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What books should everyone read before they die?Add Book
Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë
Literature
James Mustich
Aug 27, 2018
In its intense drama and disregard for orthodox morality, Wuthering Heights continues to surprise and challenge us today. To attempt to chart the web of relationships of blood, marriage, social strata, economic dependence, love, envy, hatred, and revenge that bind Catherine and Heathcliff to the book’s other characters would make Wuthering Heights sound like a story that somehow got drunk in Victorian England and ended up in the incestuous, jungly psychological precincts of Faulkner’s South. The plot is a tangle of primal feelings as palpable as the untamed landscape and tempestuous weather of the Yorkshire moors that Emily Brontë knew so well. As the couple’s destiny is derailed by prevailing ideas of convention and class, their intense desire drives them to punish each other as passionately as they long to love. Their ardor doesn’t prevail, but it does endure, with a grip on readers’ imaginations that is as baffling, buffeting, and transporting as only the most powerful emotions can be.
Though I prefer Jane Eyre, I think Wuthering Heights earned its place in literary history.
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If for no other reason than that it is so much a part of western culture.
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I agree this is a classic but I did not like the way this book made me feel. The main characters in this story were not sympathetic and I just wanted to be done with them.
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I can't hear the title of this book without being transported back to the mild angst of my teen years, when I read this book several times. A tormented, passionate man, strong and soulful, wandering on the moors--what could be more dreamy, when you haven't had an actual experience with that type of broody, Byronic man? My tastes in men have changed drastically since then, but I still think this is a lovely book, perfect for winter reading with a howling wind as backdrop.
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So much more violent and unsettling than I remembered when I reread it as an older person. Not to be missed, though.
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One of my favorite books of all time. Such complexity and layers.
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To read three times in your life. at 20, 40, and 60. Your point of view will change drastically.
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"1,000 Books To Read Before You Die" is a registered trademark of Workman Publishing, Inc. Based on the book: 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die by James Mustich, (Workman Publishing Co., Inc.: © 2018 James Mustich)
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