Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Somehow I made it to this point without having read Wuthering Heights. I always assumed it was about forbidden love and that Heathcliff was a misunderstood romantic somewhere along the lines of James Dean. I also got the impression there were supernatural elements and that Wuthering Heights was a house shrouded in mystery. That I had so many impressions about it, and not necessarily wrong ones, shows how much Heathcliff and Catherine's story echoes in modern literature today. That being said, it was not a love story, in my mind. It was a revenge story. Heathcliffs revenge on Linton of course, but also Catherine's revenge on the both of them for making her choose between them that she makes herself ill. This is a good manual for how to will yourself to die. None of the characters are especially sympathetic and there are very few moments of hope. But it is interesting to see itinerations of it play out in other literature...the most recent I've read was A Little Life...

View all my reviews


Ways A Little Life is like Wutherimg Heights:

Jude and Heathcliff are both abandoned as a baby and left outside the church
Both have unidentifiable heritage
Both are abused as children by their father figures
Both become wealthy and 'respectable' but Heathcliff does not act like it, and Jude cannot believe he is (maybe Heathcliff can't either?)
Lipserd street is WH?  Crawling in and out of Windows
Both fall in love with their "sibling"....Willem often treats Jude as he would have his dead brother...
It is a " forbidden" love... Catherine for respectability sake, Willem had to deal with publicity
Catherine and Willem both die
Heathcliff and Jude both starve themselves in order to see their "ghosts"
Both take their own lives