Printable View
I do consider Wuthering Heights a terrible romantic novel. In it there are people who died for love, death is always related to love and love to death. The moors are also highly romantic. There are ghost. And, I repeet love, love, and love. In a desperate way. And when it is betrayed for fear or money it brings us to death. A novel so radical must be romanticism.
i have read it from a 19 year old perspective, and agree that tho it touched me, it is not the most romantic book. the attachment of cathy and heathcliff was in many ways selfish, and a self-love. but i would put at fault society and the ignorance and unacceptance of isolated individuals before blaming the protagonists, whose only real fault was their weakness in conforming to expected values.
How wrong you are, Robin, though certainly entitled to your opinion. Heathcliff was far from spoiled. His life before Mr. Earnshaw rescued him from the streets had no doubt left its mark on him which all of Mr. Earnshaw's indulgence and all of cathy's love could not do away with. Mr. Earnshaw died and Heathcliff was left to the cruel mercies of Hindley who treated him like a slave. No doubt this damaged him mentally and made him obsessed with revenge, to say nothing of reaching for love from the only person left in his life to show him any, Cathy. I am 33 and first read Wuthering Heights at 23. I loved it then as I love it now. Wuthering Heights is romantic because love is the all consuming passion that makes Heathcliff behave as he does. Perhaps Wuthering Heights is a little unrealistic but perhaps that what makes us love it. We know that no one will ever be that devoted to us in the real world but ah, we can dream.
I agree with Robyn S., both Heathcliff and Catherine are overly self-centered. There is no real 'love' here, but an obsession. Although Catherine does want to be with Heathcliff, not for any pleasure of any sort, she decides to marry Edgar for his social status. Now if the book was really romantic...she would not marry Edgar, but Heathcliff, the man she truly desires to be with in her heart. Being the person that she is though, she marries Edgar and is dissatisfied with him and still shows passionate feelings for Heathcliff while Edgar is there. That in itself is far from romantic. The thing that irks me the most about Catherine is that she is overly selfish. She marries Edgar, not for love,but for herself. She knows she desires Heathcliff, but still marries Edgar becase it will be to her advantage. She marries the poor man and tortures him while she is. At the same time, she torments Heathcliff until he dies. The real victims in the story are the men who loved Cartherine, since she toyed with them both. She had no real consideration for their feelings and continued to demonstrate this. She should've chosen from the beginning which of them she wanted and then treated them fairly.
I've never understood why people say this is the most romantic book ever written. While it held my interest, I came away thinking it was a terribly unromantic book whose two main characters are supremely self-centered and care more about themselves and their own wants and desires than each other. And while Heathcliffe's despair at losing Cathy led him over the brink of sanity, I saw it not as a symptom of a broken heart but the uncontrolled anger of a mal-adjusted and spoiled child who was forever denied the thing he prized most.<br><br>Maybe this is all because I read it for the first time at the age of 35 and was looking at it from a perspective different from most high school age students.