Having watched various televised/movie versions of the tale…I have to say, I dreaded reading the book when someone in my book club chose it. I hate it when I know when someone will die (I assume that there’s no need for spoiler control here?).
However, Cathy was such a spoiled princess and Heathcliff a dispicable animal killing psychopath (oh, yes he was)…I couldn’t wait for Cathy to pop her precious clogs. As for Heathcliff…he goes waaaaaay beyond being a bad boy.
I finished it but found both the main characters very annoying and didn’t care what happened to them in the end.
Much preferred Jane Eyre by Charlotte.
Charlotte was definitely more readable, but there is something very special about Wuthering Heights. For that era it was very wild and abandoned. It’s that free spirit of the moors that she captures so beautifully. It’s amazing when that the entire Bronte family were pretty much wiped out in youth and yet their work has made such a lasting impression.
Possibly but I do like to read something modern between classics.
I recently tried Far from the Madding crowd but didn’t get very far. I found it far too dragged out; A whole chapter was devoted to a young lady arriving on a horse and cart, then losing her hat. :-p
Well Hardy is pretty heavy going at the best of times so perfectly understandable!
In case you haven’t read any, Virginia Wolf’s fiction is quite interesting if you wanted a more recent classic. “The waves” is almost like an impressionist painting in its style of analysing characters’ lives in an abstract way. I’ve just opened it on a totally random page :
“All is solid now. Instinctively my palate now requires and anticipates sweetness and lightness, something sugared and evanescent; and cool wine fitting glove-like over those finer nerves that seem to tremble from the roof of my mouth and make it spread (as I drink) into a domed cavern, green with vine leaves, musk-scented, purple with grapes.”
I did see that yes It was good to see something finally about the fabulous and gifted Brontes and it’s surprising that no Hollywood film has yet been made on the subject of their lives.
I’ve been to Haworth, lovely town, yummy tea and cakes too!
WH must be my favourite book, I find it moody and having family ties from Yorkshire I always really enjoy reading it. There are quite a few versions, my Mum bought me an edition of it with lots of originally left out dialogue, I did find it more difficult to read.
It’s definitely not a book that men enjoy generally.
Mrs LDs also loved the book and the film but somehow, I just didn’t think it was that well written, which is my also my opinion on a lot of the classics. It’s probably to do with the old language.
I started reading ‘far from the madding crowd’ but got bored. Page after page after page about a woman losing her hat.
I have never really liked Wuthering Heights as the characters seem to rush from one crisis to the next.
But I admire it as a tremendous achievement by a lady of limited life experience, who wrote of violent passions and all consuming obsessions created in her own imagination.
Of course the sisters fed each other’s imaginations all the time, and they had the disintegration of Bramwell in front of them as well.
I much prefer Jane Eyre, a much more subtle book, and Villette…even better.
What remarkable minds the three sisters had…and living in what we would think of as repressed circumstances.