Wuthering Heights

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Summary: Nelly Dean tells the story
Review: I read this book, initially, many years ago. Then I sought out the Oliver/Oberon movie. While I loved the movie, it was only half the book! So I went back and read WUTHERING HEIGHTS again! It was even better the second time. The characters of this incredibly intense story acquire so vivid a uniqueness as the narrative goes on that the reader, sometimes, even becomes unable to distinguish the characters from the "real people" around him, for he is inevitably beguiled into feeling for them all kinds of sentiment; from love to contempt, from pity to hatred; in a wild kaleidoscope of feelings which no sensitive reader will ever forget. But probably, the greatest triumph of this story is the character Heathcliff. Emily Brontë creates a being singular in all its ways, especially its revengeful impulses. She renders Heathcliff something more than human, a true entity!, as she describes his life in that ingeniously exerted gossip fashion. By revealing to us only as much information as the closest person to his whole story (Nelly Dean) has, the writer presents him more as a legend of a superstitious countryside place than an ordinary person. There's just too many factors to go into when describing this book, but suffice it to say that if you miss this one, you've missed a great deal. Also recommended: Of Mice and Men, The Bark of the Dogwood, A Tale of Two cities

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Summary: Wuthering Height - A Students Perspective
Review: I recently read the novel Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte. As a student, I would not recommend this book to other readers. Unless falling asleep after every chapter of a book classifies it as good, Wuthering Heights is only good as a bedtime story. In the novel, it is said that Heathcliff and Catherine are in love, if this is so they wouldn't have spent their times together trying to hurt one another for pleasure. Heathcliff would have not wished that Catherine not rest in piece because she didn't mention him in her last breaths of air before dying (even though she was unconscious). This relationship that the author portrays as love, really is not love. It is more of a hate than anything. Another thing about this novel in which, I did not quite enjoy was its exaggeration in descriptions of everything. It is great to describe things well enough for the reader to create an image on what is happening in the story, in their mind, but don't push it overboard. For example, Liam O'Flaherty an author of short stories and novels uses great descriptions in his works. In his stories, he was able to create a mental image of the story in reader's imaginations, without letting the story get boring, and without over doing it. The thing is in Wuthering Heights, Bronte explained things out far too well and made the story less interesting. So coming from a student, I would not recommend this book to another student.

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Summary: Mean horrible awful people and personal redemption
Review: The movie American Beauty reminds me of this book. Both pull off the near impossible task of presenting the reader (or viewer) with horrible nasty people and then at the last moment making us see them as simply angry human beings fully capable of redemption and understanding, even if its too late to do anything with their lives.

The book starts out with one of foppiest of English fops touring the Manor with a utter contempt for these people and their ways. The stories that he hears from the servants only confirm his view, but they are intriguing. No one tells what they want to tell and there are times when you want to strangle the servants telling the stories (especially the one that PURPOSELY hid a note that would have eased some of the tensions because she didn't feel that it would be right. How many interfering old bitties like this are in the world? Probably more in the Victorian era.)

The love between Heathcliff and Catherine might have worked out in different circumstances, if Heathcliff had not been the hated adopted gypsy child, if Catherine's brother hadn't been an idiot drunk, if Catherine hadn't been pledged to marry the idiot next door. Of course, then it wouldn't have been such an intriguing novel. Heathcliff comes back the conquering hero to find that Catherine is married and her idiot brother is still a drunk and he can't have her so he plays dangerous games with people's hearts and gears everything to his twisted revenge. Included in his schemes are the marrying of Catherine's sister-in-law and the corrupting of Catherine's nephew (the son of the drunken idiot).

It's pretty rough going and you want to like Heathcliff at least more than the rest of the people in this book, but he gives you no room to excuse his actions. He's just horrible. Then like Kevin Spacey at the end of American Beauty, he reveals himself and comes to a point of self-reflection and repentence that fulfils the hope you had for him at the beginning of the book. It's very rare that this happens and its believable, but in this case it's very believable.

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Summary: An eternal story...
Review: The other reviews of the book already summarize the plot and lend a personal response. I only wish to bring to mind, a few points about the book which make it worth reading and worth appreciating .Written in the typical Gothic Novel style, the work is full of horror, violence, love, trauma and death. How many authors can intergrate all that into a single plot and have the novel called a "classic"? The fact that Heathcliff cannot be classified is crucial to the novel, he oscillates between the vicitm of abuse by Hindley, and the villain by Nelly, Cathy and Linton. Throughout the novel, the unreliability of the narrative only adds to the dire and dark tone of the novel - making it even more horrific than it already is. In the time Bronte wrote in, eroticism in literature was absent - the boldness of Bronte in writing about a man walking into a married woman's bedroom inannounced is not only shocking, but also a precursor to the modern, romantic drivel that some read. Its a great book, the theme of nature vs.nurture and of wuthered development have been taken up with severity - and as the story unravels, the plot reveals itself in repetition - highlighting the horror of violence. Read this book, knowing the time it was written in, see the harsh descriptions of the violence committed by a loveless man, whose unknown background makes him a mystery. Tell me, when you've read it, if you think Heathcliff was an illegal child of old Earnshaw...is there another explanation for the way he is brought into the house, and why catherine and him develop the diabolical friendship they have?

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Summary: Monstrously evil book
Review: WARNING: reading this review will spoil some of the plot of WH.

I grinned when Sis, back in high school, told me I reminded her of Heathcliff. I remembered from the (old, old) movie that he was some evil fellow. Then I read the book. And stopped grinning. I'm amazed this book would ever be assigned to high school 'kids.' It's humorless and ultra-realistic. Every page reeks of evil and has selfishly evil (meaning normal) characters. Heathcliff was a tortured being but hardly innocent. Cathy was a solipsistic, driven fool. Even the Cliff Notes booklet for WH is surprisingly short (I read The Notes after burning through the book in a week) as if Cliff's was horrified to study this book! Cliff's good observation about Heathcliff is that his sole emotion is actually pity/affection for Hareton and that his 'love' for Cathy is, in fact, an animal possessive jealous rage. I changed after reading this book. For the better, I don't know. There is a point in the book where Heathcliff's every action evokes disgust and hatred, and then...as a man...I began to feel what he felt. For whatver his faults, I began to connect fully with his insane rage, and that his ideal of 'love' for Catherine--however warped--had been stolen from him forever. I understood his ruthlessness and love for no person or thing after Catherine's death. By the way, not to parrot the critics, but it is true that the marriage of Cathy and Hareton is NOT some kind of full circle, happier ending. It's more like holding hands in Hell. I left this book sadder than when I started it. After reading it, I doubt anyone anywhere is getting 'wiser.'