Wuthering Heights...and the other Brontës

Post by **Impenitent** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 12:08 pm

I just re-read it for the first time since I was...probably about 18. Even before I was through with the first chapter, I realised that I had forgotten much of the actual book - I could remember the basic plot but had transmuted it to that of the movie. I guess I'm very good at suppressing bad memories.

Not that it's a bad book, although I squirmed at some of the gothic drama, but it's just so damn depressing! I mean...I almost didn't finish it, not because it's bad but because I was feeling so traumatised by it! Such dreadful people, getting away with doing such dreadful things to each other and to others. And deaths all over the place...

But it all came good in the last two chapters - I had forgotten the ending altogether so those were a relief. Not exactly satisfying, but I think I would have been completely devastated for weeks had it gone the way...the rest of the narrative went.

How can Cathy and Heathcliffe be compared to some of those other dramatic star-crossed lovers I do not understand, so self-destructive and hateful as they both are. Yes, I know their love conquered all, but really, what a selfish, oblivious, almost hateful kind of love. It may be their one redeeming quality but it does not redeem enough.

Really, those Brontës are worthy of the Addams Family.

Jane Eyre is up next for a re-read. I'm a little nervous; I don't recall it being so dreadful, but after Wuthering Heights I feel on shakey ground. I hope I haven't got too much bad stuff suppressed.

Post by **Cerin** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 9:27 pm

I distinctly remember my reading of Jane Eyre decades ago -- it put me in a mental stupor for some reason. Perhaps all the strong emotion drained my own? (Although, I was ill at the time; perhaps a certain state of vigour is required to stand up to the Bronte sisters.)

Post by **Túrin Turambar** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 10:10 pm

I don’t get why it’s considered some sort of quintessential romance either. I’ve certainly never read another romance where the author implies that the male lead is Satan in human form...

Post by **Impenitent** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 11:53 pm

It is rather an odd definition of romance, isn't it?

24 hours since I finished reading it, and I can now stand back and admire it , now that I've recovered somewhat from my trauma.

It is darkly brilliant; that Brontë was able to evoke that kind of despairing horror in the reader - a 19th C vicar's daughter! - is quite an achievement! The narrative flicks between multiple voices very successfully too...and there is such intensity and sizzle between Cathy and Heathcliffe - but then, 19th C writers did restrained eroticism so much better than we do today.

Altogether, a good read, in a repelling sort of way. Not sure that I'll take that journey again any time soon, though.

Cerin, I'm looking forward to Jane Eyre - I'm only 2 pages in so far and, once again, it seems I have suppressed my memories of my previous read; it all seems new to me! Yet I know I read it at least once because I bought the book when I was in high school and I can still see the turned down corners where I marked my place.

Post by **vison** » Mon Aug 18, 2008 11:57 pm

Jane Eyre is wonderfull, IMHO. Wuthering Heights sux. SUX. I just hate it. I hate the characters, I hate the artificiality of the plot, I hate the endless boring dialect passages and think the whole book could have been vastly improved by having the house hit by a huge meteor at the beginning of the first paragraph. Then, "The End".

Now. Jane Eyre: still rather "Gothick" in some ways, but no ghosts, a far more "believable" plot, a heroine one can love even when one is annoyed with her primness - a far, far, far superior book.

"Wuthering Heights" is regarded as the creme de la creme of romance tales because most people who read romance tales are brain dead. Well, not most. But the ones who love WH are.

Post by **Impenitent** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 12:18 am

Tell us how you really feel vison; don't hold back!

It was an interesting reading exercise, as I said, but it is not a romance, not at all, unless one considers domestic violence romantic. I don't get that, at all. And yes, the long passages of dialect caused my eyes to blur and I just skipped them.

I don't object so much at the artificiality of the plot - a lot of plots seem very artificial when analysed objectively. Do you mean you were unable to suspend disbelief?

Post by **vison** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 12:30 am

Impenitent wrote: Tell us how you really feel vison; don't hold back!

It was an interesting reading exercise, as I said, but it is not a romance, not at all, unless one considers domestic violence romantic. I don't get that, at all. And yes, the long passages of dialect caused my eyes to blur and I just skipped them.

I don't object so much at the artificiality of the plot - a lot of plots seem very artificial when analysed objectively. Do you mean you were unable to suspend disbelief?

Yeah, I have to learn to express myself more . . . . um . . . freely, eh?

I've read other novels of that era, and it doesn't hold up any better than they do IMHO. Just why it has remained so long and loved in the popular imagination is beyond me! I once sat through the movie starring Olivier and it was just as awful, I couldn't stand it. I guess the book was "romantic" in the sense they used it then, not meaning necessarily a Love Story, but "romantic" as was understood by the poets of the era, etc. Rather like the arguments in Sense and Sensibility, where reason was to be abandoned in favour of feeling - and people could read WH without letting their brain interfere to say, "This is incredible dreck". It appealed to "the passions" and it arouses a passion of ennui and annoyance in me . . .

Yet I truly love Jane Eyre. I always have. One is a work of genius and one isn't and there are as many fans of one as the other.

Post by **Impenitent** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 1:33 am

Yes, quite right! I hadn't considered it in the context of the Romantic period, whose exponents prided themselves in having made away with the constraints of Classicism - intellectual and civilised and learned.

Yes, by that definition, it is Romantic. But still not a love story.

Tue Aug 19, 2008 1:59 am

vison wrote:One is a work of genius and one isn't and there are as many fans of one as the other.

Hmmm? I haven't read either Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre so I have no axe to grind either way, but I can't help wondering about this comment. What makes one a work of genius and the other not? Is it just because one matches your tastes better than the other, or is it really an objective difference? I'm not trying to pick on you, vison, or question your judgment; it just struck me as an interesting thing to say.

It might be worth a separate thread, this question of what makes something a work of genius. If others think it would be worth discussing.

Post by **vison** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 2:14 am

Voronwë_the_Faithful wrote:
vison wrote:One is a work of genius and one isn't and there are as many fans of one as the other.
Hmmm? I haven't read either Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre so I have no axe to grind either way, but I can't help wondering about this comment. What makes one a work of genius and the other not? Is it just because one matches your tastes better than the other, or is it really an objective difference? I'm not trying to pick on you, vison, or question your judgment; it just struck me as an interesting thing to say.

It might be worth a separate thread, this question of what makes something a work of genius. If others think it would be worth discussing.

Oho. Well, you know there are those who think The Lord of the Rings is a work of genius - and there are those who don't.

It might indeed be a worthy topic for a thread. What say we start one? Right now I gotta go make the kids some supper, but I shall give this a great deal of thought.

Post by **River** » Tue Aug 19, 2008 2:20 am

I second Voronwë's motion.

Post by **Impenitent** » Tue Sep 09, 2008 2:05 am

So, I re-read Jane Eyre (weeks ago, now) and went on to re-read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (also weeks ago; since then I've re-read my daughter's Janet Evanovich collection, all of them Stephanie Plum books, and had some wonderful belly laughs in the process. Ahem. Back to the Brontes).

So what's up with the Jane Eyre worship? There are some wonderful moments, true, but none of them to do with the principles IMO. Jane is a bit of caricature - she's 18/19 years old but was obviously born middle aged while retaining a child-like physiognomy. She's seen nothing of the world, having been locked up in an orphanage school her whole life, and yet she has a worldly understanding. She's too mature, she's too prim.

And then there is Rochester. He's awful! He lies to her, he deceives her, he manipulates her emotionally and in other ways, he's more than 20 years her senior and has led a relatively dissipated life and he latches on to this young woman who is more a girl...close to pedophilia IMO. Nope. The pairing is horrifying to me. Even if he has come to the point where he no longer considers himself married, he knows that Jane would never agree with that point of view and yet he attempts to trick her into a bigamous marriage. This is love? The whole crazy wife in the attic thing is nutso anyway, but it didn't strike me as hard this time around as the first time I read it. Once you know, the shock (and hilarity) evaporates.

And then I went on to the Tenant of Wildfell Hall - which I liked the best of the three Bronte books! I didn't see it as a teenager when I first read this (I have a compilation volume of the three books/three Bronte sisters, in case you're wondering why I read the books in that order) but this is a proto-feminists book! There's still too much self-sacrifice involved, but that's part of the gothic genre so I can deal - but surrounding that is a story of a very strong woman.

Both these books are laced with religiosity. Yes, I know that is consequent to the period and the fact that the author was the daughter of a pastor - but this religiosity smacks of glassy-eyed fervor rather than the robust common-sense Christianity that one would expect to imbue an English country parsonage. Some of this is self-sacrifice to a scary degree, especially Jane, who wanders off without any means of support to starve in the hedgerows.

St John is a very interesting creation - to my mind, the most powerful and compelling literary creation, chillingly sketched. I was horrified by his end even though Bronte led us there so inevitably. Excellent!

Post by **axordil** » Tue Sep 09, 2008 2:44 am

he's more than 20 years her senior

By the standards of the time, that was not only OK but desirable. Just sayin'.

Now if you really want to see Rochester as a rotter, go read Wide Sargasso Sea...

JE and WH are both quite gothic, yes. If you want a tonic for it, reread Northanger Abbey.

Post by **Lalaith** » Tue Sep 09, 2008 2:48 am

Oh, I love Jane Eyre, and, yes, I've read it again recently.

(Just so you know that I'm not remembering it fondly from my past.)

Now Wuthering Heights.... Well, honestly, I don't think I've ever read the whole thing, though I've seen the movie. It didn't strike me the way Jane Eyre did.

I have never read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Hmmm. I might have to put that on my list.

Lali

Post by **Impenitent** » Tue Sep 09, 2008 3:27 am

Ax, I know that age disparity was quite desirable at the time (and not so uncommon these days either), but nevertheless...Bronte goes out of her way to draw the difference. Rochester is so much older in many, many ways...and Jane is described in childlike ways with regard to her physicality. I just find it icky.

And the way he deceives her! Plotting to do it, dressing up as a gypsy to spy on her...I mean, it's dreadful! How can this be seen as a model of true love?

(This past couple of weeks I've been listening to all the Jane Austen's as audiobooks as I work and I've just heard Northanger Abbey again

It's such fun! I'm half-way through Emma again at the mo.)

Lali, can you say why you love the book? I'd appreciate an alternative perspective.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is really good. Not quite so gothic, very engaging.

Post by **axordil** » Tue Sep 09, 2008 3:54 am

How can this be seen as a model of true love?

In an age where true love was a concept not really yet embedded in the popular consciousness, stalker-like behavior was part and parcel of it.

In some quarters it still is.

Seriously, the notion that a man of property would devote himself in this fashion to a little (and poor) wisp of a girl was tremendously romantic--and at the same time, there are these undertones about the oddity of it all, even in the context of the time. The Madwoman in the Attic...was in her time tremendously romantic, was she not?

I think Rochester is on the neurotic side, and I don't think he's supposed to be an unalloyed heroic figure. The gothic genre denies such exist.

OTOH I used to say I would have loved to date Jane.

Post by **Lalaith** » Tue Sep 09, 2008 4:17 am

I didn't find Jane prim and proper, beyond what was normal for that era. I found her quite believable as a character. I guess I could identify with some parts of her personality.

Perhaps because I first read it as a very young teen, I identified with the drama of it all--the terror of being locked in the red room, the bullying by her cousins, the tragedy of Helen (oh, how that still makes me cry!), the mysterious happenings in her new home, etc. I just liked all of it, and I still do.

I didn't take it as the epitome of true love, even when I was a teen. I took it as a very well-told story, full of drama, mystery, intrigue, plot twists, beauty, ugliness, etc. Perhaps I have always liked the fact that Jane was far from perfect and far from beautiful, and, yet, she was loved by Rochester anyway.

I never really found the age difference creepy; I just accepted it as normal for that time.

I have also always liked the incidents where Jane's sixth sense arises. (Well, I am Scottish, after all.

)

Lali

Post by **vison** » Tue Sep 09, 2008 5:22 am

Yes, I agree with Lalaith. It didn't creep me out, I just loved it. I didn't see Rochester as a stalker, just a desperate man longing for happiness before it's too late. And it was obvious that Jane fell for him like a ton of bricks.

I haven't read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall for, omigawd, decades! I don't even know if I still have that book . . . .

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Tue Sep 09, 2008 6:22 am

Anyone read Shirley? By Charlotte.

I have it, but haven't read it since college. I remember liking it better than Austen's Emma, which I also had to read <grimace>, but all I still really recall from it is that Shirley was constantly explaining why she had been given a man's name.

Shows how attentive I was to literature, I guess.

I will give it another try sometime. Certainly Emma turned out to be well worth a second effort.

Post by **Impenitent** » Tue Sep 09, 2008 12:03 pm

Nope, haven't read Shirley. Might. Although, I'm feeling all Bronte'd out at the mo.

I don't think I'll ever be reconciled to Rochester. The guy was creepy. He lied. He deceived. He manipulated. Yeah, he was desperate all right, but I can't accept it was love; it was too selfish and self-centred.

And now...I return to Janet Evanovich.

I think I'll start a thread; this series is so funny it's worth some light-hearted sharing.