I'm just on fire with so much admiration for Emily Brontë right now. Having read this book, I now understand why it’s generated such fierce controversy since its first publication in 1847. Why early reviews dismissed it as an aberration (with one pearl-clutching reviewer wondering “how a human being could have attempted such a book as the present without committing suicide before he had finished a dozen chapters”) and why writers like Sylvia Plath and E.M. Forster, drawn to the complex and often...

"Hello, everyone. Welcome to chaos." -Emily Brontë upon publishing this book, probablyInside me, there are two wolves. (I am saying there are two wolves in order to reference the meme, but what would be more accurate is to say that inside of me there are two boring and nonviolent creatures. Like a pigeon. Or an accountant.)One wolf, or whatever, has such a constant and undying need to share its opinion that it is currently ranked #1 on Goodreads for most annoying best reviewer. (Don't check if t...

This is my favourite book. I do not say that lightly - I've read quite a lot from all different genres - but this is my favourite book. Of all time. Ever. The ladies over at The Readventurer kindly allowed me to get my feelings of utter adoration for Wuthering Heights off my chest in their "Year of the Classics" feature, but I now realise it's time I posted a little something in this blank review space. I mean, come on, it's my favourite book so it deserves better than empty nothingness.So, what...

I understand why many people hate this book. Catherine and Heathcliff are monstrous. Monstrous. You won't like them because they are unlikable. They are irrational, self-absorbed, malicious and pretty much any negative quality you can think a person is capable of possessing without imploding. They seek and destroy and act with no thought to consequence. And I find it fascinating that Emily Bronte chose them to be her central protagonists.When this was first published it was met with animosity be...

"all i care about in this goddamn life are me, my drums, and you"...if you don't know that quote, you're probably too young to be reading this and isn't it past your bedtime or shouldn't you be in school or something?but that quote, hyper-earnest cheese - that is romance. wuthering heights is something more dangerous than romance. it's one long protracted retaliation masquerading as passion. and goddamn do i love it. i can't believe i haven't reviewed it before - i mention this book in more than...

Ah the classics. Everybody can read their own agenda in them. So, first a short plot guide for dinner conversations when one needs to fake acculturation, and then on to the critics’ view. A woman [1:] is in love with her non-blood brother [2:] but marries her neighbor [3:] whose sister [4:] marries the non-blood brother [2:]; their [1,3:] daughter [5:] marries their [2,4:] son [6:]; meanwhile, their [1,2:] elder brother marries and has a son [7:]. Then everybody dies, 1 of bad temper, 4 of stupi...

I never expected this book to be as flagrantly, unforgivably bad as it was.To start, Bronte's technical choice of narrating the story of the primary characters by having the housekeeper explain everything to a tenant 20 years after it happened completely kills suspense and intimacy. The most I can say is that to some extent this functions as a device to help shroud the story and motives from the reader. But really, at the time literary technique hadn't quite always gotten around to accepting tha...

Certain novels come to you with pre-packaged expectations. They just seem to be part of literature's collective unconscious, even if they are completely outside of your own cultural referents. I, for instance, who have no particular knowledge of--or great love for--romantic, Anglo-Gothic fiction, came to Wuthering Heights with the assumption that I was picking up a melancholy ghost story of thwarted, passionate love and eternal obsession. Obsession turned out to be only accurate part of this pre...

If you think that spitefulness is romantic, and that people destroying their lives is dramatic, go ahead and read this book. But don't say I didn't warn you.

I've tried it three times. I know people are obsessed with it. I hate everyone in the book - and I just can't care about a book where I actually hate the characters.

And, sure, I get the interpretation that as terrible as Heathcliff and Cathy are, it's their love that redeems them, and isn't that romantic.

No.