Reading "Wuthering Heights" is like popping a piece of chocolate in my mouth only to find out it's filled with espresso beans. I thought it would be sweet, but it turned out to be too dark and bitter for my taste. I cannot fault Emily Bronte for a deficiency in writing, though. The fact that she was able to create a constant state of tension while keeping me interested, alludes to her genius. In my opinion, it's a horrible story well told.

You know the sayings: "Love conquers all", "All you need is love", "Love is a many splendored thing"?
Well, how about this one: "Love is incestuous, psychologically damaging, manipulative, violent, digs up your corpse when you die, and wants to be haunted by your ghost forever and ever"?
The latter may not be the sentiment on most Valentine's Day cards, but it sure is the depiction of "love" in "Wuthering Heights". I used to think this was a romantic novel untiI I've read it. I bet most people who haven't read the book have the same perception as I had before.
Forget the romantic candlelit dinners, the wine, and the roses. Catherine and Heathcliff's love exists on an entirely different plane! The one that involves ghosts, corpses, the possession of souls, and revenge. Speaking of revenge, Heathcliff, who harbors more than one grudge against his adoptive family, the love of his life, and his neighbors, manages to make every revenge drama look like kids' play.

It was a difficult read, but I highly recommend this book. I think, Bronte created one of the most passionate love stories ever told. Sure, its idea of love is psychotic, way unhealthy, and it makes "Blank Space" look like a really level-headed approach to love --but that's the point. Sometimes "madly in love" means just that: that love has rendered you literally mad. Sometimes it's not healthy. It's not a good idea. It is all-consuming, stay-up-all-night, hurts-worse-than-a-root-canal kind of love, and Bronte tells it as it is.

So take a trip to Wuthering Heights, where love will tear you apart, follow you every step you take, and come in like a wrecking ball!

Memory is a treacherous monster.

How else can it make me remember this classic, which I read as a teenager, as a SAD LOVE STORY? It is quite impossible to explain the increasing surprise on my face, and the accelerated beat of my heart, after I lazily grabbed the new copy of Wuthering Heights that I bought for my daughter's birthday, and started reading. Inattentive at first, thinking I knew what was coming, I began to obsessively devour the story, finishing it in a frenzy.

What is this?

A Genealogy of Yorkshire Monsters - as observed over three generations and various family branches? An ambitious writing project with the mission to create only bad characters? If so, who would win? Let's see...

Monster In Chief must be Heathcliff, as he deliberately destroys what comes in his way. Naturally, he is cast as the dark-skinned orphan with a mysterious past, brought up to feel his difference and underprivilege every single day, and strongwilled and energetic enough to take revenge on a world that never gave him a chance: biological and social ostracism combined against a powerful individual character. Mister Monster In The Making only awaits the two additional ingredients that are necessary to make the Molotov cocktail explode: unreasonable, hopeless love and deep humiliation.

So Heathcliff wins the Monster Prize, along with the Height and the Grange, but he has strong contenders for the title.

What about the two siblings Earnshaw (first generation)?

A sadistic drunkard and careless father, Hindley has a horrible role to play. A natural snob and bully, he delivers most ingredients for Heathcliff's explosion. And the lovely lady of the play? The sweet darling Catherine? Not so much. Meet entitled, spoiled rotten, fake-tantrum throwing Miss Earnshaw, who adds to the mix by rejecting her true love because it would make her feel "low", while marrying a weak, boring, yet rich and suitable young man gives her the power she yearns. And of course she must keep playing with the heart she has broken - until it snaps. Mrs Linton is barely better than her former self, Miss Earnshaw. And then there is Isabella - the victim of the rest of the egos? Maybe. But only because she is weak. If she had had more strength, she would have used it to display exactly the same amount of monstrous cruelty and egomaniac emotional bankruptcy.

Nelly? The sweet creature taking care of all the spoiled brats, one after the other? But she is also causing trouble, meddling, taking things in her own hands and generally acting according to her own favouritism of the moment rather than according to true compassion.

The Holy Joseph, then? The voyeur of evil, preaching hellfire without ever helping a victim?

Generation One is a wild bunch of characters if there ever was one. No wonder the next generation turns out weak and selfish and confused. After all, parenting matters.

So who is surprised that the anti-fairytale can be summed up with a "and so they died unhappily ever after"?

The hint in the end at the ghosts of Heathcliff and Catherine haunting the wuthering heights can hardly be any scarier than their living selves, in my opinion. May they rest in unpeace, but this novel is a riot! I am glad I reread it, and hope I will remember it now.

The exprience does cast some doubt on my memory of other teenage favourites, though. Is Anna Karenina really a SAD LOVE STORY? I really hope she is not anything like Catherine, to be honest. But I guess I will have to reread that one as well to be sure.

And last, but not least: I wonder if it was a wise choice to buy this for my twelve-year-old daughter. It is a WILD, WILD story. And she has an amazing memory. I am sure she won't forget the monsters once she gets to know them.

Motivul pentru care i-am dat 5 ⭐️ si nu 4 (desi asa aveam de gand), ultimele 150 de pagini (aproximativ) m-au facut sa mai adaug o steluta, iar asta datorita personajului Heathcliff care m-a enervat atat de mult incat am zis: ok, e de 5!

When people say they don’t like books where the characters are all unlikable I think “hear me out: Wuthering Heights.” These people are all shit. But I hear you protest “but but, madam, consider if you will that they have reason to be from their past and their—“
Oh I get it and agree, doesn’t make them not suck as people though. But what fun would a happy and content ghost be anyways? On the moors no less. I stand by it. And this book slaps.

Em.B, you penned a real one.

Phantoms sobbing through the night, a shitty guest telling your story based on the cleaning lady’s oddly verbatim retelling, a man more beast than man or so they say, a tale of love a tale of obsession a tale told through soaring statements of euphoric beauty. ‘Honest people don't hide their deeds,’ and this dishonest crew are gonna give you the most notorious tell-all of literary history. Shit will get real and hit the fan and you will love it. This is a classic for a reason. Heathcliff is an eternal little vindictive shit and can go fuck himself but of course I’m gonna read this story gripping the pages and frantically flipping as fast as me wee eyeballs can carry us. Read it. Do it, you’ll love it. Just do it already.
Also, shoutout to Anne Carson's phenomenal poem/essay The Glass Essay which inspired me to revisit this book.

it's not true love until he wants your ghost to literally come haunt and drive him insane and oh while he's at it also digs your grave a few times to give you a hug.

find yourself a hot psychopath who loves you and only you. never settle for less!

---
too soon in 2023 for an emotional breakdown???

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!”

“wuthering heights is a masterpiece. it’s incredibly unpleasant to read.” -vox.com

upon finishing, i immediately researched more into this achingly beautiful book because i am OBSESSED and i feel the above quote summarizes it well. this was my first classic and i’m happy it was. was it a romance? a gothic novel? a tragedy? i’d say all of the above.

everything in this novel is so subjective, but heathcliff is the most prominent character in my opinion. his love for catherine, a strong female character, leads to an absolute rollercoaster of events and emotions. alice hoffman stated, “Read “Wuthering Heights” when you’re 18 and you think Heathcliff is a romantic hero; when you’re 30, he’s a monster; at 50 you see he’s just human,”. as of now i see him as all three; although mainly a monster for reasons i won’t say to avoid spoilers. catherine may have been the reason he was so awful although i’m unsure. there are many other important characters but i feel the story revolves around those two. if you want to say “aww” one second and “i can’t believe someone would say that” the next…this book is for you. so many emotions! so much symbolism! stay tuned for more classic reviews because i’m officially hooked! can you tell i’m excited!

this was a fun buddy read with rex, glad to have br my first classic since it was a bit confusing at first.

*Trigger warnings for mental/physical abuse, sickness, mental health issues, and multiple deaths*

n  n    “you said i killed you—haunt me, then! be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where i cannot find you!”n  n

emily bronte had no right to make this book so good.

wuthering is not a romance (no matter how many times stephenie meyer tried to tell us otherwise in the twilight saga), but it is a love story, albeit a very distorted one. brontë's erudite demand of the english language shines through as she weaves poetry within her prose to create one of the most devastating, emotionally complex stories of all time.

this book should not be read as a romance, but rather a story of deeply complicated and unlikeable characters and their relationships. brontë uses them as vehicles to explore the boundaries and intersections between infatuation, love, and lust. unlike most classics and books, she does not shy away from thoroughly depicting some of the most monstrous characters in literature—what they love, what they hate, how they love, how they hate.

that in itself is a literary triumph and feat.

n  n    "if all else perished, and he remained, i should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger."n  n

⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻

n  mini reviewn
i originally had this at 3 stars when i read this almost ten years ago but i am bumping it up to 5.
i fear this may be the best brönte... so sorry charlotte.

It’s so unusual to find a good story with terrible characters.

I don’t mean characters we dislike due to their personality or choices, but because, at their core, they’re weak or cruel or, maybe, just plain evil. So, to open up a book 175 years old, having only heard “It’s a great love story!” as guidance, Wuthering Height is probably the biggest false advertisement I’ve ever faced which made it so much better to read.

Being honest, the beginning was slow and boring. It’s the most technically challenging book I’ve read in a while after a break from reading and a large consumption of mostly YA books in the past few years. Secondly, I didn’t know where it was going. Heathcliff may be the star of this story, but he’s not the one to tell it. Our protagonist, Mr Lockwood, is literally a random person who doesn’t hold any relevance to the plot except to hear the woeful tale of Wuthering Heights from someone who also isn’t Heathcliff (a bit like a book Inception, if you will). But the more I got stuck in and the more my page count trickled upward each day, I came to appreciate it for what it was. Not a love story exactly, but instead a depiction of the cruelty and wickedness of humanity.

Long story short. Heathcliff, a gypsy boy, is adopted by Earnshaw to Wuthering Heights, a house among the Moors. There he spends his childhood, in love with Earnshaw’s daughter Catherine, hated by Hindley, Earnshaw’s son. As they grow up, their lives become entangled with another family, the Linton’s, and they more they intersect, the more chaos is caused.

For a lot of the story, I wondered where were things going, because from the start all of these characters continued to be unpredictable. Cathy is bad-tempered, Hindley, abusive, The Lintons, weak, (though I liked them both) and Heathcliff…he’s basically a sociopath, I don’t know what other way to put it. All their children are equally frustrating (with such similar names to their parentage), yet I was completely sucked into the drama of their lives. Because this book takes the risk of of irredeemable characters, it suddenly becomes so more unique and fascinating to read. They have unhappy marriages, are abusive, treat one another terribly, that you lose hope in their humanity. And to think of how long ago this was published, I would’ve loved to seen the uproar at time.

Because how many happy books and characters do we have? How many relationships are unbreakable and honest, and last without flaws? This could’ve been an easy love story about a boy from a low background trying to marry a girl who’s from a privileged family. But no. Heathcliff and Cathy are callous and deceitful, and marry other people, and then treat their spouses with hatred. It’s remarkable a book this old went to challenge social norms during such a conservative time period. Never once is there sympathy in this book. People hate (or love) each so much, they dedicate their lives to getting revenge in such weird ways on each other. And that's where the believability lies. These cruel character with their selfish impulses and violence reflect the part of society and relationships we don't talk about. We like the happy endings and soul mates, but this book is just a portrayal of the opposite side. The qualities of the characters in this book are qualities that exist in real life, and maybe we'd like to believe they're unrealistic, but the truth is, most people lay between this and the Disney, rom-com ending. We'd just rather not see the former because we want to believe love is a perfect thing, when this book proves that's not always a correct view to have.

In terms of characters, Nellie and Edgar were the only remotely nice people, as well as Hareton. And I’m just clarifying my stance here, but there is no way Heathcliff can be considered redeemable. He’s a brilliant character and incredibly complex, but to those who are convinced he’s some kind of swash-buckling romantic figure, I’m just so confused. Give me your thought process.

I must admit, I also see the allure of referring to this book as romance novel due to the sheer intensity of Heathcliff and Cathy’s relationship, but I feel Bronte was much more focused on the negative aspects of these characters. Yes, they may be abusers and wicked people, but they can love in their own, odd ways. At the same time, they’re still abusers and wicked people. Their love, strong as it is, does not detract from the things they’ve done. In fact, maybe their love was the cause of the downfall of all these people anyway.

I didn’t mind “It’s a story, about a guy who’s told a story” as a choice of narrative, and while I actually felt I didn’t get a full picture of the Moors, I feel the spooky atmosphere was always spot on. My stars are lost on the general slowness of the beginning and the last fifty pages took such a random turn, I put down the book to laugh at the absurdness of it, thinking “what is this book?” It felt like the third act twist of a B-list horror move. But the characters and their choices stayed fascinating and the psychology of each one of them left so much for me to explore. I thought it was a bold take on what we expect of a romance story and I'm glad I picked it up.

(I really hated Heathcliff's son though. I just need to write that down.)

- "كل ساقٍ سيسقى بما سقى"، لم يبارحني هذا القول معظم الرواية، مثل طيف "كاثرين" الذي لازم "هيثكليف" :)

- من الروايات القليلة المربكة على صعيد الشعور، فالصراحة لم اعرف اذا كنت قد احببتها او كنت قد كرهتها! فمن جهة تعاطفت مع "هيثكليف" في البداية لما يعانيه من يتم، ومعاملة سيئة، وتنمّر ابن صاحب البيت وفي النهاية احتقرته واشمأزت نفسي منه ومن افعاله! كذلك كاثرين فقد راق لي عطفها على الغريب بدايةً، وكرهت انانيتها وتسلطها وغرورها لاحقاً وهذا يسري على جميع الشخصيات تقريباً.

- من ناحية البناء، نحن نتكلم عن رواية تقّصها علينا خادمة، ورغم ان الخدم يطلعون على معظم الأحداث التي تجري في بيوت مخدوميهم، الا ان هذه المعرفة تبقى ظاهرية وسطحية، من هنا كانت الشخصيات قريبة الى التسطيح، والسذاجة لا بل مثيرة للشفقة في العديد من الأماكن! لو ان الرواية كانت على لسان "هيثكليف" كانت لتكون اعمق بكثير (وهذا من وجهة نظري).

- وتدور الدوائر، فلسفة القصة دائرية، عودة على بدء في كل شيئ، القصة التي ابتدأت بالقلب الناصع العطوف لوالد كاثرين انتهت بذات القلب الأبيض لأحفاده! وما بينهما كان الموت والسواد والإنتقام، والمصادفة العجيبة ان هذا الموت تجسّد في شخصٍ أسود! شممت العبير الإنكليزي ههنا!!

- الحبكة الدينامكية المستعملة كانت ممتازة لوقت كتابة الرواية، لكن ذروة الرواية بعودة "هيثكليف" وبدء الإنتقام كانت ضعيفة وضبابية، خصوصاً ان التغيير الذي حصل له بقي مجهولاً ولم اقتنع بنوعية التغيير في زمن قصير! كما ان التصوير الشيطاني لهيثكليف كان مبالغاً به خصوصاً في تعاطيه مع ابنه ومع ابنة حبيبته المفترضة ومعشوقته الأرضية!

- الرسالة التي ارادتها الكاتبة بتغليب الحب على الأنانية كانت ممتازة في نهاية القصة خصوصاً ان قصة حب "كاثي" مع ابن خالها هي اعادة لقصة حب "هيثكليف" مع "كاثرين" لكن كاثي لم تتمادى في انانيتها وسخريتها بل اخذت على عاتقها تعليم ابن خالها ونجحت في كسبه. وكل ما حاول "هيثكليف" فعله طوال عشرين سنة ذهب ادراج الرياح.

- الترجمة كانت جيدة، هناك مشكلة بسيطة في الطباعة فالأسطر جدّ قريبة من بعضها!

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 read this book for my AP Literature class. I loved the teacher, loved the subject matter, and loved pretty much everything else we had read, so I had high hopes for this book. I must say, I made a genuine and sincere effort to like this book, I really did. I got half way through with no hope in sight, yet I perservered, hoping the second half would show promise in the next generation. No such luck. Although nothing tops the finale "love scene" between Heathcliff and Katherine, with Heathcliff foaming at the mouth and a verbal battle of "no, YOU killed me" "no, you killed yourself" (a stupidity hiterto unknown since the "no YOU'RE prettier" battles). Eventually, the final pages came into view and I was desperate- there must be some redemption for this junk! Some message, some ending sequence, SOMETHING that makes this worthwhile. The characters are so self-absorbed and posses an unprecendeted lack of intelligence, yet are still portrayed as intelligent by the literary world, that it seemed like the only fitting ending would be the characters realizing their stupidity and engaging in a mass suicide. No such luck. Every last word was idiotic and as empty as the first. But you know what grinds my gears even more than the fact that I wasted a week on this worthless pseudo-classic? It kills me that people not only mistake this hoax for real literature, but reference it for ROMANTIC value! Foaming at the mouth, marrying someone you don't love, wow.... now that's a level of romance lovers fantasize about achieving.