Wuthering heights - Emily Bronte

Advantages: A classic novel that impress peole with your variety of reading materials
Disadvantages: a slightly contrived ending

...I didn't read the classic Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte until just the other day. I had read Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and fell in love at once with Mr Rochester, all of the Austen novels, falling in love at once with Mr Darcy and many of the other Victorian type novels, mostly for pleasure but with the mind that they would help for comparison of texts of the era when I sat the dreaded exam for the worst book I have ever read, Tess of the ...
...by a woman) Bronte released Wuthering Heights to the public. Originally beginning in the first person of a Mr Lockwood, a visitor to the area, we truly believe that a gentleman is taking us through his first impressions of Wuthering Heights and the strange gloominess that fills the household. This however soon changes, Mrs Dean, the housekeeper of the Grange, takes over the narration and tells our weary traveller of the happenings at the house before ... Read review

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Disadvantages: See Review

Wuthering Heights is a tragic love story, and has even been labelled “Emily Bronte’s great story of hate.” And in a way, that’s true. Almost every character has a love/hate relationship, and isn’t scared of showing that hatred. Such hatred that isn’t normal in a person. Heathcliff is shattered after the death of his love, and the hate he shows towards people in the book isn’t normal, and is rather disturbing ...
...this is the setting for Wuthering Heights. She was brought up with her two sisters - Charlotte (The Professor, Jane Eyre) and Anne – (The Tenant Of Widfell Hall, Agnes Grey) and her brother Branwell. Her two other sisters had died young, and her Mother a year after Anne’s birth. This just shows the tragedy and loss that Emily went through in her life. The losses she had to deal with at such a young age. And her Father who was a Minister ... Read review

Advantages: Very powerful reading
Disadvantages: None

...made it a stump. Wuthering Heights is the most famous piece of writing by Emily Brontë, the sister of Charlotte and Anne Brontë. She worked as a governess in a school near Halifax and, after spending a little time with Charlotte in Brussels in 1842, moved to Yorkshire. She died in 1848 of consumption along with her brother Branwell, followed by Anne the following year and finally by Charlotte in 1855. Wuthering Heights was first published in 1847 ...
...However, by now it has been identified as one of the great pieces of English literature. There is much power in this novel, to keep one interested till the end. The demonic Heathcliff keeps you on your feet at all times with its gothic undertones and wild passions, but also offering hope for a better future when all is said and done. And the architecture of the book is kept well in order throughout, creating a true classic of literature. © berlioz ... Read review

Advantages: Beautiful Work of Literature
Disadvantages: None whatsoever

...of two households: the earthy Wuthering Heights and the 'refined' Thrushcross Grange. Old Mr Earnshaw goes away on a business trip to Liverpool and returns, not with the promised presents for his children Hareton and Cathy, but with a young street urchin named Heathcliff. As the children grow up together Heathcliff becomes the catalyst for division and hatred, while he and Cathy become closer. Can forbidden love survive society? and what will it's ...
...geographically small metaphorical triangle of Wuthering Heights, Thrushcross Grange and Gimmerton, within which all the action takes place, and the intense emotions appear even more heightened. The emotional highs and lows of the novel are very carefully mapped out within the claustraphobic structure. Starting us on a very superficial level, Emily Bronte skilfully manoevures us down to the psychological depths of the action before bringing us back ... Read review

Advantages: Classic Story, Strong characters. Classics often cheap.
Disadvantages: Difficult language. Some complications

Wuthering Heights is a book about people. It’s a soap opera in the lives of two households in early 19th century northern England and is one of those books that you just have to read. It’s often mistaken for a love story telling the story of the famous romance between Catherine and Heathcliff. That was one of the mistakes I made. Although there is a relationship explored between these two characters, it’s by no means the main aspect ...
...the new tenant Lockwood visiting Wuthering Heights and Heathcliff. He then goes back to Thrushcross Grange, his residence and the narration is handed over to Nelly Dean, the housekeeper there who retells the story of Heathcliff’s childhood and his life. This is the main part of the book and you are only a couple of times reminded that this is the story being retold. It then closes back in the present. Another confusing aspect are the characters ... Read review

Advantages: all the hallmarks of the classic Bronte yarn
Disadvantages: Helen's diary can drag a little

...The Bronte sisters are of course so famous that they have their own place at the pinnacle of English literature but in asking people what they know about the three amazing girls, Charlotte and Emily wrote classically more famous books: "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights" respectively and so this one may be overlooked. Like "Agnes Grey", Anne Bronte draws on her experience as a governess and her brother Branwell provided the inspiration for Arthur Huntington, a brutish drunkard. This helps make the tale a more real one for the reader. The story is of a single woman who is a tenant in an abandoned old hall and becomes the object of gossip for her neighbours who wonder why she is living alone (that is without a husband, for she has a child). Yet there is one, Gilbert Markham, who resists believing such tales and slowly develops a tentative... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful

Advantages: Cleverly and honestly written
Disadvantages: If any, that it lacks some of the romance we might expect

...This novel defied all my expectations, in the best way possible. It would be far too easy to overlook “Agnes Grey”, to leave it lying in the shadow of the more widely-renowned Bronte books, but I would definitely recommend reading this. Anyone who has read works by the other sisters, Emily (“Wuthering Heights”) and Charlotte (of “Jane Eyre” fame), may be expecting the usual feast of impassioned romanticism...in which case they are in for quite a shock. What they will get instead is a far more modest and unaffected piece, an honest look at what life was ‘really’ like for governesses working in 19th Century England. It’s safe to say that this was a semi-autobiographical novel, following, as it does, the career and hardships of the young Agnes as she struggles through life as tutor in a typically Victorian family. Our heroine embarks... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Best love story in fiction
Disadvantages: None

...English teacher, a redoubtable Cambridge M.A., H.M.H.Harrison. with iron grey hair pulled back into a bun, and a gimlet eye, had found something new for me.She had. Jane Austen.After just the first chapter of Pride and Prejudice I was hooked, and knew I had to read everything Austen had written. If you make a profession of the written word, over time your tastes change. A certain cynicism sets in. This is not to say that your enjoyment lessens. When I was fifteen, I thought that Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights was the greatest novel ever written. I can see now that it's melodrama, full of faults,creaking along; still I love it.But this disillusion has never happened with Austen. Every year I re-read her novels. and each time appreciate them more, wonder at the technical perfection, see something new. And of them all, Persuasion is the one I... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful