Wuthering HeightsAuthor: Emily Bronte
Publisher: HarperCollins
Pages: 431
Release Date: May 1st, 2009
Rating: 3/5
Review: I first read this book a long time ago as a school assignment and novel study where we read it as a class and broke it down in depth. I re-read it more recently and found that I still liked this book, but what I hate it ow it's portrayed in popular culture. It is not a love story.
This is a dark, sad and downright depressing story. It is a well-written timeless tale of missed opportunity and the psychological effects of abuse and neglect and the consequences of our choices. There is nothing romantic about it, it's not a romance. Also, this is sort of a completely unrelated side note but the version I purchased (and the only version they had in store) had a badge on it (see photo of cover) that said 'Bella and Edward's favorite book'. Also goes so far as to include a twilight themes cover and caption itself "Love never dies...'
What the actual heck? Why is a piece of classic, beautifully written literature being marketed to a new generation through a sub-par sparkly vampire story? No, just no. There is something seriously wrong with us if this is going to make us pick up a book.
This being said. I am not hating on Twilight, it has its own... charms and I've admittedly read all four books. When I first read them I was drawn in and finished the whole series in a week, but after revisiting them, I started to question why I'd like them to begin with. I just don't think you should ever use one book to market another it just seems wrong.
Story: Catherine is a selfish opportunist who at the heart of things is nothing more than a mean girl who not only wants her cake, but everyone else's too.
Heathcliff is a sad man bent on revenge and cruelty towards others even though it will never make up for the things he has suffered, or the fact that he fell in love with a girl who turned into a total Regina George, without the redemption.
I don't find it a particularly romantic story, not in any way shape or form.
I know there are those who do but in my opinion, it is not a story about two people who were kept apart, because the outcomes of the story were entirely the effects of their own choices, bad or not, and not the choices of others. This is not Romeo and Juliet, their families are not separated by an enternal blood feud.
They could have been together, if they'd really wanted to, but Catherine made her choices, and Heathcliff, instead of living with it, became vindictive and took what could have been a happy life for himself and made it miserable for him and everyone around him.
Life is what you make it no? I have never read a book that I liked so much, where I hated the main characters with such passion that I hate these two.
There are literally very few redeeming qualities about these characters, the only real sliver of empathy you can feel is for Heathcliff because of his beginnings and his treatment as a child, oh and the fact that the moment Catherine got some fancy attention she basically ditched him.
Favorite Quotes:
"I have not broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine"
"“May she wake in torment!" he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. "Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven."
"Honest people don't hide their deeds."
Recommend: I always recommend that people read this book, just to have it under their belt. It is, as they say, a classic. Even if I hadn't read this for school, I would have read it anyway because I like to be informed.
