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A review by aaronj21
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
5.0
The original problematic situationship. A book that asks the question, what if love was stripped of all its noble aspects and was nothing but pure, undiluted, obsession? What if the two worst people you ever met fell in love with each other and made it everyone else’s problem?
The basic premise here is that there are two landed families in the north of England. They only have like three names between them (making keeping track of who hates and loves who very tricky) and spend all their time plotting against each other, falling in love with each other, or dying from the elements. There apparently isn’t much else to do up on the moors. Add to this mix a mysterious foundling, Heathcliff, and you have a recipe for an internecine family drama for the ages.
Wuthering Heights is, and I mean this in the best possible way, the gas station taquito of the Bronte novels. It’s just enjoyable on a basic, universal level. Jane Eyre is a wonderful book and she's a great protagonist, but she’s so noble and hard to emulate. She’s your older sister who did everything better than you ever could. And Villette has too much French in it for any novel, let alone an English one. And those are the only ones I’ve read, so there.
Wuthering Heights is also the perfect book to read in high school as a bright young thing and then again as a sad, washed up, Millennial adult. And that's just what I did.
Because to a lonely and very young reader with at best a shaky grasp of what romantic relationships actually are, the central relationship in Wuthering Heights seems like the gold standard. “He's more myself than I am”. “Whatever souls are made of his and mine are the same”. “I cannot live without my life. I cannot live without my soul!”. That shit goes hard, okay? And it’s precisely how you feel when first falling in love, or when you first think you’re falling in love.
As an older, grizzled, more experienced, reader I can still find something beautiful in these people’s wholehearted obsession with each other while also recognizing how unhealthy it all is. As it turns out you DO need more for a relationship than fixation and a willingness to die for each other, as these two walking train wrecks amply demonstrate.
Heathcliff is often unintentionally hilarious. What do you mean your brain broke because you accidentally rescued your enemy’s infant son from a fall? What do you mean you overheard part of a conversation and then disappeared for years only to come back with money, education, and perfect posture? What do you mean your dead girlfriend’s spite lingers even in death because her ghost only just barely haunts you for eighteen years? What. Do. You. Mean.
This novel is both better written and more grotesque than I remember. The narrator is attacked by a ghostly child in a dream one night and all but severs her arm off on a broken window pane. Heathcliff straight up kidnaps Catherine Linton (not the OG Catherine he’s in love with, but her daughter who’s named after her) and refuses to let her go back to her dying father until she marries his worthless son. Heathcliff goes mad, starves himself, and dies with a horrible rictus grin on his face, apparently finally reunited with Catherine.
On second reading I found much to enjoy and revisit from this novel. I particularly liked the hopefulness of the improbably happy ending. How Hareton and Catherine II were able to shake off the mountains of baggage their progenitors saddled them with and find their own happiness.
The basic premise here is that there are two landed families in the north of England. They only have like three names between them (making keeping track of who hates and loves who very tricky) and spend all their time plotting against each other, falling in love with each other, or dying from the elements. There apparently isn’t much else to do up on the moors. Add to this mix a mysterious foundling, Heathcliff, and you have a recipe for an internecine family drama for the ages.
Wuthering Heights is, and I mean this in the best possible way, the gas station taquito of the Bronte novels. It’s just enjoyable on a basic, universal level. Jane Eyre is a wonderful book and she's a great protagonist, but she’s so noble and hard to emulate. She’s your older sister who did everything better than you ever could. And Villette has too much French in it for any novel, let alone an English one. And those are the only ones I’ve read, so there.
Wuthering Heights is also the perfect book to read in high school as a bright young thing and then again as a sad, washed up, Millennial adult. And that's just what I did.
Because to a lonely and very young reader with at best a shaky grasp of what romantic relationships actually are, the central relationship in Wuthering Heights seems like the gold standard. “He's more myself than I am”. “Whatever souls are made of his and mine are the same”. “I cannot live without my life. I cannot live without my soul!”. That shit goes hard, okay? And it’s precisely how you feel when first falling in love, or when you first think you’re falling in love.
As an older, grizzled, more experienced, reader I can still find something beautiful in these people’s wholehearted obsession with each other while also recognizing how unhealthy it all is. As it turns out you DO need more for a relationship than fixation and a willingness to die for each other, as these two walking train wrecks amply demonstrate.
Heathcliff is often unintentionally hilarious. What do you mean your brain broke because you accidentally rescued your enemy’s infant son from a fall? What do you mean you overheard part of a conversation and then disappeared for years only to come back with money, education, and perfect posture? What do you mean your dead girlfriend’s spite lingers even in death because her ghost only just barely haunts you for eighteen years? What. Do. You. Mean.
This novel is both better written and more grotesque than I remember. The narrator is attacked by a ghostly child in a dream one night and all but severs her arm off on a broken window pane. Heathcliff straight up kidnaps Catherine Linton (not the OG Catherine he’s in love with, but her daughter who’s named after her) and refuses to let her go back to her dying father until she marries his worthless son. Heathcliff goes mad, starves himself, and dies with a horrible rictus grin on his face, apparently finally reunited with Catherine.
On second reading I found much to enjoy and revisit from this novel. I particularly liked the hopefulness of the improbably happy ending. How Hareton and Catherine II were able to shake off the mountains of baggage their progenitors saddled them with and find their own happiness.