On finally appreciating Wuthering Heights

I thought it was going to take ages and I would dislike it as much as ever, but I think I've just confirmed that I've been unfairly prejudiced. With a caveat that I think maybe this is a book you have to grow into. As a side note I do think I've matured as a reader and as someone who writes about books for a hobby.

WH is a strong candidate for the debate about whether you need to like the characters in order to appreciate a book. Heathcliffe and Cathy are both loathsome examples of humanity. You can appreciate their devotion to one another to some extent, but their love is eternally polluted by their own characters and backgrounds. I still can't understand why Stephanie Mayer thinks it's an example to emulate, but then she did write Twilight. 

I think I appreciated it more this time because I realised how ground-breaking it is and surprising that it appeared and was successful at the time. I'm not sure I've really read anything like it in its savagery, and this was certainly the first time I've realised that Heathcliffe poisoned his own son to gain inheritance and probably poisoned himself (he somehow doesn't seem the sort to pine away, even if he did realise that his revenge was empty and Cathy 2 and Hareton were going to marry). I think it's also interesting how it's narrated by Nelly, I'm not sure if she can be classed as an unreliable narrator or not. She certainly doesn't shy away from describing her feelings towards the various characters. Lockwood also works well as the bumbling outsider who doesn't understand the wild Yorkshire ways and has a creepy encounter with the ghost of Cathy. 

I'm glad I've read it and it does make me wonder what other books I've previously disliked might be more to my taste, particularly the two Austen novels on the list and Ivanhoe. I last read that at university and can't remember why I disliked it so much, but I want to put a bit of Walter Scott on the next reading list if I ever finish this one. I'm not quite sure where I'm going with it at the moment but I would like to get a bit further with the ones I'm currently reading, mainly W&P and The Moonstone.

 

Back Into Trollope & Reading Wuthering Heights (without prejudice)

I've finally finished Can You Forgive Her? It took a bit of time to get into, which I think was more the fault of my state of mind rather than the book itself. It strikes me that some of it would make a rather nice updated novel, particularly the parts about Glencora's love triangle. I've read two of the Austen project novels last month - I loved the way that Curtis Sittenfield updated Pride and Prejudice, her adaptation retained all the wit and sparkle of the original and I loved the wacky Bennet family. I didn't find Joanna Trollope's version of Sense and Sensibility as successful. Austen portrays the Dashwoods and in particular Colonel Brandon with such a delicate subtlety, somehow Joanna's version just made Eleanor seem insipid and spineless and Marianne just unhinged and irritating. Trying to make Margaret speak current slang and references to social networking didn't really work either in my opinion. Anyway, I prefer Anthony and his minor Victorian scandals and politics. I've already started the next Palliser and so far it's going okay.

Other than that I have started Wuthering Heights and I'm hoping to actually finish it this time and not get so confused with the Cathys and men whose names begin with a 'H'. I think I do appreciate it a little better this time around. What I find off-putting is the Stephanie Mayer's of the world misreading it as some sort of passionate immortal love story, which I don't think was quite what was intended. I definitely admire Emily Bronte for writing it and getting it published, but I can't read it as a love story. To me, it's about two reprehensible people who can't escape their dreadful upbringing and in particular the mistakes of their father, and I would rather use lit theory to analyse it than swoon over Heathcliffe. I know I can't very well argue that that was what was intended, but I think that you wouldn't really depict a romantic hero or heroine in the way that Heathcliffe and Cathy are depicted.

I think the main reading that was pursued in University was postcolonial, that Heathcliffe was some sort of Caliban avenging himself on his oppressors. I think at the moment I am pursuing an alternative reading that the lack of a mother figure affected the family dynamics and the way that Heathcliffe and Cathy behave. They are pretty much left to run wild when they are children and to grow up as having none of the graces or accomplishments needed to get on in society, and it is only when Cathy encounters the Linton family that she starts exhibiting any behaviour that could be considered feminine. Heathcliffe is left in the really awkward position of having no position, he is Mr Earnshaw's favourite over his own son but that just seems to leave both Hinton and Heathcliffe with gigantic chips on their shoulders locked in a permanent struggle for precedence which begins even before Mr Earnshaw is dead. I suppose a modern reading might assume that Heathcliffe is Mr Earnshaw's bastard son and this is why he brings him into the family in such a weird way. Anyway, the chaos seems to start pretty much as soon as he dies and the Earnshaw family encounter the Linton's. 

That's pretty much where I've got to in the novel. I'm trying to read it without prejudice anyway,