Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
rating: 5 out of 5
(Emily Bronte kicks butt and I'm adding Wuthering Heights to my fav classics)
Being partial to the classics, I enjoyed it and actually got through it quickly. For some reason, I expected this book to be like "Gone With the Wind'...I was so wrong.
Anyway, what is 'Wuthering Heights'? It's a house. With a name like 'wuthering' (which I can't find in the dictionary by the way) I expected this to be a romance novel. Supposedly 'wuthering' is a Yorkshire word that refers to turbulent weather.
I kept hearing this is a 'gothic romance'. It is dark and gothic. It is a love story, but not just that. It's about death and revenge as well.
And with one of the main characters being named 'Heathcliff', I imagined a romantic tall dark and handsome man. Not! Heathcliff is a jerk. A big one. Yes, he is dark and tall. He is supposed to be either a gypsy or spaniard. Nobody knows for sure since he was abandoned and brought to 'Wuthering Heights' as a child.
He is raised with Catherine, who by the way is a bit nutty and very selfish, and they become inseperable. The perfect couple!
Catherine winds up marrying Edgar Linton and Heathcliff leaves for 3 years. When he returns, he runs off with Edgar's sister Isabella and marries her.
Soon enough Isabella realizes how horrible Heathcliff is and she hates him.
Heathcliff admits openly that he doesnt love Isabella and only married her to get revenge on her brother Edgar.
Isabella and Heathcliff have a son. Catherine and Edgar have a daughter.
And a whole lot of events take place...the story was very, very good. I recommend it.
I like the dark aspect to this story. And I found it interesting that Heathcliff is so bad. He is a villain to the very end. It's almost hard to believe he can love anyone, but he does seem to love Catherine his entire life.
favorite quotes:
"It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same..."-Catherine
"Two words comprehend my future-death and hell: existence, after losing her, would be hell. Yet I was a fool to fancy for a moment that she valued Edgar Linton's attachment more than mine. If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn't love as much in eighty years as I could in a day. And Catherine has a heart as deep as I have..."-Heathcliff
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next to read will be
Chocolat by Joanne Harris , but in between I am reading something else. I don't know what yet.
