A review by theodrred
The Brontë Sisters: Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre by Emily Brontë, Charlotte Brontë
5.0
In high school, a friend of mine read Jane Eyre and, assuming that I would not get around to reading, I said I was fine with spoilers. When I read the book two years later, I felt that I had missed out on a vital part of the book -- I knew the truth about Rochester's past and the happenings inside Thornfield Hall. So since then, I have tended to avoid details of books I have the slightest interest in. All this is just to say that the only thing I knew about Wuthering Heights was that it was about two teenagers who were bratty and unbearable and couldn't make their relationship work. And I knew about the Kate Bush song (although I didn't even let myself listen to it, even after I started getting into her work).
But that didn't even scratch the surface of this book. Emily Brontë totally delivered on the batshit dynamic between Heathcliff and Cathy and I was in love with them & their awful unhealthy dynamic (not to mention the incest?), but there was so much else going on. This is also a sophisticated narrative about domestic abuse and intergenerational trauma spanning nearly forty years, and through multiple perspectives. It's a lot, but it's really good.
Not to mention that this went so much further than I thought a Victorian author was willing to go. The levels of blasphemy and violence were so much more than I was expecting. This is more Gothic than I could have imagined.
This is all just my impressions from my first readthrough I can't wait to revisit this in the future, I'm going to get so much more out of it. (And yeah... we're in a 48 hour Kate Bush lockdown.)
But that didn't even scratch the surface of this book. Emily Brontë totally delivered on the batshit dynamic between Heathcliff and Cathy and I was in love with them & their awful unhealthy dynamic (not to mention the incest?), but there was so much else going on. This is also a sophisticated narrative about domestic abuse and intergenerational trauma spanning nearly forty years, and through multiple perspectives. It's a lot, but it's really good.
Not to mention that this went so much further than I thought a Victorian author was willing to go. The levels of blasphemy and violence were so much more than I was expecting. This is more Gothic than I could have imagined.
This is all just my impressions from my first readthrough I can't wait to revisit this in the future, I'm going to get so much more out of it. (And yeah... we're in a 48 hour Kate Bush lockdown.)