Wuthering Heights (HRW Library (Holt))

Hi there, it's me again with another 'Classic'. You probably don't know I recently made a resolution to read some of the 'Classics'. I had avoided them successfully for decades and then decided that perhaps I was missing out on some really great stories. So, I carefully selected some novels that sounded like great 'Classics' to read. 'Wuthering Heights', 'Pride and Prejudice' and 'Jane Eyre' rose to the top of the list.

They all sounded like fabulous stories, everyone raves about them, the book jackets make them sound like the absolute be all end all for engaging fiction. And maybe they are for the vast majority of people, but not me. Jane Eyre being the exception of the three.

I did LOVE 'Jane Eyre', love, love, loved it. However my strong feeling for both 'Pride and Prejudice' and 'Wuthering Heights' swing dramatically in the complete opposite direction.

I really strongly disliked (okay, I hated) almost everything about Wuthering Heights. I thought the characters were absolutely horrid and rotten, the only exception being the innocent and unrelated tenant, Mr. Lockwood, who Ellen Dean tells this awful tale to.

The relationships were completely dysfunctional, violent, abusive and destructive. I can not comprehend how this came to be called "one of the most romantic novels of all time". I have no idea who said that but in my opinion whoever it was should have their head examined. If this is what people call romantic it is no wonder that 1 in 2 of all marriages fail.

Perhaps, I have some sort of completely unrealistic expectations when it comes to the classics and my expectations set me up for failure...? Perhaps. But I am going to stop searching out any more 'Classics' for the time being.

One more hostile note that some of you will appreciate. I swear I wanted to cudgel the servant Joseph who spoke in a northern dialect and could only be understood by reading the notes to the text in the back of the book.

I would have to place this book at the top of a list for 'Most Likely to Create Hatred of English Literature'.

Wurthering Heights by Emily Bronte is a great book. It is set ing the moors of old England. Cathy and Heathcliff are two lovers, but when Cathy marries Heathcliff's rival, Edgar Linton, he vows revenge on both of them. The protagonist of the book is without a doubt, the narrator of the story, Nelly Dean. The antagonist is the vial, Heathcliff. She write the characters with such description, it is like they are right in the room with you. The plot is so well writing, it keeps you guessing at every turn.

This book is written in the perspective of Nelly (Ellen) Dean. She is the care taker to Cathy through out the book, and one of Heathcliff's close friends. The theme has many interpretation, but I think the most noticeable is of the jealousy Heathcliff feels towards Edgar. It warns you of the dangers of jealousy and that i can drive anyone to the very brink of insanity. This book was one of the most intriguing, well written, passion filled, exciting, living you on the edge of your seat wanting more, creative books I have ever had the pleasure of reading. I would recommend this book to everyone, 5 out of 5

When I first read Wuthering Heights, I was completely absorbed into the phantasmic world. While I have read gothic works like Edgar Allan Poe and Mary Shelly's "Frankenstein," Wuthering Heights tramples them with it's intense passion of the central characters, Heathcliff and Catherine. Not everyone's going to love this book, most, if not all the characters, are amoral and cruel people isolated from society. Heathcliff is the classic Byronic Hero; brooding, passionate and driven by vengeance, definitley better than today's wannabe gothic characters(cough...Edward Cullen). Other than that it is poetically written, an open field of meadows and lonely households, snowy storms, etc. If gothic stories are your thing, then pick this up, be warned that despite being hyped as the archetypal story of forbidden romance, that is only half the tale which is filled with bitter revenge; buy this.

Honestly, i really enjoyed this book and feel in love with the younger Heathcliff and Cathy when really they loved each other but then the story did a whole 360. Heathcliff blames everyone for his life and how he turned out and Cathy was a real witch and very selfish and ugly attitude and really made everyone around her suffer. Heathcliff became an unbar able coniving money hungry person that suffered because of Cathy's stupid selfishness and just became an ugly person. Linton (heathcliffs son) is just a panty and treats everyone like there supposed to be his mommy its really irratating and then treats Catherine (daughter of the Cathy) like crap after she is the only one giving a heck about him. And the nurse, Nelly, is really spiteful and goes behind everyone's back and she feels like she doesnt care what happens or doesnt try to understands everyones feelings but her own, even through she says she is thinking about everyone elses feelings, yah right. I really liked this book, it was a different type of book i read and it was really hard though to try and keep reading it because it seem to be more sad every turn in the book. But i didn't want to stop and i found that there is a sort of happy ending with Catherine but overall it was a sad sad story. But in the movie they dim down on there type of character and i think that is why i could bear to watch the movie and it actually got me to cry where as the book got me sayin' what the Heck!...But i really love it in spite of all the ugly characters in the story. this is why i give it a 4 instead of a 5, i would have gave it a 3 if i hadn't fallen in love with the book along the way.

Author of Afinidad: A novel of a serial killer
Aztec Dawn: A tale of sacrifical murder, from Manhattan to Mexico
I won't talk about the plot as the first two Most Helpful Reviews do that admirably. What I want to do is encourage people to read the book because it is gripping literature. Yes, it is definitely not a love story, as many other reviewers have pointed out. It is a story about hate; Hindley Earnshaw's hatred and jealousy of Heathcliff, Heathcliff's hatred of the two Lintons, and also his hatred of his own and Catherine's offspring. And the quality of the love between Catherine and Heathcliff is so obsessive and selfish that it bears no resemblance to what most of us would consider to be that noble emotion. But, god, is it mesmerising to read about! You will be astonished at how far Heathcliff is prepared to go to exact revenge on the people who have hurt him, and you will definitely find Catherine a most unlikeable character. For her, it's all about what gratifies her without any regard for how that affects those who are expected to do the gratifying. In fact, that utter selfishness is her undoing. But, people, despite all this, there is a happy ending! Yes! Ultimately, Heathcliff fails in his quest for revenge and love truimphs! And that redeems the story surely, although I don't have anything against tales that don't have happy endings because that's life too. Sometimes, things just don't work out well.
As for the structure of the novel, the way in which the story is presented, I consider it to be very well done. In fact, it is amazing that this was the author's first novel. However, Emily had been writing for many years. She and her siblings had spent most of their lives inventing and writing about imaginary worlds for their own amusement. Such an exercise of imagination and the expression of it clearly gave her the skills needed to write a compelling novel. The reading of that novel leaves me with one burning question, though, that even the reading of several biographies of Emily Bronte has not answered. Where on earth, or in hell, did Emily learn to hate so magnificently? She must have been very familiar with that emotion in order to write about it in such depth. However it was that she learnt it, she has left a lasting legacy of it in Wuthering Heights.