Discussion Wrap Up: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
When Wuthering Heights was suggested to me as a book club choice, I thought perfect. It’s a classic, it’s beautiful, it’s one of my favorites and everyone will love it just as much as I did the first time I read it.
I could not have been more wrong. What follows is a tale of strife, misery and despair. Friendships were lost, feuds were forged and yes, there was even murder.
Ok, I might be exaggerating. A little bit. Let’s just say this was a divisive discussion. But you know what? That makes for a great book club. Even if not everyone shares the same opinions, we can still get together and have a lively debate. And boy was it lively. There was even a power point presentation (which will be included at the bottom of this post). For those of you who missed out, let this encourage you to never miss a book club meeting. Ever again. (I hope that sounded threatening.)
The group was pretty much split between die hard fans, die hard haters and die hard sitting-on-the-fencers (including Marie, who was literally sitting in the window sill when she said this.) Those who loved it spoke of the beautiful language (Emily was, after all, a poet first), the gothic aspect that was maybe not expected of a young woman in 19th century England, as well as the place the book holds in the history of literature. They brought up how influential it was, even though it was not well received at the time. While Jane Austen was maybe a bit more palatable (and don’t get me wrong, I love Jane), Emily wrote about abuse, generational trauma and tragedy in a way that people (coughs men) did not want to hear about from a young woman. The characters being despicable and unlikeable was the whole point. Reading through a gothic lens, one has to look at the characters as stand-ins for ideas and tropes, rather than as fully-fledged humans. Do not get attached to them. Chances are they won’t make it. They represent something, and in this case, they happened to represent the worst humanity has to offer: revenge, obsession, power and envy. The landscape was more fully-fledged than most characters, but one could argue that the landscape was itself the main character. Perhaps people go into this with expectations of it being a love story. Dash those hopes and dreams now. As Shannon pointed out, it is not a love story. It is not a romance. There are romantic aspects, and some sentences are swoon worthy. But it is not a story about love. It is a story of hate, more than anything.
Those who hated it didn’t love the structure. Dealing with one annoying, unreliable narrator was enough, let alone two. They could not connect with any of the characters, and some didn’t love the weirdly ambiguous/religious ending. Some felt that Heathcliff was too two-dimensional, and the biggest question of the day: Where on Earth did he get all this money?!. They slogged through it, wondering when everyone was going to stop whining. The opinions of the haters is best summed up in the powerpoint, made by Yuval. Who hated it the most.
All in all, the only thing most people could agree on was that it perhaps 60 pages too long. And while the discussion was heated, we ended it amicably. Those of us who loved it could understand why it was a rough read, while some who hated it could accept and admit that it was well written and important. Not even just for feminist literature, but for literature in general.
Afterwards, we all went out for a drink, and some of us ended up staying at the book shop until 12:30 in the morning, multiple bottles of wine later. And to be honest, isn’t that what book club is all about?
Below is the link to Yuval’s powerpoint. Enjoy, because he did a fantastic job (even if he was on the wrong side.)
https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:EU:565d9899-eadc-4853-afcc-97804262dbe8