Reviews

Bronte: Wuthering Heights by Hilda D. Spear

taylor1321's review against another edition

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dark emotional lighthearted mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

jyotideepa's review

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5.0

Unforgettable ❤️

toniacartonia's review

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adventurous dark emotional sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

hannahsuemiller's review

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5.0

no matter how many times i reread, this story never becomes boring or overtold. there is something new 2 discover with every reread.

abbiky's review

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5.0

Read for school, but surprised at how much I liked it! Favorite classic so far

_erica_reads_'s review

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5.0

I read this annually, as it is my favorite book. I learned more about Emily Bronte's life before beginning it this time. Even though I've now read it 13 times I discovered so much more this time!

lenteja_virtual's review against another edition

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dark sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

It may have been such a novelty in its time, but jeez, I just hated it. All characters have a extremely toxic relationship between them, and there’s nothing else, just that, toxic families and romances. Well, not my cup of tea.

marieoliver's review

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2.0

It was painful to get through! So hard to read.

brew_and_books's review

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3.0

How do I even write about something that has been so widely acclaimed as one of the most quintessential works in World Literature? Let me put it anyway. Yes indeed, I have received mixed opinions on this book and I do believe this book is not for everyone, but hardly matters, nothing is for everyone. For me, it was really one of those books that invoked great emotions and intense feelings.

An elementary anecdote of two families bounded by some unalterable destiny. The narrative is fabricated on the pretext of a love interest between Catherine and Heathcliff - the central characters of the book. Both of them grotesque and completely unlikeable. They are simply unjustifiable, self-centered egomaniacs with almost all negative qualities that a human form has the capacity to imbibe in itself. Yet the emotional enormity evoked by their bittersweet love story is substantial and all-embracing. Their relationship ruins everything and everyone around them and their destructive actions are never thought of the consequences.

The mere objective of weaving a story concerning such ghastly characters as the main and central characters is in itself meritorious and captivating. The unapologetic writing of Bronte is compelling and to know something like this has been created in the 1800s is even more alluring. This is definitely no perfect book, I had my reservations in some parts of the book but it appears quite inconsequential now that I have completed it. You might just simply relish this book for what it has to offer or despise it for just the same reasons, but you can’t help but appreciate the quality and the hope Bronte’s writing kindles through Wuthering Heights.

theeditorreads's review

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5.0

Some interesting facts I came to know while reading this study guide which I stumbled across in the library a few days after I started reading Wuthering Heights.

1. We get to hear Heathcliff's own voice in Chapter 6. Do we really? I'll have to go back and check.
The poetic power of Bronte's language transforms Heathcliff for us again into a man to be pitied, if not to be understood.

Now that I agree with. While Heathcliff's abominable actions didn't endear me to him, the writing definitely made me pity his life and from where he came. However Heathcliff behaved, I couldn't help but sympathise with him because of his lifelong loneliness and no sense of real identity, though his actions from time to time are deplorable. But, as I mentioned in my review of the book, I never could understand Catherine's behaviour. What prompted her to be the way she was. Is it because we always look for protagonists of a story to be inherently good, and not selfish like Catherine actually was.

2. It is interesting to note how one's surroundings are often the inspiration for the setting of place in a novel. Emily Brontë's life at Haworth Parsonage became the setting for Wuthering Heights, complete with the moorland and the gothic feel.

3. In Chapter 26,
Here, as so often in the novel, the weather matches the movement of the plot. The sultry, threatening day prepares us for the menace which seems to hang over Linton. The physical violence which we have witnessed earlier is replaced by unspecified violence, more frightening in that our imaginations run wild as we try to envisage Heathcliff's methods of dominating his sickly son.

4. This guide drives home the fact about the unconventionality of the protagonists in a novel that is at once unique in its creation.

5. While reading the book I never once had this strange feeling of everyone escaping the Heights and then finding their way back to it eventually as stated in the guide. To me, it was like a no-brainer, a kind of a prison from which the Earnshaws or Lintons could never escape, and the isolated setting reinforced that sentiment.

6. While this novel has the theme of love, it also ends in tragedy for all the pairs of lovers except one. And the following description rings true but is still amusing:
Lord David Cecil in his essay on Emily Bronte in Early Victorian Novelists describes the families respectively as 'children of the storm' (Wuthering Heights) and 'children of calm' (Thrushcross Grange).

7. I was amazed at all the references I had missed when reading the novel at the way Brönte connected both the timelines. Next time, I'll read the study guide simultaneously.

I'd definitely recommend reading a study guide which greatly helps in putting into perspective a classic novel, especially if your copy doesn't have any accompanying Notes to the Text.