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Wuthering Heights
If the craft of writing appeals to you, this is a gem. There is only one word out of place (one pronoun with an ambiguous antecedent). The story is told from multiple points of view and includes a variety of sad and sordid relationships but ends with a vision of love nearly unequaled in literature.One overarching theme is the relationship between love and control. As we know today, control is often manfested in anger but also in eating disorders. Yes, two of the main characters would be called anorexic today. Emily Bronte herself probably died of anorexia--her coffin was less than 20 inches wide.This is romantic in the traditional sense: Wuthering Heights emphasizes emotion. And when emotional people are thwarted, they turn angry. Add love, jealousy, class conflict, sibling rivalry, supernatural dreams, and the wild moors of Yorkshire, you've got a gothic novel that has been often imitated but seldom duplicated.Because of the multiple narrators, there is one warning. Many of the episodes are told more than once from different points of view. In each case, though, the perspectives are so different that you might not even realize at first that you are reading about the same event.If you want to read a fascinating story and want a sense of how a great story should be told, read Wuthering Heights.
Wuthering Heights
A TRULY EXCELLENT EDITION of this strangest and strongest of English novels,hauntingly beautiful in its impassionate poetry,a novel that reads us instead of the other way round,more about important questions than about too trivial answers.The text is roughly the same than Clarendon's reference one, without correcting the error at the beginning of Chapter 16 (we get "inhabitants" for "inhabitant", and the reason for NOT emending both 1847 and 1850 readings, although duly explained in a note, is most incredible). The punctuation is even a bit heavier than Clarendon's(I fear a bit too heavy for American habits) and the implied two-volume division with independent chapter numbering looks as funny and cumbersome as in Oxford's.The Introduction, although shorter than Stoneman's for Oxford, is excellent nonetheless. So are the notes, that more often than not give full quotation of the references involved, while Oxford gives only the references. Material production is as bad as you fear and then some, as regards paper quality and binding: pages will get brown in only five years (and Oxford's don't fare much better). Printing quality, on the other hand, is fair-to-good.Don't miss the very first page (the one about Emily Bront life),then read Lucasta Miller's preface,skip both the excellent Pauline Nestor Introduction and the controversial"Charlotte's materials" (the Biographical Notice and the Preface to the New),and -giving an attentive glance to the Genealogical Tree- go to the TEXT (perusing the notes).Afterwards you will do well to read the previously skipped material, and, perhaps some months later, to peruse the excellent Bibliography.IN SUMMARY: as far as text, Introduction and notes are concerned, no other edition is better. Material production and durability, on the other side, are even a little worse than Oxford World's Classics.Have a haunting, unforgettable read!
Wuthering Heights
This is one book I've read over and over again, to understand how it appears to other people. Whomsoever have I met consider it to be rude and strange at first. What this book means to me is unsurpassed literature. It depicts rough love- a love that is as wild as the moors of England. Wuthering Heights breeds initself a "horror of darkness", we sometimes breathe in our lives. The love existing between Heathcliff- the most loved villians of all time and Catherine stands strong. This book is about a stranger entering a household where he is rejected, and during this course betrays the one solitary feling in his heart- not being his love for Catherine, but compassion. The other half of the story reaches a point where Heathcliff takes his sweet revenge. There are no answers to questions like: Should a character like Heathcliff exist or not? I do not know. This is a masterpiece in literature depicting love, innocence lost, friendship, forgiveness and above all acceptance. Unfortunately, this was the first and last book of Emily Bronte. Wish there were more novels like this one!
Wuthering Heights
Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights is a novel that creates a love story between Heathcliff and Catherine. This is not however a regular love story. Bronte's ability to create real emotions puts Wuthering Heights in a category far from a "Cinderella" story. Bronte's remarkable ability to conceive almost twisted stories can be seen not to far into the story. It can be seen once Mr. Earnshaw brings home Heathcliff, basically treats Heathcliff as his son and neglects his birth son, and Catherine begins to love Heathcliff that the story will be far from regular. Bronte uses these unique ironies to create detailed stories.In this book Bronte uses her ability to mimic real human reactions in her characters come about. Such as when Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw die Hindley, their birth son, forces Heathcliff to leave because of his hatred towards him. Hindley knew his father loved Heathcliff more than him and he couldn't stand it. Heathcliff leaving causes problems between. It's Ironic that when Heathciff comes home after three years because of his love for Catherine, she has already married another, Edgar Linton.Emily Bronte's story obviously wasn't that of a regular love story. Not too long after Heathcliff comes home Catherine dies. Heathcliff becomes filled with anger and seeks revenge. He causes pain to all that have hurt him or are related to those that hurt them. Although Bronte didn't create a storybook love story she does end it, in a way, like a love story should end. The lovers are of course united in death. I liked this story by Emily Bronte because it wasn't just a regular love story with a happy ending. Although it did end with the lovers together, it is hardly a "Cinderella" story and the plat twist and intricacies make it a memorable story.
Wuthering Heights
Reading Wuthering Heights is like a journey into a dream abound with entangled relationships, bitter vengeance, and how the innocent heirs from feuded families struggle to escape the macabre legacy of the past. The person who unraveled the history behind Wuthering Heights was Lockwood, a new tenant of the Thrushcross Grange who was forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord Heathcliff.Heathcliff was kidnapped and shipped to England, grew up under the roof of the Earnshaws. Old Earnshaw took a liking of the young Heathcliff while his son Hindley persistently and insidiously grumbled long string of tales against him and treated him like a house servant after the old Earnshaw passed away. At Wuthering Heights the young Heathcliff cultivated a consummate bonding with Catherine Earnshaw who later on betrayed him and married Edgar Linton.LoveThe novel's pivot tends to focus on the power of the central relationship between Catherine Earnshaw-Linton and Heathcliff. However dark and vindictive the novel might have turned out, the work's attraction, as a love story is not difficult to extract. Catherine loved Heathcliff because he was more herself than she was. Their souls were made of the same materials. Her soul, her heart, and her conscience reproved and convinced her that it was wrong to marry Linton, though Heathcliff might appear to be an unreclaimed, uncultivated creature, which would degrade her. In her final words to Heathcliff, the embittered Catherine Earnshaw writhed in torment. Here the novel has attained to the fullness the celebration of such transcendent love, which has surpassed the bounds of mundanity and death, despite the fact that their reunion was marked by dejection, regret, and bitterness. To Heathcliff the entire world was such a dreadful conviction of memoranda that he had lost his beloved Catherine Earnshaw, even though her daughter Cathy asserted that nobody would love him nor cry for him when he died.VengeanceHeathcliff's eye-for-an-eye vengeance visited upon the next generation. To revenge on Hindley Earnshaw's being acrimonious to him, Heathcliff determined to make Hindley's son Hareton a brute. He never taught him how to read or write, never rebuked him for any bad habit and never led him a single step toward virtue. When Heathcliff later became master of Wuthering Heights, he reduced Hareton to a mere house servant and deprived him of any wages. Edgar's daughter Cathy was forced to marry Heathcliff's sickly son Linton who braced the brawl of the previous generation by reviving how Cathy's mother had betrayed the man she loved for her father Edgar Linton. Through his son Heathcliff meant to usurp Edgar Linton's property at Thrushcross Grange and confiscated Cathy's fortune. The heirs (Cathy Linton, Hareton Earnshaw, and Linton) strived to escape from the bitter rift of the previous generation. The second half of the novel (volume ii) somewhat signifies such restoration of order and balance in this second generation.Dream/Stream-of-ConsciousnessThe appearance of Catherine Earnshaw's ghost in the early part of the novel proves to be such an appropriate notion to set the tone of Wuthering Height. The house servant only proved the house was haunted at the expense of the new tenant Lockhood, the ghost also challenged the limits of life. Wuthering Heights as a whole conveys a sense of vagueness and ambiguous plausibility. The notion of dream proved to be a significant source of understanding as both Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff envisaged their happiness in dreams, and Catherine articulated the dreams' informing power to Ellen Dean, who narrated the story to Lockwood over the span of a night at Heathcliff's abode. The warped sense of time, the geographical remoteness, and social aloofness contribute to a dreamlike, stream-of-conscious setting. Such dreamlike setting offers an uncensored realm, free of logic and boundaries, to the transgression of identity, sexuality, violence, and vengeance."May you not rest, as long as I am living. You said I killed you - haunt me, then." The book obviates a transcendent love that surpasses grief and death. It is meant to be haunting. 4.5 stars.2004 (1)
Wuthering Heights
Several years ago, tired of reading the latest novels, I decided after a few forays into classic literature that maybe I should devote more time to them. After all, anything hailed as a "great literary work" by millions of people has to be good, right?I'm glad this wasn't the first classic I picked up, because I never would have continued reading them. The book itself isn't all that thick, which while I prefer thick, I was grateful it wasn't in this case. It is a book about torment. Everyone in it is in a perpetual state of plain, downright torment. And the kicker is they bring it on themselves. Reading it I felt bad for Heathcliff as a child and sympathised with his plight. The fireworks begin after Heathcliff returns from some unnamed place or places with millions in the bank. The apple of his eye is the wishy-washy (I just can't come up with a more fitting term for so wretched a woman) Catherine, who can't make up her mind what to do throughout the book until her dying breath. Thank God that happened.When I read a book I generally try to find a connection with one of the characters, someone who might share the same views as I would or who might take the same action as I would in certain circumstances, but I'm sorry to say I couldn't find a single one. I found myself more or less taking the side of Edgar, although he wasn't very enjoyable either. As for Heathcliff I felt like reaching into the book, smacking him around a few good hours while screaming "Get over it!" Wuthering Heights is filled to bursting with detestable people doing deplorable things for no other reason than greed, selfishness, and what must be some kind of masochistic desire for misery. And Heathcliff is the King of Pain in this one. I felt actual relief at his passing as I would that of a rabid dog.This would be a one star review, but for the last 40 pages where at least some semblence of hope and happiness comes to this stupid book, something it was completely devoid of throughout the rest of it. It's a wonder half of England didn't commit suicide out of severe depression after reading it when it was first released. Even more troubling is that the up and coming youth who read this tend to really believe it's a classic "love story". Heaven help us.Want torturous love but with actual hope and happiness sprinkled through it? Try "War and Peace" by Tolstoy. Leave this one on the shelf, unless you like reasons to take sedatives that is.