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3.92 AVERAGE
3.92 AVERAGE
I read this annually, as it is my favorite book. I learned more about Emily Bronte's life before beginning it this time. Even though I've now read it 13 times I discovered so much more this time!
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
It may have been such a novelty in its time, but jeez, I just hated it. All characters have a extremely toxic relationship between them, and there’s nothing else, just that, toxic families and romances. Well, not my cup of tea.
How do I even write about something that has been so widely acclaimed as one of the most quintessential works in World Literature? Let me put it anyway. Yes indeed, I have received mixed opinions on this book and I do believe this book is not for everyone, but hardly matters, nothing is for everyone. For me, it was really one of those books that invoked great emotions and intense feelings.
An elementary anecdote of two families bounded by some unalterable destiny. The narrative is fabricated on the pretext of a love interest between Catherine and Heathcliff - the central characters of the book. Both of them grotesque and completely unlikeable. They are simply unjustifiable, self-centered egomaniacs with almost all negative qualities that a human form has the capacity to imbibe in itself. Yet the emotional enormity evoked by their bittersweet love story is substantial and all-embracing. Their relationship ruins everything and everyone around them and their destructive actions are never thought of the consequences.
The mere objective of weaving a story concerning such ghastly characters as the main and central characters is in itself meritorious and captivating. The unapologetic writing of Bronte is compelling and to know something like this has been created in the 1800s is even more alluring. This is definitely no perfect book, I had my reservations in some parts of the book but it appears quite inconsequential now that I have completed it. You might just simply relish this book for what it has to offer or despise it for just the same reasons, but you can’t help but appreciate the quality and the hope Bronte’s writing kindles through Wuthering Heights.
An elementary anecdote of two families bounded by some unalterable destiny. The narrative is fabricated on the pretext of a love interest between Catherine and Heathcliff - the central characters of the book. Both of them grotesque and completely unlikeable. They are simply unjustifiable, self-centered egomaniacs with almost all negative qualities that a human form has the capacity to imbibe in itself. Yet the emotional enormity evoked by their bittersweet love story is substantial and all-embracing. Their relationship ruins everything and everyone around them and their destructive actions are never thought of the consequences.
The mere objective of weaving a story concerning such ghastly characters as the main and central characters is in itself meritorious and captivating. The unapologetic writing of Bronte is compelling and to know something like this has been created in the 1800s is even more alluring. This is definitely no perfect book, I had my reservations in some parts of the book but it appears quite inconsequential now that I have completed it. You might just simply relish this book for what it has to offer or despise it for just the same reasons, but you can’t help but appreciate the quality and the hope Bronte’s writing kindles through Wuthering Heights.
Some interesting facts I came to know while reading this study guide which I stumbled across in the library a few days after I started reading Wuthering Heights.
1. We get to hear Heathcliff's own voice in Chapter 6. Do we really? I'll have to go back and check.
Now that I agree with. While Heathcliff's abominable actions didn't endear me to him, the writing definitely made me pity his life and from where he came. However Heathcliff behaved, I couldn't help but sympathise with him because of his lifelong loneliness and no sense of real identity, though his actions from time to time are deplorable. But, as I mentioned in my review of the book, I never could understand Catherine's behaviour. What prompted her to be the way she was. Is it because we always look for protagonists of a story to be inherently good, and not selfish like Catherine actually was.
2. It is interesting to note how one's surroundings are often the inspiration for the setting of place in a novel. Emily Brontë's life at Haworth Parsonage became the setting for Wuthering Heights, complete with the moorland and the gothic feel.
3. In Chapter 26,
4. This guide drives home the fact about the unconventionality of the protagonists in a novel that is at once unique in its creation.
5. While reading the book I never once had this strange feeling of everyone escaping the Heights and then finding their way back to it eventually as stated in the guide. To me, it was like a no-brainer, a kind of a prison from which the Earnshaws or Lintons could never escape, and the isolated setting reinforced that sentiment.
6. While this novel has the theme of love, it also ends in tragedy for all the pairs of lovers except one. And the following description rings true but is still amusing:
7. I was amazed at all the references I had missed when reading the novel at the way Brönte connected both the timelines. Next time, I'll read the study guide simultaneously.
I'd definitely recommend reading a study guide which greatly helps in putting into perspective a classic novel, especially if your copy doesn't have any accompanying Notes to the Text.
1. We get to hear Heathcliff's own voice in Chapter 6. Do we really? I'll have to go back and check.
The poetic power of Bronte's language transforms Heathcliff for us again into a man to be pitied, if not to be understood.
Now that I agree with. While Heathcliff's abominable actions didn't endear me to him, the writing definitely made me pity his life and from where he came. However Heathcliff behaved, I couldn't help but sympathise with him because of his lifelong loneliness and no sense of real identity, though his actions from time to time are deplorable. But, as I mentioned in my review of the book, I never could understand Catherine's behaviour. What prompted her to be the way she was. Is it because we always look for protagonists of a story to be inherently good, and not selfish like Catherine actually was.
2. It is interesting to note how one's surroundings are often the inspiration for the setting of place in a novel. Emily Brontë's life at Haworth Parsonage became the setting for Wuthering Heights, complete with the moorland and the gothic feel.
3. In Chapter 26,
Here, as so often in the novel, the weather matches the movement of the plot. The sultry, threatening day prepares us for the menace which seems to hang over Linton. The physical violence which we have witnessed earlier is replaced by unspecified violence, more frightening in that our imaginations run wild as we try to envisage Heathcliff's methods of dominating his sickly son.
4. This guide drives home the fact about the unconventionality of the protagonists in a novel that is at once unique in its creation.
5. While reading the book I never once had this strange feeling of everyone escaping the Heights and then finding their way back to it eventually as stated in the guide. To me, it was like a no-brainer, a kind of a prison from which the Earnshaws or Lintons could never escape, and the isolated setting reinforced that sentiment.
6. While this novel has the theme of love, it also ends in tragedy for all the pairs of lovers except one. And the following description rings true but is still amusing:
Lord David Cecil in his essay on Emily Bronte in Early Victorian Novelists describes the families respectively as 'children of the storm' (Wuthering Heights) and 'children of calm' (Thrushcross Grange).
7. I was amazed at all the references I had missed when reading the novel at the way Brönte connected both the timelines. Next time, I'll read the study guide simultaneously.
I'd definitely recommend reading a study guide which greatly helps in putting into perspective a classic novel, especially if your copy doesn't have any accompanying Notes to the Text.
I have to admit I knew next to nothing about Wuthering Heights before reading it. I thought it was supposed to be a sweeping, gushing romance story (which in hindsight makes me wonder why I wanted to read it in the first place). But it's not! There is some romance in here, but those moments appear briefly and unexpectedly like momentary rays of sunshine that burst through the clouds before the sky turns dark and grim again.
The characters are often cruel and vicious to one another. The story often feels quite bleak. And yet, Emily Brontë writes it so well that it's hard to put down. Many of the characters are unlikeable much of the time, but they also feel real. I think Brontë does a decent job of showing that the faults we find in others are often no fault of their own, and rather are due to the events and experiences that shape us while we're young.
This book wasn't what I expected, but I liked it.
(Also, deciphering whatever Joseph was trying to say was a highlight)
'Whet are ye for?' he shouted. 'T' maister's dahn i' t' fowld. Goa rahned by th' end ut' laith, if yah went tuh spake tull him.'
The characters are often cruel and vicious to one another. The story often feels quite bleak. And yet, Emily Brontë writes it so well that it's hard to put down. Many of the characters are unlikeable much of the time, but they also feel real. I think Brontë does a decent job of showing that the faults we find in others are often no fault of their own, and rather are due to the events and experiences that shape us while we're young.
This book wasn't what I expected, but I liked it.
(Also, deciphering whatever Joseph was trying to say was a highlight)
'Whet are ye for?' he shouted. 'T' maister's dahn i' t' fowld. Goa rahned by th' end ut' laith, if yah went tuh spake tull him.'
While this book doesn't contain a SINGLE healthy relationship between its covers, the angst alone makes me want to scream into the abyss. I find myself reaching for it time and time again.
Wuthering Heights often gets misinterpreted as an epic romance between Heathcliff and Cathy. Taken out of context, many of the best known quotes do sound this way, so reading them in their original context made me see them in a whole new light. Almost all (if not all) of the characters commit acts that render them thoroughly unlikeable to both each other and the reader. And yet, the magic of Emily Brontë and the reason it has endured as a classic work is that despite all of the misery of Wuthering Heights, it is impossible to put down.
I really wanted to like this book. I recognize and respect that it is a classic so really this comes down to personal preference, because this was a Did-Not-Finish. The overall story is good, just not one I could get in to