Reviews tagging 'Misogyny'

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

78 reviews

challenging dark sad tense slow-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

Everyone in this story is kind of awful. Even the great love story of the story is very toxic and between two people who bring out the worst in each other. After his great love, Catherine, betrays him, Heathcliff schemes and manipulates his way into destroying his own adopted family and that off his rival's.

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Wuthering Heights is a stunning, claustrophobic nightmare of a gothic novel that I appreciate more in my 30s than I did in my teens. I went into this with little memory of the plot - the entirety of my recollection of my senior-year English essay on the subject was “everyone’s awful.” But two of my childhood besties were game for an impromptu buddy (re)read, and there is nothing quite like revisiting a book you didn’t understand on your first read and realizing it’s actually more horrifying than you previously understood (as a parent, the generational cycle of abuse and the childhood trauma wrought by severe isolation, confinement and emotional manipulation color the story for me, now). 

Also on this read, I was more interested in the structure and style. The use of two unreliable narrators is so brilliantly done, where Mr. Lockwood’s diary-style narrative depends entirely on an abbreviated version of Nelly Dean’s narrative, which depends entirely on her retelling of events that happened to other people nearly three decades ago. The layers of bias between us and the events of the story create a feeling of always viewing the action through a fun-house mirror, with the melodrama rendered farcical and the broodiness of the characters and the moors deepening into supernatural terror. 

Ultimately, who but an isolated and introverted young woman confined to the English moors, writing under an alias, defying the strictures of her zealous Christian family members could have written a story even her own sister would later caution is maybe too dark? (Charlotte’s posthumous introduction to the novel is overly apologetic and explanatory to a degree that I really dislike, but her note that her sister’s writing was “moorish, and wild, and knotty as a root of heath” is perfectly said). 

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riverofhorton's review against another edition

DID NOT FINISH: 32%

This book is incredibly violent, with every kind of toxic relationship and abuse you can think of, with the kind of casual racism and misogyny that I have at this point come to expect from 19th Century fiction. That said, I may well return to this book at a later date, since there were a few scenes that I found to be quite thrilling, and I do find myself invested in the characters and their development. Right now just isn't the right time for me to be reading a book with this amount of violence.

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dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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adventurous dark reflective tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Fucked up and yet. So compelling. Understand why kate bush was obsessed with it, very shocking for the time period and so good

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dark emotional sad fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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challenging dark medium-paced

Emily had a plan for this book but even after several readings, I'm not sure what it was. But it was precise and high minded, however debased her characters got. This one is definitely not for those who need a likes le character. Did she carry the Byronic ideal to its logical, ironic, conclusion?

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challenging dark slow-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

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dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

If you have been abused, have experience with violent, neglectful alcoholic or controlling behavior consider reading something else. This a horror story of obsession, violence, the legacy of family trauma, alcoholism and abuse. Heathcliff is a nightmare model of coercive control. What he and Catherine have is not love it is passion, obsession and mutual distruction. They and everyone around them suffer. This story has influenced women for generations to believe that this is what love looks like.  A romance. A love story. No. It is beautifully written horror story. 

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dark emotional mysterious reflective sad
Loveable characters: No

honestly not sure why people love this book so much.. or why Heathcliff is as romanticized as he is; hella problematic person. Also we’re just okay with first cousins marrying each other as well ? 
It’s an easy read & has fairly good pacing, but I also found it difficult to ascertain which character (Lockwood or Nelly) was speaking in the first person since so much of the story is told from Nelly’s point of view.  

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