The Greatest Love Story

[Senior2315]

Since I cannot post links, google this: Emily Brontë hits the heights in poll to find greatest love story
and click on the first page.

The article describes Wuthering Heights as the best love story. I thought it would be Dr Zhivago, but there you go! Wrong as always! Should I read Bronte's book? Is it truly the greatest of the love stories? All comments are welcome!

[Abras]

meh... I read it awhile ago and I actually like that kind of book, but honestly, it is not the greatest love story of all time. To be honest with you, I'm not sure it's even that much of a love story. I always thought it was more about Heathcliff and how awful a guy he is. Now, you could explain away all his later actions as simply a byproduct of heart-stricken remorse, but I find that really hard to believe. True love doesn't swing that way, I say...

[dfloyd]

I would say the readers who voted for Wuthering Heights were mostly female, and the type who can read a novel about vampires and translate it into a love story. Doctor Zhivago is much more a love story as is Dumas fils Camille. As to whether one should read the book or not: yes, it should be read since it is a classic of the gothic genre. Charlotte Bronte's book, Jane Eyre, is, in fact, more of a love story, even though it has some characteristics of the gothic genre: Rochester's insane wife being kept upstairs until a fire destroys Rochester's home. I imagine that the happenings in Jane eyre were read by Daphne Du Maurier before she wrote Rebecca and had the slightly demented Mrs Danvers burn down Manderlay.

[Delarge]

"Wuthering Heights" is the greatest love story I have read..

[Modest Proposal]

Some might not find it a 'love story' but 'My Antonia' is about love and is one of my all time favorites.

[Delta40]

Mmm I have always preferred Jane Eyre to Wuthering Heights. I love the contained passion

[LMK]

I like Wuthering Heights, but not as a love story, Pride and Prejudice or [i]The Red and the Black[i], even [i]Les Miserables[i] are better love stories, in my opinion.

[Helga]

I didn't think Wuthering Heights was really a love story, as stated above Jane Eyre is more so. but my favorite love story is The Collector by Fowles. Something about it just grabs me.

[kiki1982]

Brilliant as Wuthering Heights is, I don't think it should qualify as 'the greatest love story'. I mean, there is nothing romantic and 'love' about it. If anything, it is the weirdest display of what love from one side maybe can result in.

Some have mentioned Jane Eyre and I also think, having done a lot of research on it, that that is more of a love story, or at least minus the first part. I mean, there is love, there is freedom, there is allowance in the end to be oneself, tehre is change for the other. In WH there is no real love, there is no freedom, there is only destruction, although the end displays some hope for the contrary. Though the end might be more positive, the greatest part is suffocating, literally like Heathcliff says what he did with the birds (that wasn't only in the film, right?).

Honestly, one wonders whether people are still reading nowadays.

But, still, you should read it. It was the weirdest first chapter I have ever read, but the thing is captivating, you can't put it down. Brilliantly written, brilliantly thought of if you think in what kind of closed-minded society Brontë lived, a brilliant mix of Northern English folklore, the wind on the moors, what she had read of Byron mainly (Dumas also seems to be an influence) and her own imagination. Just a waw from me.

But my absolute favorite one... Jane Eyre indeed always come back to me. I mean, I have read more of those stories, but they have never had the depth of that work. Amazing how she read men in general nad how she made Rochester so adorable in the end... And then in real life she had no clue that her father's assistant was head over heels in love with her, bless her... ah

[edit] Sad to see that the greatest, which moved me to tears (and that is difficult!) was not on there. I supose not brilliantly translated: Cyrano de Bergerac. Though that is a play... Als sad to see that Persuasion was so low on the list, but I suppose that more people have read or seen the books or films than the ones of Persuasion, though it is better written than any of those two.

[strumphyy]

I still think of Wuthering Heights as the greatest love story i have ever read..I guess it's the way Emily Brontë wrote those amazing passages of selfish, wild love..I also liked Two on a tower..I think it was really sad how he wasn't in love with her when he saw she had aged..And how her heart stops from happiness...it's a statement of how love passes and fades and at the same time about its strength and continuation

[kelby_lake]

Most of the 'greatest love stories' are often misinterpreted as being predominantly a love story:

- Wuthering Heights is more about obsession and consuming passion (nothing necessarily to do with love).

- Lolita is again, an obsession story. Perhaps there are elements of love but it's more about Humbert Humbert's weirdness and insanity. People conveniently ignore the fact that he's a depraved pervert, even though he can write lyrically.

- Twilight may be a love story but considering all the elements of that 'love', I find it hard to see it as romantic.

- I always found the participants of the romance in The English Patient incredibly selfish.

But then, do love stories have to be 'romantic'?

[Jassy Melson]

The greatest love story I have read is Portrait of Jennie by Robert Nathan, where the protagonist is in love with a ghost.

[Mudkip]

Like others here, I would not call Wuthering Heights a love story.

And while I agree that P&P is an excellent love story, Persuasion is the Austen that fits most nicely into the "love story" genre IMO. Although they all have romance as one of the key themes, none of the others focus quite so much on the relationship.

If short stories count, O. Henry's "The Gift of the Magi (http://www.auburn.edu/~vestmon/Gift_of_the_Magi.html)" is my favorite. :)

[hazelk]

Love And Shadows - Isabel Allende

[togre]

Evangeline by Longfellow was a "love story" that I found to be quite superb (at one point I even got verklempt).