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West Yorkshire - Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë


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WEST YORKSHIRE
 
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
 
Synopsis:
Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange, situated on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before; of the intense relationship between the gypsy foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw; and how Catherine, forced to choose between passionate, tortured Heathcliff and gentle, well-bred Edgar Linton, surrendered to the expectations of her class. As Heathcliff's bitterness and vengeance at his betrayal is visited upon the next generation, their innocent heirs must struggle to escape the legacy of the past.
 
 
Other West Yorkshire books:
Agnes Grey by Anne Brontë
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

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I read Wuthering Heights this summer, so will be reading one of the Bronte's other books as my West Yorkshire read, but, in the meantime, this is the review I wrote:
 
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte ******

This book is unique. I don't think there's another book that is quite so suffused with passion and emotion. There's a rawness, a wildness, that nothing else I've read has come close to emulating. In purely objective terms, the plot is almost incredible at times: there's a rational part of me niggling away all the time saying that it just couldn't happen this way, that, for instance, Heathcliff just couldn't get away with what he does at one or two points, but there's another side of me that questions that - maybe he just might, especially given the remoteness, the isolation, a sense enhanced by the fact that aside from the main protagonists, virtually no characters feature at all, no other location is described (indeed, they are barely mentioned) outside the two houses and the moors in between, and we see all the action through the eyes of just two of the characters,who Bronte cleverly inserts right into the centre of the action whilst leaving them almost peripheral in their roles: reporters giving an 'objective' story which almost contrarily actually intensifies the atmosphere.

It's that unremitting intensity that makes Wuthering Heights such a standout novel for me. When I first read it, that was what dominated my reading, and sucked me along in a totally unresistable fashion. On second reading, it's still there, but the more rational side of me did start to ask questions, not least quite how some of the characters allowed themselves to be taken over in the way they were. This time, one or two chords of melodrama started to be struck, and I even started to feel frustrated, indeed angry, with some of the characters (actually,with pretty much all of them at different stages). But then I'm sat here, now, not there, then, and maybe that is actually one reason why the book is so great: whereas last time I was almost overwhelmed by it, this time it started making me think, asking questions, feeling different emotions. My views on the characters started changing too: Heathcliff is now more of a villain (unremittingly so in fact!), Cathy more grounded than I recall. It'll be interesting to see what I think of it the next time I read it, because I will certainly read it again some time.

What is undoubted in my mind though, is that there really is nothing else like it in the entire canon (at least from what I've read). Whether one 'likes' it or not (and what an inadequate word that feels in the context, a bit like 'nice'), it's one of the very few books I've read that I believe everybody has to read at some stage. It's also a book that is almost impossible to summarise or review in a few words - any review on these pages can be nothing but
inadequate. You just have to read it for yourself!

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 It's that unremitting intensity that makes Wuthering Heights such a standout novel for me.  

 

Totally agree  :D It's one of my favourite books & movies ( Lawrence Olivier & Merle Oberon version) It's a long time since i last read it though so i'm looking forward to rereading it for the challenge.

 

As for some parts of it being difficult to swallow - how often do we hear in real life of things happening that if put in a story would seem unlikely - 3 women kept prisoner in an ordinary suburban house for 30 years for example  :eek:

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Great review willoyd  :smile: I agree it's a totally unique book. I look forward to re-visiting it but it's always such an emotional read .. you feel quite battle scarred afterwards. Every single character frustrates me :D and quite a few of them exasperate me almost to the point of madness :blush2: I still think it's the most extraordinary piece of writing especially from someone who lived a fairly isolated life. It's just a pity we didn't get to see what else her imagination could conjure up :( 

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  • 1 year later...

033-2015-July-22-Wuthering%20Heights_zps

 

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

 

The ‘blurb’

Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord.  There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before: of the intense passing between the foundling Heathcliffe and Catherine Earnshaw, and her betrayal of him.  As Heathcliffe’s bitterness and vengeance is now visited upon the next generation, their innocent heirs must struggle to escape the legacy of the past.   

 

I downloaded Wuthering Heights onto my Kindle on Boxing Day in 2011.  It’s one of those novels that I’ve always felt I should read, but have put off for various reasons, not least because I was rather daunted by it.  It being chosen to represent West Yorkshire for the English Counties Challenge meant that reading it suddenly became inevitable.  I downloaded the audio book for my recent holiday in the hope that it might prove a distraction on the flight, as I’m a very nervous flyer and hadn’t flown for ten years.  The book was narrated by Michael Kitchen, whose voice I very much like.  However, having strapped myself in a psyched myself up for the flight, I found that I couldn’t concentrate on the narrative and instead contented myself with listening to music.  I took a couple of ‘tree’ books on my holiday which I read fairly quickly and so, on the last day, I decided to try Wuthering Heights in book form and I found I was immediately hooked!

 

A man named Lockwood rents Thrushcross Grange – a manor house in a bleak and isolated area of Yorkshire, owned by an unfriendly man called Heathcliffe.  On visiting Heathcliffe’s house, Wuthering Heights, Lockwood becomes snowed in and is grudgingly allowed to stay the night.  In his room he notices the name Catherine scratched into the windowsill.  He has a nightmare about her and later, intrigued by Heathcliffe’s behaviour on hearing of the dream, Lockwood questions his housekeeper, Nellie Dean about his landlord, and through Lockwood’s account of her reminisces we are told a story of love and betrayal that spans the generations…

 

I’m finding it a tricky book to review because my words just can’t do justice, but wow, what fantastic writing.  The book is set in a desolate location on the Yorkshire Moors and Emily Brontë captures that bleakness in her wonderful prose.  There is little, if anything, in the book to make one smile but I found myself entirely caught up in the emotions of the characters and, on finishing it I felt wrung out and exhausted! 

 

Heathcliffe is such a marvellous character.  We’re not meant to love him, of course, but I did feel some slight sympathy towards him at the start and the end of the book.  It’s powerful stuff.  I definitely intend to reread it at some stage and would like to find a decent adaptation to watch too.

 

I had Kate Bush’s 1978 song going through my head as I read this!  :D  I can think of worse songs to be stuck with!  :D

 

4/5 (I really enjoyed it)

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OH and I walked up to Top Withins from Haworth last Monday, in typical Bronte weather.  In spite of the fact that it's easily visible from my route to work each morning, and I've lived in the area for almost 40 years, this was my first visit (although been to the Parsonage several times).  There were a fair number of people there, but the walk there and back (out via the waterfalls) was distinctly solitary - and very evocative! 

Am reading Villette at the moment - fine, but not really in the same league.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I've just found the audiobook that Kay recommended to me, read by Patricia Routledge, on Audible, and if I buy a particular edition of the Kindle ebook for 77p, I can get the audiobook for £2.99, or I can just wait for a future monthly credit to get it then.  I read the book when I was a teenager and didn't get on with it, and the memory of my feelings at the time are so strong, it's put me off reading it again, but perhaps if I try the audiobook, I might get on better.

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  • 6 months later...

Copied from my book log:

 

I came to this book knowing little about it except for the above sentence. As anyone who has read it will know, there is an awful lot more to it than that and I gobbled up this story in only a few sittings. 

 

How sad that Bronte only ever wrote this one novel! What a talented writer she is. The characters were brilliantly-drawn and you really get a sense of the lonely world in which they live. Rather than a love story, this is all dangerous passion and revenge and it has a properly gothic feel. 

 

It's a bit slow to start, because you have a character who isn't really a central figure relating the story and you wonder where on earth this is going. The fact that our narrator, Nellie, was absent for a good portion of events is a little odd but no matter, this is a novel where the whole transcends the little piffling details of an odd beginning. 

 

The character of Heathcliff might be one of my favourites in ages. What a complex character, filled with hatred and evil yet bizarrely fond of Hareton, who he treats disgracefully as part of his revenge plot. Catherine is just as bad, and it's easy to see why some people struggle with the book, because these two characters are indeed HORRENDOUS humans. Selfish, evil, whatever you want to throw at them is probably fair. Yet they are fascinating for all of that. 

 

The setting of the moors is perfect, because it really ups the ante. It leaves you with a sense of darkness and foreboding, and of characters that live largely out of society's grip. 

 

And yet there is hope here too. It's definitely a book I'll reread some day. 

 

5/5 (Likely to be one of my absolute favourites)

 

I really don't feel, like Janet and Willoyd, that my review does this novel any justice at all. I loved it. I think it gets a bad rep for being a classic and one that teachers recommend, but it's really accessible, a brilliant piece of writing, and one where the richness of the characters is matched by plot. 

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  • 5 months later...
I was reluctant to read this book again, but I had to give it another chance.  I first read it when I was 19 and didn't like it at all.  As I mentioned earlier, Kay had recommended the audiobook read by Patricia Routledge so I thought I'd give it another go.  Unfortunately, despite a great narrator, I still didn't like the book.  It's full of misery and miserable people, there's no light and no hope.  It's dreary and depressing and I'm really sorry that I can't see what others do in this book, but I'm afraid it's just not for me.  I suspect I'm going to be a lone voice here, but that's just how I feel.
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The Kate Bush song is awesome haha. When I was a kid I thought the book was called 'Withering Heights', I've no idea why, and the song made me read the book. It's been a regularly re-read favourite of mine since I was 14. It is bleak, but due to Ralph Fiennes in that movie it's hard not to like book-Heathcliff. :giggle: There's a lot of pretty quotes, too.

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Yes, I listened to all 14 hours and 14 minutes of it.

SPOILER ALERT

 

 

Then surely you picked up the "light and hope" at the end of the book, with Heathcliff backing down from his aim of total revenge, and the next generation of Cathy and Hareton coming together and moving forward. leaving the hate behind them, whilst Heathcliff, Cathy and Edgar are finally at peace in the graveyard.

 

 

I don't think though that listening to a book your struggling with will have helped: 14+ hours, when the book took barely a third of that to read it. I really enjoy audiobooks, but only when I'm in tune with the book.

Edited by Athena
Edited to add spoiler tags.
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It’s one of those novels that I’ve always felt I should read, but have put off for various reasons, not least because I was rather daunted by it.

 

This is exactly the reason I have never read this book.

 

I was given a copy of this, along with a few other classics, when I was a teenager and although I pick it up every now and again I have never gotten round to actually reading it.  In many ways I really do want to, after all Wuthering Heights seems to be a lot of peoples favourite novel (and I've heard people say they re-read it on a regular basis), but I think a part of me is worried that it won't live up to expectations and that I'll hate it.  But then again I also have the feeling that if I don't read it I'm missing out on what could potentially be a really great and absorbing read.  I do also tend to avoid classics because I think I'd struggle with the different style of writing that they used back then.

 

I have to admit though reading the reviews in this thread (for the most part) have really inspired me to dig out my copy and maybe give it a go.

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