Wuthering Heights, My Review

Two nights ago I finished reading Wuthering Heights for the first time. It was around 2 am and I was left bewildered and unable to go to sleep. I came about the book as many youngsters do this day and age, by reading Twilight. The way the book gets tangled in Edward and Bella's story made me completely curious about it; I did some research and found out a few reviews that classified it as a tragic romance. I thought Romeo and Juliet-like and decided I could do with a bit of tragedy. Oh, my, did I get it wrong. It is a tragedy, alright but in a very unexpected way and, from my point of view, it has very little to do with romance.

Lets start with its best qualities, the style. The narrative is enthralling and you know how some classics are so heavy on the descriptions that you just want to skip whole paragraphs? Well, I'm happy to say this is not the case. The descriptions are vivid and take you to the middle of the moors where you feel the breeze caressing your hair and can almost smell the abandonment in the old Wuthering house. The language is simple for the most part, though one of the characters, Joseph, speaks in a manner completely indecipherable to me but it's a small character and all the others give you a clear idea of life in the 1800's. The style of a story provides like half of the experience for the reader and this half is a master piece. Now the other half, the characters.

Imagine a painting with a beautiful country landscape so bemusing you can't stop looking at it even though in its centre there is a group of human beings doing the most atrocious things to one another. That's kind of the effect the story has on the reader. All the beauty contrasts so much with the behaviour of the characters that it hits you like a hammer.

Wuthering Heights relates the story of the Earnshaws, who deal badly with the adoption of an abandoned gypsy boy the father took back home from one of his trips. Very soon in the story, you perceive how the relations between the children break and, as soon as the father dies, the suffering begins. What eventually develops is a vicious cycle of abuse towards the youngest characters that broke my heart and almost made me cry more than once.

About the romance part we all have heard so much about... well, more than a love story I would say that the main characters, Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, share the same sense of entailment and selfishness that dooms their 'love' from the very beginning. Their actual 'love story' lasts but a moment in the whole of the book but it has such an effect on them and the ones around that, like in the aftermath of a hurricane, the horrible weather left behind is what destroys whatever life the other characters had.

I think the one very contemporary message everybody fails to see is how damaging verbal abuse is and how it tends to repeat over and over through generations. In our time, this subject tends to get the same kind of incredulity the story in the book got back in its time. And I quote the Graham's Lady Magazine: "How a human being could have attempted such a book as the present without committing suicide before he had finished a dozen chapters, is a mystery. It is a compound of vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors."

I'd have to say to that woman that many families live in real life the horrors described in the novel and still there's hope for love to survive and one to better his/herself, just like in the book.

So, in a nutshell, I one hundred percent recommend Wuthering Heights, not only as a great exemplar of classic literature, but as a cautionary tale of a very contemporary problem. Let yourself be taken to life in the 1800's, its beauties and its pains; just be warned: don't forget your hankies.

Reading and Learning

You always hear how great writers are also great readers. Well, I haven't been abiding by that law for some time. It has always been a great scape of mine to read; I actually read my way out of my worst depression ever, and before having kids I used to read as much as five books a week. Admittedly, I did little else but read; I was single, on vacation (a half-year sabbatical), and with no friends in the city... so, things have changed... a little.

In previous posts I've told you all about my present hectic schedule and I'm not THAT crazy to believe I'll be able to make even a book a week; no, my goal is much more attainable: twelve books per year.

Of course I don't start january first: ready, set, go. I take it slowly and get 'party season' out of my system first, but eventually, I make my way to it. Now, another matter that can grind the whole thing to a stop is the selection of books. I gave it a lot of thought and after reading, twice, each Twilight book last year and nibble "The Host", unsuccessfully I must add; there were no "in" books that attracted me that much. So, this year I decided to start with the classics. You see, I'm Mexican, meaning I know something about Latin-American Literature but very little about English Literature.

There, I had my road plan. I started around end february with Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice", followed by Richard Matheson's "Hell House", back to Austen's "Sense and Sensibility" and presently I turned gears to J. K. Rowling's "H.P. and the Philosopher's Stone" in french. I figured, as long as I'm reading, I might as well go ahead and make my french teachers happy.

Four books... well, three books and a half, so far... not too shabby! I have to say, though, I'm finding Austen's stories not as compelling as I imagined them to be. I don't want to upset anyone but after hearing a lot about them, I found them a little slow. Too much beating around the bushes for my taste, and in the case of "Sense and Sensibility", not rewarding enough. However, I may have chosen exactly those who cater worst for myself and to get a better sense of her style, I'll read a couple more, or maybe all of them... call me a purist.

As for Matheson's "Hell House", I liked it a lot. I might be antiquated, but I happen to love classic haunted houses and ghost stories. This one gave me a couple of restless nights and in general was VERY entertaining. Since I'm a sucker for everything paranormal, I'm more or less up to date to the latest 'science' of investigating ghostly apparitions. This might have actually hindered my enjoyment of the story. It was written in the mid 70's and relies quite heavily on medium seances and 'ectoplasmic' production. Since these methods have long ago been proven a hoax, I found its constant presence a bit of a turn off and somewhat hard to block from my mind. Anyway, I hadn't came across a book that gave me nightmares since Stephen King's "The Shining" and it's a gratifying feeling.

What's next? Well, this is my plan as of today. After Harry Potter I'll go back to the english language with "Dorian Gray's Picture", probably Matheson's "Stir of Echoes", "Harry Potter and the Chaber of Secrets" (back to french), another Austen work, "Wuthering Heights"... and I'll figure where to go from there.

There are hundreds of books to chose from, and sometimes the amount of possibilities makes it real hard to take a decision. For this reason, whatever advise you could give me would be greatly appreciated. Remember, I'm trying to get a crush course in English and American Literature but I'm not an over-educated snub and my taste might be a bit too simple: great stories, simply written and great finales... Isn't that what we're all expecting? =D