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?

Well, Wilder didn't continue the novel series beyond the very beginning of their married life (even The First Four Years seems to be have been written by her daughter under Laura's name), because things got even grimmer afterwards for a long time, after they finally left De Smet. As they did for all the siblings -- Grace and Carrie's afterlives were poor and difficult, and Mary just returned from her school to live with their parents, and after they'd died, with Grace and Carries.

And yes to the attitude to Native Americans, but she was also being realistic about widespread contemporary settler attitudes in the years after the big armed conflicts between settlers and native clans pushed off their ancestral lands. A lot of Wilder's later political attitudes were fairly unpleasant, actually -- and her daughter, who was an important collaborator in the Little House books, Rose Wilder Lane, was an anti-Semite rabidly opposed to social welfare, taxation etc.

And even more than Almanzo having debts he didn't disclose before their marriage, charming, musical Pa was completely feckless in real life, skipping out of town with debts unpaid on more than one occasion, illegally settling on the Osage reserve. If she'd acknowledged native Americans' humanity, he'd have looked even worse.

I read Dracula as a teenager and found it gripping and scary. Reread it in my forties and found the female lead so weak and irritating, all the women kept fainting.

I have found my people. Yes, loved WH as a teenager, reread it about ten years ago and found it appalling. Not only are the characters horrible, but the writing is so clunky. It’s almost like a parody of a gothic novel. And Heathcliffe is literally a wife abuser.

I reread ‘Instance of the Fingerpost’ by Iain Pears recently which I had loved in the 80s. It’s all about self important men and the women are just ciphers ( I admit the last section leads on a woman but I gave up before then). And I realise I have completely lost my appetite for novels that treat women as ‘secondary’ or as much less fully realised than the men.

Jane Austen still stands up for me - she’s laugh out loud funny in her depiction of character.

@SlightlyAjar Oh god Pa was an absolute liability! The bit where he nearly kills them all by crossing the Mississippi River too late and the ice is cracking, then he drops the fucking roof beam on Ma’s foot. Even before I found out more about the reality of their lives I thought he was a complete tool.

I did feel sorry for Laura slaving away to pay for seven years of education at the college for the blind only for Mary to spend her life at home with the parents making hay nets for horses 🙄

If Laura was alive today she’d totally be a MAGA nutjob

I loved WH as a teenager but had a wonderful English teacher who taught me to think critically and was a staunch feminist, and when we discussed it outside of class I realised I never really romanticised Heathcliff and Cathy but saw it more as possession rather than love. I still love the book now and have reread it about 4-5 times since.

Jane Eyre is one I thought more critically about as I got older - it’s one of my favourite novels of all time, I adored it from the very first time I read it and probably romanticised Mr Rochester (I think I read it at 12) but as I’ve gotten older I’ve really seen him differently and more insidious. Jane I still love, and I often think ‘What Would Jane Do?’ 😂

I have far more appreciation for classics than I did as a teenager/twenties - despite the above. I read The Great Gatsby when I was 14 and really disliked it but read it a couple of years ago and really found so much more to it. One book I still can’t get on with is Catcher In The Rye though!

Now I have the opposite thing with Mr Rochester.

As a teen english literature student, I always thought he was deeply problematic.

Having now lived experience of caring for someone with significant Mental health needs im totally Team Rochester.

The idea of the nice entirely pleasant "asylum".... not entirely that sure that really exists consistently now let alone then

I think the 20th Century put a patriarchal lens on a lot of these and they are now being re read in a more reasonable guise. WH is best read in terms of class and gender prejudice, I think I am lucky that we studied it.
Romeo and Juliet suffers the same same fate...positioned as a beautiful romance for so long but so clearly not.

It did. The York Retreat was founded by a Quaker philanthropist (who was outraged at the mismanagement of George III's mental illness and that of one of his own Quaker friends who'd been mistreated in a 'bedlam') in the late 1790s, with an emphasis on a quiet, pleasant, rural environment where the patients could read, garden and converse and were treated as ill individuals. Other similarly humane options also existed, like the one in High Beech in Epping where John Clare spent four years, free to roam around in the forest and write.

Even if we leave aside asylums, Rochester could have afforded better care for his insane wife than an alcholic crone and a windowless attic.

His primary concern is not her welfare (I mean, he blames her for her own mental illness, apart from anything else) but secrecy. He doesn't want anyone in England to know he's married, so he can have another go. As Bertha has lucid spells when she could presumably tell people who she was, she can't be allowed to live in a pleasant asylum around other people who might listen to her, or indeed have anyone potentially sympathetic attending on her. Hence Grace Poole.

His behaviour is inexcusable. He doesn't have to look after her himself, but he can afford to pay for much better treatment for her. He just doesn't want to, in case it gets in the way of his plan to remarry.

One book I still can’t get on with is Catcher In The Rye though!

Yes! I read this when I was younger and couldn't understand the hype. I recently reread it and still don't understand the hype. I did emphasise a bit more with Holden on the more recent reading but he's still basically just a very annoying character.

If he was trying to hide the wife and asylum would have been way more effective than HIS MAIN HOME.

Im not sure concealment is ever intentional, its certainly not presented as intentional. If he'd told people he was married he would have had to explain her absence. Is that to protect him or her? If you have experience of living with someone with very extreme mental health challenges, you dont always just tell people to protect the person and to protect yourself from having to answer questions. Mental health and mental health in the family historically was a VERY taboo subject.

Secret camera filming has thrown questionmarks over many "nice" sheltered living in modern times. There was no such thing then as hidden cameras. Look at the statistics about assault on modern female mental heath patients. It's not easy reading

Quite aside from the nature of mental health itself sometimes making a challenging environment. Especially when we don't have the treatment options we currently do.

Someone who you know treats the patient kindly, which we are told the "crone" (misogyny much) does, is invaluable, whatever the location or the inherent flaws of the individual

also Is she actually alcoholic or is that the explanation given to Jane to explain what would otherwise be inexplicable.

I am having such a horrible rune at the moment, your ‘mooning around moors not getting off arses and doing something’ has made laugh so much, thank you for lifting my mood

I was a very dramatic, intense teenager (not really lost that vibe as an adult 😂)
loved WH, The Thorn Birds. My modern day fave romance is the Time Travellers Wife

anything involving doomed, tragic impossible love….absolutely loved crying for hours at the misjustice of it all

having reread WH it is actually full of really unpleasant, selfish, self absorbed, at times abusive lot of characters.

Also rich guy puts wife in asylum to carry on as it they don't exist would have been the expected societal norm. Noone would ever have a clue Bertha existed. Whole premise of Willie Collins' "woman in white". The condemnation isn't that he did it in that book, but that she was really sane.

But then that's probably all the point. My understanding of Mr Rochester, his dark sense of humor, apparent calloussness but deep sense of care all changed in light of my own experience of extreme mental health care. Scenes for that previously felt extreme and grotesque became painfully realistic.

Duplicated post.

Great posts. Very interesting.

I agree with much of the above particularly agreeing that Rochester was a manipulative horror and St John - yuck.

I liked the Anne Bronte novels, particularly The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall which I remember for its feminism - an abused women upping sticks with her child and leaving her husband. However, I haven’t read it for years.

Shirley was my favourite Charlotte Bronte novel and has some interesting themes. I must read some feminist analysis of it.

I absolutely loved The Magus by John Fowles as a teenager, reread it a few years ago and what a load of pretentious nonsense. Wish I hadn’t read it again 😢

But then that's probably all the point. My understanding of Mr Rochester, his dark sense of humor, apparent calloussness but deep sense of care all changed in light of my own experience of extreme mental health care. Scenes for that previously felt extreme and grotesque became painfully realistic.

And of course Charlotte had experience of the damage to family relations of mental health care because of Branwell's addictions.

I loved The Thorn Birds as a teenager. I thought the forbidden love story between Father Ralph and Maggie was so epic and romantic.

Fast forward 25 years. Bought the book on my Kindle for 99p. The plot made my skin crawl. That priest groomed Meggie when she was a child, bedded her when she was a neglected wife - and then never acknowledged their son.

I strongly recommend Jasper Fforde's "The Eyre Affair" and "Lost in a Good Book". I particularly enjoyed the notion of Heathcliff having to go to anger management classes.

You’re reading buographically. None of that has anything whatsoever to do with Jane Eyre.

To be fair, they were having their blood drained nightly and were probably very anaemic 🤣

Enjoyed WH as a teen but thought all the characters were absolutely ridiculous - Cathy basically starves herself to death in a fit of temper. Heathcliff is obviously an arse. Hindley is abusive. Nelly is a backstabber, though you can’t really blame her.

Loved JE - yes her choice in men is terrible, but it is her choice and not many poor governesses had the option of choosing who to marry. I liked her rejection of the “sensible” choice of St John (who was even more horrendous than Rochester). I may not agree with her choices, but she claims the right to make bad choices.

Austen characters are far more human and relatable. Usually a mix of good and bad points. Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy were my absolute favourites - Anna Karenina is the perfect tragic heroine.

I didn’t read the House of Mirth, Portrait of a Lady or Madame Bovary as a teenager, but as an adult I think they are fantastic. Honestly much better and more tragic than WH and JE.

Reading Lolita as a teenager I was swept up in the ‘forbidden fruit’ romantic idea. Reading it a couple of decades later I’d be ringing the police on Humbert by page 20.

How do you figure that out?

Jane Eyre the whole Rochester story is about a man who marries a woman who turns out to have mental health difficulties.

He then makes choices on how to provide that care. He describes those choices in the book. He describes how it would be easy to put here in an asylum or he could care for her somewhere he doesn't think is healthy enough for her (yet notably its good enough for him when he himself is an invalid).

It's then about living with the consequences of those choices. Both privately (impact on personal relationships) and publicly (in the context of trying to host outsiders).

It also describes significant mental health episodes in detail. But frankly mental health can be that horrific. Yes the attic is horrific but if you've been in more secure moden mental health facilities with 16 foot fences and locks on every corridor, the idea of secure inner spaces with limited natural light is a description that still resonants

So yes that is the point, reading with certain biographical experiences of mental health has totally changed my understanding of the book.

The book has always been about the nature of responsibility and independence, how much with give of ourselves to others. Jane Eyre's story is well considered in this respect

But Bertha's and Rochester's story has not really been understood in this context. Partly because it is so widely understood (or misunderstood???) in the context of it being an abusive relationship. BUT It's easy to forget wide Saragossa sea and mad woman in the attic are just re-interpretations with their own agenda. They are not the book. There is much that does not transpose directly, even down to Berthas name

Wide Sarragossa Sea has been hugely impactful. But it massively devalues and even undermines the representation of madness within Jane Eyre for its own purposes

Also, if we're taliking about what is or isnt in the text. your reference to the York retreat. Grace Poole is meant to cone from the Grimsby retreat. It's thought the inclusion of the word retreat is there to fictionalised reference the York retreat. So Rochester was actually trying to get the most up to date care for the time.

I completely identified with the cool teen lead character on first time of reading aged around 15. Re-read when I was around 30 and I was "ooh, he's a prat but thinks he's cool". Couldn't believe how I had completely missed that, felt like a different book altogether.

Can’t stand WH but read it in later life. See also Catcher in the Rye. Cold Comfort Farm still totally does it for me though 😂 Loved it years ago, still love it now.