Wuthering Heights

I’m proud to say I’ve done it-I have finally read a classic without being forced to by the threat of a bad grade- and I actually enjoyed it. I’ve been wanting to read Wuthering Heights for a little while now but have had my reservations.

I love reading but I’m actually pretty picky as far as what I’ll read. I like letting myself get lost in the world of a book, I like to put myself in the story, I like to be the characters and there are just certain worlds I don’t want to hang out in-like the worlds classic authors tend to create. I think it also has something to do with the writing style, they take whole paragraphs to describe what the door to the house looks like and then another paragraph to describe the windows, and another to describe the plants around the house, until I’ve read 7 pages and the story hasn’t progressed one bit…boring. If this blog were a classic I would still be describing what the cover of the book I read looked like (I read it on my NOOK, there was no cover). But like I said I had been wanting to read this one for a while and when I saw that Tom Hardy was in the Masterpiece Theater adaption that was all the kick I needed to get started.

I think a lot of people think this book is some epic love story, Romeo and Juliet on the English Moors (with lines like, “He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”) I can understand why. But it's not much of a love story at all, in fact it’s quite the opposite, a story about hate and it’s destructiveness.

At first I thought I would love Heathcliff and he would be my book-boyfriend, sorry but nope. Heathcliff is a very dark character, and not in a sexy way. You’re not supposed to like him, that much is obvious, but I did. I just couldn’t bring myself to hate him, to put him on that villain pedestal, because I felt like everyone else in the book was just like him. He was mocked, and beat and scorned as a child by his adopted sibling, and shunned by the high society he was surrounded by. He was only ever loved by two people, one of them died and the other married another man. So he went off and made something of himself and came back to the Moors to use his new found fortune to seek revenge. And you know what, in the end I kinda found myself rooting for the guy.

Not that I think vengeance is acceptable or praiseworthy. But I was somewhat amused by the hypocrisy of just about every other character in the book. For some reason they thought themselves better than Heathcliff, they thought their hate and their villainous acts were justified because Heathcliff had wronged them, but they failed to realize they were the same as Mr. Heathcliff, if not worse. His hate fosters the seed of hate inside of them until almost everyone is consumed by it.  But I don’t consider Heathcliff the source of evil, that honor belongs to Hindley Earnshaw who’s hate for Heathcliff as a child lead the “gypsy boy” down the dark path the book follows.

As far as my favorite character is concerned-because there has to be one-I will have to go with Hareton Earnshaw. He isn’t a main character and doesn’t say much but I liked him; In the end he was the only person I found myself caring about. I wish we could have seen more of him. Especially his relationship with Heathcliff, because I think if Heathcliff were to ever love another human being after Catherine the only one who had a chance was Hareton.

Would I recommend the book? Sure, if you don’t mind darkness throughout with only a dim light at the end of the tunnel. If you do decide to read it or have read it already I would love to hear your thoughts. Do you agree with my idea of the story? What was going through your mind when you read it?