Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights

[Snippety]

I first read it when I was 10 ( I had a very high reading age that I eventually grew into) inspired by Kate Bush's single In my teens I was obsessed with the book and the idea of Heathcliff. We lived on the North Yorks Moors so I spent a lot of time striding up and down "brooding", hoping to be caught in a torrential downpour

I haven't read it for many years but it's on my list of things to re-read in between reads

[pontalba]

Originally Posted by silverseason

My generation grew up with Lawrence Olivier as Heathcliff. He was a compelling Heathcliff, but not the character in the book. Some incidents in the book which showed Heathcliff's ruthlessness were in the movie changed to be abuse directed against Heathcliff.

Yes, that's the film version I saw, and I'm glad to hear that it doesn't follow the book, I didn't care for the film at all, in spite of Olivier.
I will have to reverse and read it.

[savvyambrose]

I have to say I adored the book but the film versions just didn't compare. Wuthering Heights was something I would call...certainly tragic, I think, and the movies never seemed to want to admit that it isn't "romantic" - though I do think it falls under the Romanticism category.

I have yet to talk to another person who has thoroughly enjoyed this book. An English professor of mine once told me he would rather "choke on vomit" than read that book again. All of my friends claim, "I just couldn't get into it." I can't tell you how much I despise that sentence! It's such a beautiful book, and if you haven't read the entire thing you can't go around saying it's "dry" etc.

[PhilW]

Originally Posted by savvyambrose

...I have yet to talk to another person who has thoroughly enjoyed this book...

Talk to me - I love it!

...An English professor of mine once told me he would rather "choke on vomit" than read that book again...

Not much of an English professor then I'd say

[savvyambrose]

Hah! He was actually a pretty good teacher - he said my essay on Wuthering Heights made him appreciate the book more.

[Real Great Idea]

Yes, I read it too when I was 11. It is a classic of course!

[David Rogers]

I think that this novel is such a beautiful work of genius. I have read it three times, and it still takes my breath away. I rate it as the second best novel I have ever read (the first being The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens).

[AuntiePam]

I tried to read it -- I really did -- but the punctuation defeated me. Commas and colons and semicolons were placed willy-nilly. It drove me nuts!

I've read a lot of 19th century writers, and none of them punctuate like that. It was unreadable. Mine was the Everyman edition. I don't know if other editions tweaked the punctuation. If so, I might give the book another try.

I'd quote some of the text as an example, but I gave the book away.

[OzBlackman]

I'm about to start reading Wuthering Heights for school. I'm actually quite looking forward to it, as I've not read any of the Brontë sister's novels. Although I must say, I'm not a big romance guy.

[savvyambrose]

Originally Posted by AuntiePam

I tried to read it -- I really did -- but the punctuation defeated me. Commas and colons and semicolons were placed willy-nilly. It drove me nuts!

I've read a lot of 19th century writers, and none of them punctuate like that. It was unreadable. Mine was the Everyman edition. I don't know if other editions tweaked the punctuation. If so, I might give the book another try.

I'd quote some of the text as an example, but I gave the book away.

That's odd...I never even noticed that! Time to bring out the book to see for myself...

[Libra]

Originally Posted by savvyambrose

That's odd...I never even noticed that! Time to bring out the book to see for myself...

Me neither.

[AuntiePam]

I just read some of the text on-line to refresh my memory about my complaints. In the text at literature.org, what I notice is that Bronte uses a colon where a period might be expected. There are two or three colons in some sentences.

Actually, the on-line text is easier to read. I think it's because there are more words to the line on the screen than in the book, so it flows a bit better.

[Fantasy Moon]

I tried reading it a couple years ago, but I couldn't really get into it at the time. Although I'd like to give it another chance. Perhaps I should make use of Literature.org since that was how I got into Tarzan of the Apes and Dracula.

Although I did see most of the old black and white movie adaptation. When I started to get bored I moved to the next room, and I could still hear a lot of the dialogue. And I came back in the living room towards the end of the movie while working on a crossword puzzle.

[Ronny]

I just finished it and I enjoyed it very much. I read Jane Eyre right before it and I agree that you really can't compare the two, they are very different but I did like Wuthering Heights a bit more. I also agree that it was not really a romance, there was more obsession and revenge than love or romance involved. I liked how all of the characters had kinda despicable traits, there was no clear cut "good guy/gal" even Ellen as faithful and caring as she is to all the other characters seems to be flawed in the sense she holds all that information to herself and often lets the others just dort of stumble into whatever trouble they may, but then her role seems mostly to be thobserver and relayer of the tale so that was fine too. I watched two movies based on the book this weekend, the black & white movie with Laurence Olivier did not follow the book very much at all, it down played a lot of the darker parts of the story and the newer film with Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes does a better job of sticking to the story but still was just a so, so portrayal.

[Heteronym]

No movie adaptation could do justice to Wuthering Heights.