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Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights

List Price: $22.00
Your Price: $15.40
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: An example of why bad things happen to bad people
Review: WUTHERING HEIGHTS has always been portrayed to me as a magnificiently tragic romance between an unconventional pair of lovers. I'm glad I can finally judge it for myself. Heathcliff, rather than coming across as the quintessential brooding (yet sympathetic) hero, is a character of textbook psychopathic tendencies, right down to the needless torturing and killing of animals. Catherine is never described or portrayed sympathetically either; she is ill natured, petulant, conniving and as vengeful as Heathcliff, whom she regards as her soul mate. (But, of course, since they are both physically attractive, people must feel free to ignore these aspects of the text.)

So what triggers the tragedy in their romance? Unconventional Catherine decides to take the conventional route of the times and marry for money. Heathcliff, a foundling who has been raised as Catherine's brother, slinks off with his tail between his legs, only to return in three years time with enough money to gamble with,enabling him to win the mortage to Wuthering Heights from Catherine's nasty actual brother. Meanwhile, Catherine and Heathcliff are quite dismayed when Catherine's husband finally puts his foot down and says they cannot continue their relationship. Catherine proceeds to her bedroom where she eventually bites a hole in her feather pillow and (in my favorite scene) amuses herself by naming the bird from which every feather came. Heathcliff elopes out of spite with Catherine's sister-in-law, a conventional sort who still manages to do what the wild and reckless Catherine should have done in the first place, or even later, instead of hiding out in her room for months on end. But no, that would have spoiled the plot, wouldn't it? WUTHERING HEIGHTS is definitely driven by plot, with the characters' personalities shifting to suit Miss Bronte's narrative needs.

Am I glad I read this? Yes. Bronte's descriptive strengths made mucking through the characters's histrionics worthwhile. Should I have felt guilty for having put it off for so many years? Certainly not. I think even as a teenager I'd have found the characters absurd and unlikable. Do I have concern for those who think Heathcliff's continued obsession with Catherine after her death, and his compulsion to punish all those who'd thwarted his relationship with her (as well as the offspring of these people, even his own)is a shining example of a true love that transcends death? Most definitely. It saddens me to think that some girls may remain in abusive relationships because their boyfriends are the Heathcliff-type, and therefore, supposedly desirable. Heathcliff is psychopathological. Love for one person, thwarted or not, is not supposed to be used as grounds for destroying the lives of everyone else you come in contact with.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Five Stars, and all for Heathcliff
Review: I was having a very hard time with this book, as I found the characters to be unbelievably hideous and hateful. Only Heathcliff sparked my interest, as my heart went out to him as he was tortured by Catherine, who must be the meanest social-climbing b*tch in English literature. Finally, about halfway through, Cathy dies (thank God) and the book really takes off. I could not put the book down as Heathcliff returns to carry out his revenge, and destroys the lives of basically everyone. Heathcliff is a magnificent creation, with whom I have one small quibble: why does someone as astonishing as he fall in love with a vile conniving bit of skirt like Catherine?

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great, too bad for the critics
Review: What a fantastic book! I already scrolled through the myridad critical remarks, mostly positive, and I did note one fact: the negatives are always hostile and sound like they come from low class and uneducated people.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A haunting love story beautifully written.
Review: I was supposed to read "Wuthering Heights" for a college humanities class. Well, . . . ummm . . . I didn't.

It wasn't until almost ten years later, when my wife recommended this book to me, that I finally "bit the bullet" and read it.

"Wuthering Heights" is a dark, sometimes tragic, love story. The characters have a depth to them that causes the reader to become emotionally involved with them. I found that I was cursing Heathcliffe on one page, and pitying him on the next.

My only regret concerns myself more than the book. The ever-decreasing attention span of Americans today made me feel at time that the book got a little long. Perhaps if I weren't so distorted by a sitcom mentality where conflicts are resolved neatly in thirty minutes (minus time for commercials), I wouldn't have felt this way. In other words, the fault here is with my reading of the book, not with the book itself. Just be prepared when reading it.

But read it nonetheless!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A wonderful must-read for fans of other Bronte & Austen work
Review: I recommend this wonderful book to almost everyone! I especially love reading novels that take place in the past yet can be related to now. One thing I do recommend - when you start reading this book, as you piece character personalities and profiles together - write them down! Make a family tree! That is the one confusing part of this book but by getting things down on paper you help yourself to enjoy the book more and not worry so much about who is who ;)

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: the cruel intentions of the 18th century
Review: this is a really good book that i had to read for school and i have not finished it yet but i look forward to an ending that is even more twisted then the previous chapters

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A dark love story set in the eightenth century.
Review: Wuthering heights is a book whitch everyone should read. it is a facinating love story between two wild individuals. It contains many twist and turns that you would never sucpect. This book pulled me in and made me felt that I was right there. It is not hard to see why this book is a classic.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Dark, depressing classic of obsession and love...
Review: I went into reading this book with the mindset that I was reading an 18th century english romance novel, which isn't exactly the genre that I would choose to read. I chose to read Wuthering Heights because I've heard of the acclaim that this novel receives for being one of the greatest pieces of English literature ever written so I casted aside my stereotpes and read it. It is a very tragic obsession between CAtherine and Heathcliff that lasts well after the latter dies and one can really feel the love between them. And the most riveting character in this story is the demon that Heathcliff transforms into as the story progresses. He is truely one of the most sinister characters I have ever read. Oh yea, as mention earlier by another reviewer, kudos to anyone who can sucessfully understand Joseph on a consistant basis throughout the story!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: a quick goodie
Review: it's a classic, which has got to say something for it, and i never could have written it, but i would have made a few changes. Brontë didnt get deep enough into the characters thoughts and emotions because she wrote it from a third person perspective, that of Nelly Deen. And what was Joseph saying?! I just skipped over his infrequent lines. Also, she should have made it longer, she just zoomed right through the lives and loves of Catherine, Heathcliff, Edgar, Miss Catherine, and Linton, who were all very interesting characters. Those characters were so interesting that the reader should have gotten to know them better! But, it is a classic everyone should read. Also, I found myself quite enraged with Nelly throughout most of the book because she was the main hindrance in the loving relationships between Catherine and Heathcliff and that of Miss Catherine and Linton. She was stern and not understanding of the young mind and definitely not a romantic. And, I thought she was mostly exaggerating about Heathcliff, untill the end where I saw how he treated Hareton and Miss Catherine so poorly, and then i saw that maybe Nelly was right!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Dark, violent, driven, fascinating.
Review: Amazing book. Truly amazing. The story keeps you gripped until the end, and the dark, driven obsession within the characters (especially Heathcliff) is rather fascinating, as well as the uncertainty it inflicts in the reader of whether to call Heathcliff the protagonist or the antagonist, which makes him one of my all-time-favorite novel characters.


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