliked Nelly who I found infuriatingly interfering

I’m actually disappointed I did re read the book actually, as the novel has been part of my psyche for so long!

I recently re read some Georgette Heyer which was a go to comfort read in my late teens and was truly appalled that the hero ‘boxed the ears’ of the young heroine and this was clearly felt to be an entirely appropriate response as opposed to DV

I love Wuthering Heights and have read it several times. I never read it as a romantic relationship though so I didn’t ever have a significant opinion change when reading it. As a pp said though you always take something new away on a reread.

One that I did change my opinion of is Mansfield Park. I first read it for A level and thought it was really boring, with nothing significant happening until the very end. When I reread it in my 40s I appreciated the story and the subtleties of the relationships far more. I wouldn’t say I loved it but I enjoyed it more than I did at 17/18.

I adore MF, but yes, that’s certainly emerged more with age! I realise that it’s not about drippy, never-wrong creepmouse Fanny the way P and P is very much about Lizzy Bennet, it’s the entire cast of characters and their various stories and interactions, the sexy baddies, and the big set pieces like the visit to Sotherton and the Lovers’ Vows rehearsals etc.

I think feminism happened to you - the lived experience kind rather than the 'be kind' kind lol.

I really enjoyed Goalhanger's new Book Club podcast episode on this and I think you will too - it's Dominic Sandbrook (slightly grumpy conservative but very clever dad) and his Gen Z assistant producer Tabby Syrett reading (and usually re-reading) modern and less modern classics. The differences in how each reads a text, and in how their individual readings have changed over time, are really interesting.

Love it! 😁

I didn't like it at all btw when I read it at 20 - it just seemed insanely overwrought and all the relationships utterly toxic. I found Cathy totally unrelatable and Heathcliff seemed like a psychopath. But I was raised by a domineering bully of a man so maybe couldn't buy into the romantic frenzy. And Christ the endless moors.

Georgette Heyer, on the other hand (particularly These Old Shades) gave me the model for what a romantic hero should be (a drawling effete psychopath, basically - far more polished ) and I'm sure if I re-read it I would be appalled.

It's actually quite useful to think about that in relation to my own 20yo daughter - how very very different we are at that age from the people we will eventually turn out to be.

I loved WH too in my 20s. Daren’t read it again in case my memories are spoilt.

I loathed Wuthering Heights when I read it at a teenager and I've never read it again. For someone with a dysfunctional family I didn't see any romance in it at all, just toxic relationships and damaged, unpleasant people. It's well written, I'm not denying the skill, I just don't like it very much.

Flowers in the Attic, reading it as a teen, I thought it was scandalous and terribly grown up; reading it as an adult, I thought it was badly written and tacky.

thanks for all the replies. Been fantastic to read different perspectives

@thestudio - i think you are right. I would absolutely have said I was a feminist at 20 but not in the same way I am today. And I was still in thrall of a deep first love (although no longer in the relationship). He wasn’t kind to me but it was highly emotional and destructive love. I bet that helped me relate to Heathcliff

thabks for the podcast recommendation- will look that up

Interesting that others didn’t like Nelly. I don’t think I “misread” her but do appreciate that others may interpret her differently. To me she was sympathetic character- like other women she has little power but seems to use it where she can. And on balance she saw good in others (although agree not always).

Mansfield Park and Jane Eyre going on my reread list. And To Kill a Mockingbird.

I read P&P and Emma recently. Emma much funnier than i remembered. I definitely know some of those people!