Wednesday, February 08, 2006
JUST FINISHED: Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. Really, it'd be a bit presumptuous to assume you haven't heard of this one, but then again, I did a yard-long writeup of Plato back in the day, and that's bedrock, dammit. So here we are again.
If you skipped this one in school, or the school skipped it for you (as mine did, since you can only fit so many novels into a year), here's the pitch in a nutshell: the head of the Earnshaw household--known as Wuthering Heights--takes on a scruffy, dark, sullen foundling named Heathcliff. The old man dotes on the child, and Heathcliff and Mr. Earnshaw's daughter Catherine take a shine to each other (although his end of this infatuation may have been shinier). However, Catherine's brother is seething with resentment over the upstart's stealing of attention, and when the old man dies, he puts Heathcliff in with the servants. He doesn't know it at the time, but that's where his troubles begin.
Yes, there's a love element in it, but for the most part this is a hate story, as Heathcliff sets out to ruin the lives of the people he perceives as having kept him apart from his soul mate, and everybody learns to dread the man. When Catherine marries the lad down the lane, all that does is widen the path of rage. Heathcliff runs away and comes back several years later, changed for the worst, and sets about the business of tearing their world apart.
Don't let the amount of time it took me fool you (check the date on the previous post), I definitely enjoyed the experience. There were some genuinely creepy character moments with Heathcliff and his household; most of the other males in the book were either physically or morally weak, making it that much easier for Heathcliff to put his plans into place. When you're in the middle of the narrative, however, it definitey carries you along with its power.
Once again, cheapness drove me to the Barnes and Noble edition, which has a definite advantge of footnoted translations of the sometimes impenetrable dialect a few of the supporting characters speak in. The B&N edition also includes snippets of the outraged contemporary reviews; apparently Wuthering Heights droped like an incendiary bomb in 1850, as bad an influence as gangsta rap, Grand Theft Auto, and the Republican party all rolled into one. It's just another indicator that whatever you think you're seeing for the first time, we've probably been there before, just at a lower threshold. It's under $5, bub; it won't break you.
If you skipped this one in school, or the school skipped it for you (as mine did, since you can only fit so many novels into a year), here's the pitch in a nutshell: the head of the Earnshaw household--known as Wuthering Heights--takes on a scruffy, dark, sullen foundling named Heathcliff. The old man dotes on the child, and Heathcliff and Mr. Earnshaw's daughter Catherine take a shine to each other (although his end of this infatuation may have been shinier). However, Catherine's brother is seething with resentment over the upstart's stealing of attention, and when the old man dies, he puts Heathcliff in with the servants. He doesn't know it at the time, but that's where his troubles begin.
Yes, there's a love element in it, but for the most part this is a hate story, as Heathcliff sets out to ruin the lives of the people he perceives as having kept him apart from his soul mate, and everybody learns to dread the man. When Catherine marries the lad down the lane, all that does is widen the path of rage. Heathcliff runs away and comes back several years later, changed for the worst, and sets about the business of tearing their world apart.
Don't let the amount of time it took me fool you (check the date on the previous post), I definitely enjoyed the experience. There were some genuinely creepy character moments with Heathcliff and his household; most of the other males in the book were either physically or morally weak, making it that much easier for Heathcliff to put his plans into place. When you're in the middle of the narrative, however, it definitey carries you along with its power.
Once again, cheapness drove me to the Barnes and Noble edition, which has a definite advantge of footnoted translations of the sometimes impenetrable dialect a few of the supporting characters speak in. The B&N edition also includes snippets of the outraged contemporary reviews; apparently Wuthering Heights droped like an incendiary bomb in 1850, as bad an influence as gangsta rap, Grand Theft Auto, and the Republican party all rolled into one. It's just another indicator that whatever you think you're seeing for the first time, we've probably been there before, just at a lower threshold. It's under $5, bub; it won't break you.
And yes, now that I've read the book end to end, I still have no idea how or why MTV would turn this into just another TV teen movie. If I can track down the DVD, I'll let you know. And hell no, I'm not buying it.
|| Eric 10:54 AM#
