Wuthering Heights Book Review: Love Is Poison, More Than Sweet Nectar

Book number 37: Wuthering Heights by E. Bronte, the last of the books I picked up from MIBF 2012.

What it is: Told in a flashback from start to finish, Wuthering Heights tells the story of unchecked passion, succumbing to society, cruelty, and revenge. It reminds me of your typical soap opera where a young boy, in the case of Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff, is brought up well but when his guardian Mr. Earnshaw dies, the son Hindley seeks vengeance upon him and he is suddenly poor. Heathcliff falls in love with Catherine, the sister of this son, but because of his status, she opts to marry another, Edgar Linton, despite of her feverish love for Heathcliff. From here, Heathcliff departs to amass money and returning for vengeance that he lays on everyone who has wronged him. Wuthering Heights has two parts and I swear, the soap opera plot made me give up almost, but I lived to tell the tale.

What I liked about it: This is a classic and My Mentor asked me to read it to prove a point. Point taken very well at the end of reading Wuthering Heights. For me, the best thing about it is how it showcased the lesser side effect of wildly loving someone. Love isn’t all lovely and nectar; it’s also selfish and scornful. It can become poison if left unchecked and from this love springs awful, horrible things, which are quite interesting because what brought them to light is something supposedly as grand as love. This core is very realistic, as well as the angle shooting at people trying to please society more than their own. All hell broke loose when Catherine chooses Edgar over Heathcliff, for all the wrong reasons, apparently. In a way, I think the book reminded me of The Notebook, sort of.

I must also say that the cover of my copy of Wuthering Heights totally rocks! It’s made by Ruben Toledo in original cover in watercolor, pencil, and ink.Check it out, it’s very beautiful and a work of art in itself. I think I fancied the cover more than the contents, tbh.

What I did not like about it: Apart from the soap opera plot, the narration is atrocious. Each time I’d read Wuthering Heights in the afternoon, I’d fall into a nap, which can be a good thing. I swear I thought I’ll never finish. Reading volume 1 took five days – five days! I finished this last Sunday I think, to make it a week’s total worth of reading (that’s my weekend lunch on the photo above! :D). Wuthering Heights is no easy read and I particularly detest the parts where Joseph speaks – I can’t understand a damn thing!

I did not fall in love with the characters too, though you’d think I would since I have a penchant for deranged fictional characters, but I found the cast of Wuthering Heights too silly for me to care. Some of their motives and reasoning are a tad unbelievable too, imo – very soap opera-ish, like I said. Plus I have issues with the narrators. The first narrator is Nelly Dean, the servant, and her story telling struck me as domestic gossip while Mr. Lockwood is so passive I don’t understand the purpose of his character at all.

Recommended for: Read Wuthering Heights if you like gothic romance or if you want to dip your hands in the classics (but I suggest reading The Catcher in the Rye that this one, most definitely, for this purpose).

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Second photo taken from here.