A classic! A classic! And one of the most godawful boring books I've ever forced myself through! I felt in need of clockwork-orange-style eyelid openers for most of the book. This novel is a great example of exactly why high school students learn to hate reading 'classics.'

Me resulta increíble haber estado tantos años retrasando esta lectura. Por miedo, básicamente. Tenía tantas ideas preconcebidas sobre lo que me iba a encontrar con las Brönte, que no me atrevía. Hubo una época en la que pensaba, incluso, que Cumbres Borrascosas era una novela romántica. Maldita ignorancia.

Una de las primeras cosas que impactan de la novela es el tono tétrico. Las descripciones sobre Cumbres Borrascosas y su recorrido hasta la granja de los Tordos serán imposible de olvidar. Al igual que sus personajes. Cosa curiosa porque la gran mayoría de sus personajes resultan extremadamente desagradables. Prácticamente todos. Pero aún así, consiguen que te intereses por cada uno de ellos y leas este libro sin parar. La lectura es adictiva y claustrofóbica a partes iguales. Ansioso estuve, incluso.

Creo que pocos personajes he visto tan crueles en la literatura como Heathcliff. Es curioso que cuando era peque su nombre me hacía identificarlo con galan de películas románticas. Catherine tampoco se queda atrás. No llega al nível de crueldad de é, pero eran tal para cual. No voy a entrar en detalles de la trama, porque no es necesario. Y para quien conozca poco de la historia, como era mi caso, le recomiendo que siga siendo así hasta que lo lea. Cuanto más a ciegas vaya, más se sorprenderá y más maravillado acabará.

Y si hay algo que sigue flipándome es pensar que Emily Brönte escribió esto. Una mujer, que por lo poco que sé, era extremadamente introvertida y vivía apartada de la sociedad al cobijo de sus hermanas y su hogar. Una mujer así fue capaz de escribir una historia con tanta profundidad y personajes tan ricos. Pareciera una mujer de 80 años que hubiera vivido una vida excitante.

En fin, solo me queda unirme a ese gran pesar de todas las personas que han caído en las redes de Emily Brönte. ¿Por qué la vida no le dejó escribir más novelas? Vida llévate las novelas de 50 sombras y las de After y traenos más historias de Emily.

Anne es tu turno :)

I'm still trying to understand why and how there is such a hype for a sadistic sociopath and a spoiled pshyco bitch falling in "love" with each other and wrecking everyone's lives around them. People need to stop calling this romantic!

What follows is a retelling of the exact moment I gave up on reading Wuthering Heights.

"I CAN'T DO IT ANYMORE!" Screamed the weary reader.

His startled co-workers looked up from their monotonous work at the unexpected vocal discharge from an otherwise quiet introvert.

"Classic my a##." He shouted as he thrust the book into the bottom drawer of his desk.

The room was quiet; the tension was thick; the anticipation was palpable. His fellow workers wondered if this was it, the moment he finally snapped.

"Bad book Jesse?" said some faceless co-worker.

"Yeah, bad book," mumbled the weary reader as he went back to his mind-numbing job.

Wuthering Heights is not an enjoyable read in the least. It could be my current mood. It could be that I just came off an amazing read, and it had no chance to live up to that. Or it could be the book sucked. I'll put it in the try again later file, but I have little hope for it.

I don’t love this book for its perfection, for the way it meets expectations, for playing by the rules. I love it for the opposite of those things, and I love it with the kind of passion I imagine Emily felt for things she loved: personal, indefensible, aesthetic, undaunting.

The only easy-to-explain reason I have for loving it is the structure, the multiple narrators that don’t allow you to forget you’re being told a story. While the wind blows through the heather, settle in and listen to a tale unlike any you’ve ever heard …

“There was no sound through the house but the moaning wind, which shook the windows every now and then, the faint crackling of the coals, and the click of my snuffers as I removed at intervals the long wick of the candle.”

It seems this is a book written by a young woman exposed to very little except a family of diverse characters, the early death of loved ones, the harsh conditions of the Yorkshire moors, and a whole lot of moralizing from religion and social expectations. All of that comes across in her story.

Looking out on the landscape around her, I imagine Emily, intimately in touch with her surroundings, tried to make sense of it all. Why is the winter so bitter and deadly? Why does the heather grow so strong in the sunshine? To better understand, she turns them into characters: Heathcliff is the storm, Cathy the heather. Perhaps each day brings the possibility of danger because of a deep and enduring love between the two forces, a love gone wrong. Perhaps this provides some explanation to Emily, for the wild nature in which she lives, the restrictions on her existence, and the anguish that love has brought to her short life.

There are so many ways to read this novel:
1.tIt’s about Heathcliff, that evil monster, and all the destruction that can be caused by one bad dude.
2.tIt’s about Heathcliff that poor orphan boy, dreadfully abused as a child.
3.tIt’s about the powerful, timeless love between Heathcliff and Cathy.
4.tIt’s feminist. All the men are either evil or stupid or weak. The women have strong natures, a moral compass, and fight hard for what is right.
5.tIt’s an anti-romance novel. There is a marriage early on, but the reader doesn’t hear any wedding bells. It’s skipped right over in the text, as if that didn’t matter to Emily. Marriages are just means to an end. “Blessed events” are treated similarly, often leading to death.
6.tIt’s about the dangers of a patriarchal society. Emily shows how easily society’s propriety and the laws of primogeniture can be used for evil.
7.tIt’s a mystical novel, showing lives that reflect the natural world that contains both sunshine and shadow, that maintains life and destroys it, that provides both beauty and destruction, and beings that live on beyond death in a world we neither see nor understand.

For me it’s a combination of all of these, and more.

And to those who say this is no love story, I beg to differ. It’s a love story alright, just not the kind we have learned to expect, which provides my favorite literary twist. In Wuthering Heights, going for the happily-ever-after is a deal with the devil. It sets in motion all manner of horrible things, including death and destruction. EM Forster says “Only connect.” This story is about a connection, a connection discarded for want of happily-ever-after. But a true connection cannot so easily be undone, as the story proves.

“If he loved her with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn’t love as much in eighty years as I could in a day. And Catherine has a heart as deep as I have: the sea could be as readily contained in that horse-trough as her whole affection be monopolized by him.”

Aristotle said, “There is no great genius without some touch of madness.” This book is a celebration of Emily’s madness, and her genius.

I think the reason I’ll keep returning to this book is the depth and complexity of feeling it contains. I expect to re-read it many more times, and expect each read to bring a different connection to it, a different sympathy, and a reminder to embrace the wildness and danger that living brings.

Heathcliff might be the biggest ass-munch in the history of classical literature. True, he didn't come to Wuthering Heights under the best of circumstances, being an adopted "dark skinned" interloper in a household full of spoiled brats with inattentive adult supervision. And he had no role models of kindness and compassion to speak of. But holy shit Brontë, cut us a little slack. Even the so-called "love" that Heathcliff allegedly has for Catherine manifests itself in a cauldron of bile and vitriol so perpetual and unrelenting that almost everyone in his sphere of influence is driven to an early grave. And he doesn't stop there. No sir. He just redoubles his insidious efforts by targeting and manipulating their decendents.

Dogs are kicked and beaten and hung with handkerchiefs from bridle hooks. Children are slapped and scorned and terrorized. And that's not even the worst of it. Yet, I kept reading. I kept thinking that there had to be redemption and retribution in there somewhere. Heathcliff was going to slip and fall into a live volcano, slicing himself on razor shards of obsidian (encrusted with anthrax) on the way down… right?

Sayings of Georgia, No 9:

"This book says that you really shouldn't get into a relationship where if they die and get buried you think it's a good idea to dig them up again."

I hated everyone. I mean how can you like anyone in this novel? People say Nelly Dean is a nice character but we don't know anything about her past! She is the most unreliable narrator in the history of fiction!

I've heard people say this is a love story. Well, I don't think they actually read this novel. If tormented souls literally digging up corpses of loved ones is your idea of love then you are probably Dexter or someone.

I don't even know how to review this. Near the end I had to take it chapter by chapter. It was SO depressing I couldn't even stand it! I read a chapter, then watched Clueless, read a chapter, then watched Labyrinth, read a chapter, then watched Romy and Michele's High School Reunion, I needed to flush each chapter out with teen comedies!

DO NOT read this book if you are in any way depressed or sad about something because it will drive you mental and you'll end up like Heathcliff.

Even though I hated everyone and everything was so depressing, I still loved it. It's not up there with her sister's work "Jane Eyre" but it's not as boring as "Pride and Prejudice".

this is my third (3!) time reading this novel and every time is just like the first one. i know i say this about almost every five star but it doesnt get any better than this. if anyone still haven't read this HANDS OFF THE WHEEL, DROP WHATEVER YOU ARE DOING, GO TO THERAPY AND LOCK IN.

im going to say a very scary and disturbing thing, but i first found out about this novel from the Harry Styles fanfic ‘After’, as one does at the age of 12, and after reading the novel itself and discussing it with my mom, i constantly began to wonder why all the heroines in romance novels are reading ‘Wuthering Heights’ like crazy. my guess is because when an author writes a romance book, they google ‘the greatest romance novel’ and immediately BINGO—top result is ‘Wuthering Heights’.

!SPOILERS AHEAD!

the lore, for anyone uncultured—once upon a time there lived a brother and sister, Catherine and Hindley, on a remote estate with their family, until one day their father brought Heathcliff, a homeless guy whom he had picked up dying of hunger in Liverpool, and decided to shelter him, and even then no one in the house besides the old man really cared if he lived or died. every day this handsome boy wins more and more sympathy and love from Cathy and her father, who demanded that the children accept the guy into the family and consider him a worthy family member. to which Hindley responds ‘BARS

Here’s my choice for flashback Saturday at the time of another Mercury retrograde! One of my all time favorite classics: Wuthering Heights.

The readers of this unconventional, provocative masterpiece truly diverted in two sides: haters and true admirers.

I’m one of the admirers because I always like to read about honest approach to the monsters wearing human furs in the real world. Catherine and Heathcliff are irritating, extremely selfish, destructive, illogical characters. They can be definite as threatening monsters. The claustrophobic, dark, agitating world building at Yorkshire moors: desolated, remote, freezing grassland reflects true beauty and ugliness at the same time ( like the reflection of its own habitants) combines with the dark souls of the characters and push you into depressive,intense, bleak world of them filled with grudge, hatred, resentment.

Why a man turn into a monster? Abuse he endured throughout the years from his family can manipulate his mind and make him think he’s not worthy enough. His bottled up anger, growing inferiority complex, sadness pushed him so far to kill the last pieces of humanity left in his body. He turns into a violent man beating his wife, cursing to his faith, becoming more vindictive at each second, fueling himself with the pain of the others just like he suffered when he witnessed his soulmate chose to marry with someone else and deep inside he is still humiliated Gypsy orphan boy even though now he is rich and powerful man . But in the meantime the man is still capable to feel passionate love. Did his obsessive love feed his hatred and push him too far to plan his vindictive revenge?

He’s not the only villain of the story, his true love Catherine is also selfish, vicious, filed with hatred. The anger inside of them darkens their souls. They slowly decay and turn into ruthless creatures who don’t carry any piece of empathy.
Catherine and Heathcliff’s story was too intimidating, destructive, unconventional for 19th century of England but as far as I can see it’s still way too much complex, heartfelt, painful for the world we’re living in, too.

Multi POVed storytelling technique and the heartbreaking, moving, extremely disturbing, dark, traumatic and truly tragic story of two most argumentative characters of the literature still haunt my soul but like a moth to a flame I cannot help myself to be drawn to this book over and over again.

Here are my favorite quotes:
“Do I want to live? . . . [W]ould you like to live with your soul in the grave?”

“Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!”

“I’m tired of being enclosed here. I’m wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there: not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart: but really with it, and in it.”

“He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”

“You loved me—then what right had you to leave me?”

“I’m now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.”

“I have to remind myself to breathe—almost to remind my heart to beat!”

n  n

"إنها قصة طويلة ومحزنة ، وليست من النوع الذي يجب أن اختاره لتسليتي "

لا انا مبتكلمش عن نفسى طبعا محدش يفهمنى غلط ، ده النوع بالذات اللى بحب اختاره

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 that omnipotent 3rd person narrators are allowed, so you'd have to have a multiperspective story told by an omnipotent 3rd person narrator who was actually a character in the story (e.g. the housekeeper Ellen). The layers of perspective make it annoying and sometimes impossible to figure out who is telling what bit of story; and moreover, because so much is related as two characters explaining things between themselves, the result is that we rarely see any action, and instead have the entire book explained in socratic, pedantic exposition.

The sense of place is poorly rendered and almost entirely missing. Great, the moor is gray.

But ultimately, the most damning thing is that the characters are a bunch of immature, insuffrable, narcissistic assholes with very little self respect. This isn't a story of great love and passion. It's the story of how child abuse perpetuates itself through the generations. The characters are either emotionally abused as children or, as in the case of Cathy I, they're spoiled and overindulged with no discipline and can't muster the restraint and self-respect to ditch abusive relationships. I kept waiting for any of the characters to be remotely worth my time, but I found no respite from the brutish abuse of the horribly twisted Heathcliff or from the simpering idiocy of Cathy I and II. Ugh. Not only are there no transformations or growth, but the characters aren't even that likable to begin with. How this book got to be a classic is beyond me.