A Quick Tip by voilodion2012

There's something rotten in the manor of Wuthering Heights. A young boy is hanging up puppies like decorations, an elderly servant can't speak comprehensible English, and the master of the house is a maddened, love stricken gypsy hellbent on exacting vengeance on all those around him. Okay that's exaggerating a bit, but...

It's really hard to review a literary classic without saying things that haven't been said a million times before. And if you do, usually you'll be corrected by the puritanical literary community. Well, I can say that if for some reason you haven't read this classic gothic romance novel despite it being readily available on the internet (and even on your cellphone!), you are missing out. Even by today's standards, this is a pretty dark story, with lots of unpredictable dramatic twists, characters who could be good, but instead turn out less so, and a hero who starts out sympathetic but turns...bitter.  This is not a story about how true love is the answer; this is a story about how true love creates major problems and can turn very talented people into real life monsters.  But that twist to the traditional romantic formula is what makes it consistently interesting to this day. The story moves along extremely fast and I was always constantly compelled to figure out what happens next.

Is it good as JANE EYRE? I personally found in more interesting given that many of the dramatic twists concerning the central characters surprised me more than in JANE EYRE.  In JANE EYRE, you know who the protagonist is and you follow her throughout the whole story.  In WUTHERING HEIGHTS though, there is no reliable sympathetic protagonist.  The main characters are morally flawed, and the ones who aren't are just relatively static observers.  The heroes' passions become the root of the problems that envelop them.  That's what makes it compelling because you constantly want to see how these mad interactions will play out.  How will the next generation fix the mess of the previous generation?  Will it ever be fixed or will the "curse" continue? 

Just watch out for Joseph's extremely thick Yorkshire accent; the way that man's voice is written had me slowing down and rereading passages more times than I could count.  I'm sure there are teachers/scholars who must have translated the parts where he talks, but I haven't looked yet.

It's hard not to see why this is a classic gothic-romance. The themes of obsessive love and twisted romance are very modern and so instantly recognizeable to many of us. I should not even have to recommend it.  If you're reading this just to earn a grade in your high school English class, then I envy you.