Yet Another Review - Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë My rating: 4 of 5 stars Wuthering Heights is one of the few books I like while simultaneously disliking the protagonists. Perhaps that is why I enjoy it so much. My hatred for the central characters made me enjoy this book all the more. In fact, I rather liked Heathcliff, despite his flaws (and there were many of them). I was rather on his side for a good portion of the book, up until he started with animal cruelty, at which point I was snapped out of my haze and found myself no longer pitying him. To be fair, I don’t think Heathcliff would wish for anyone to pity him. He was hurt early in life and instead of growing from that, took everything else that happened to him or near him as an intentional injustice meant to harm. This should be a life lesson about how not to let your past influence you. This is not a love story. In some ways I rather wish it were, my heart aches for Heathcliff to find happiness with Catherine, which of course later becomes impossible, but then even later turns into a sort of possibility, if you squint and blur the lines between reality a bit. I like to think they did, at least. That is what is so much fun about Gothic literature - the amount of supernatural elements make it easy enough to pretend the impossible is possible. Maybe these two hateful characters ended up blissfully tucked away in the afterlife, haunting the village while making each other miserable. Still, despite any personal feelings for these two characters, I legitimately wished for them to find happiness with each other. Don’t get me wrong, they were horrible, terrible, no good people. But perhaps if they had found love with each other, which they both clearly wanted, maybe they would have been happy enough to soothe their less then stellar attitudes towards everyone else. I’m at least satisfied enough to see that Cathy changed her tune in the end, or else there would have been a Wuthering Heights 2.0 with her and Earnshaw. View all my reviews