Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Part of BBC’s “100 Stories that shaped the World” list, I thought it would be fun to keep track of all the works I have read that are listed.
During the last decade or so I read this story 3 times and I can say with absolute certainty that the third time definitely felt like a chore. I had to force myself to go to my local university’s library (not that I don’t like libraries) at 8 in the morning, with a packed lunch and a double shot cappuccino for two-and-a-half days to make it through this book. I had to trick and force myself to concentrate by turning off all social media on my devices and I just kept looking forward to every afternoon when I could go home and take a break from this story that won’t “bring a smile across your lips”.
I found the story more than just a little confusing, and hey, I read it three times, with all the characters across the generations having the same or very similar names. I asked myself “why god why make it so complicated and write a story that is told within a story within a story?”. Sound familiar? We had the same structure in Frankenstein and I know some will gasp in horror now, but it isn’t a great way to construct a story that will stay positively with the reader. Throw in the strange character of Heathcliff and I’m still sitting here scratching my head at the author’s intended goal for her story.
I may sound a bit negative and that with good reason, at least to me. Recently I read a quote in an article posted on the Jane Austen Centre website citing Brontë’s opinion of Austen’s writing as lacking emotion and the visceral aspect of human existence (I’m paraphrasing here). The point I got from the quote was that Austen’s writing isn’t worth anything compared to the Brontë’s writing, because it doesn’t make the reader feel like they have to throw themselves off a cliff at the end of the novel. That stung a bit and I took a defensive stance in favour of Austen.
Anyway, I did not like Wuthering Heights the first time I read it and I certainly didn’t like it the third and guaranteed last time I read it. It is more like a right of passage for every English student to make it through this story, write a paper on it and finally move on with their life.
