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A review by theeditorreads
Bronte: Wuthering Heights by Hilda D. Spear
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.
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,
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:
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.
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.