Books remaining in my physical TBR: 31
A man, Lockwood, moves to an isolated English moor and rents a manor known as Thrushcross Grange, meeting the grim landlord Heathcliff, who resides in a neighbouring manor called Wuthering Heights. Lockwood returns home and asks his housekeeper, Nelly Dean, about the history of Heathcliff and the former residents of Wuthering Heights, which Lockwood documents in his diary.
I'll be honest: I ended up enjoying this book much more than I thought I would. It took me about a month to read, as, unfortunately, after I began reading it, I fell into a reading slump. I've been reading it alongside 'The Wedding People' on my iPad Kindle app, but neither of those stories could draw me out of the slump. Thankfully, in the last few days, I've been greatly motivated to read! So, whilst I doubt I'll be able to finish the rest of the 31 books I have in my physical TBR by the end of the summer, I am only 1 book away from catching up to my reading goal. I should be at 14, but I'm currently only on my 13th, and I have an itch to reread some books.
I didn't really enjoy the first few chapters of the book - I will explain more in detail when I get into the 'spoiler section' - but I'm glad I pushed on, as the later few chapters were much more enjoyable to me. The book I was reading was, I believe, published to replicate how Brontë herself published it, where it was released as three volumes - with two being for Wuthering Heights, and the last one being for her sister Anne's story called 'Agnes Grey'.
From here, there will be spoilers
The first volume touched on Heathcliff's childhood with Catherine Earnshaw. From when Mr Earnshaw (Catherine's father) first brought Heathcliff home with him, and after his passing, when Heathcliff had to deal with Hindley Earnshaw's (Catherine's brother) abuse. I really did not enjoy this half in all honesty; I couldn't stand any of the characters, they all annoyed me - though I think that was what Brontë was going for? Even though I had seen through Lockwood what would become of Heathcliff, I still hoped he would have grown to become much nicer throughout volume one, sort of like the typical stories where the abused child rises above it and becomes better from the experience. If that makes sense? I do think it's understandable for an abused child to grow to hate the world, but I hoped that, since this was fiction, it wouldn't be like that. Catherine also annoyed me in how she claimed to love Heathcliff yet married Edgar Linton. I know her brother disliked Heathcliff, and I'm going to be honest and say I'm not really aware of the rules surrounding women and their choice in who they marry. It was just so unfair on Edgar for her to marry him, and for her to spend most of her time in Thrushcross Grange in misery over Heathcliff!
I felt great sympathy for Isabella - the sister of Edgar Linton - with Catherine exposing her crush on Heathcliff, only for him to go and exploit that so he could marry her! And for what? So he could neglect her for the fun of it? I'm not going to lie, I can't remember much of Heathcliff and Isabella's relationship, but I was so pleased when she was able to get away. One of the only bearable characters, in my opinion. So unfortunate her offspring was insufferable.
Volume two was my favourite part of the story. Whilst I know the novel was sort of focusing on Heathcliff and his haunting from Catherine, I really enjoyed all of the drama which was happening in these later chapters. Cathy (daughter of Edgar and Catherine - Catherine passed shortly after Cathy's birth) was insufferable in earlier chapters, which made sense to me as she was an annoying tween/teen, which I was probably exactly like her, if not worse at that age. But she is fictional, and I am not. Around this time, I mainly was 'reading' it using audiobooks, as it meant I could crochet during it, so it made me feel much more productive. I chose a dramatic reading on YouTube (find it here). Whilst the voice actors/actresses were brilliant, some of their voices really irked me, which I think added to the experience and reflected some characters well. Especially Linton Heathcliff.
Linton was the son of Isabella, who ended up dying and sending her son back to live with Edgar, but unfortunately, the tyrant Heathcliff soon came to take his son. He had the most insufferable voice and character. He was brilliantly written by Brontë if her goal was to make him as annoying as possible, but I was so happy when he finally passed away. My only dream is that he had died earlier in the book. I was so annoyed when he deceived Cathy! He was nothing but horrid to her. I was so stressed that Edgar would die alone when Heathcliff had captured Cathy and Nelly in Wuthering Heights. I think Linton was insufferable to begin with, but I can't believe Heathcliff was able to make him even more aggravating!
Another thing that confused me, which I think is more of me being ignorant of laws surrounding women of the time, was when Edgar died, and Heathcliff quickly came to tell Cathy she was to move to live in Wuthering Heights. Surely this was not written and set in a time when women were still classed as property? Though I suppose there was no one there who could really fight back against him anyway, I really don't understand why Heathcliff enjoys inflicting pain on others that was once inflicted on him.
I was so happy during the last few chapters when Nelly was reunited with Cathy, and also to learn that Heathcliff had died! I hadn't even considered that at one point the two timelines would overlap, as all I knew about Wuthering Heights beforehand was all because of the controversy around the new film; I had no idea it even moved onto the next generation after Catherine and Heathcliff. I also only knew part of it due to Kate Bush's song 'Wuthering Heights', which I assumed she had written after reading the book, but apparently she either never finished it or only read the blurb! I am unsure of which, but it's still a beautiful song, in my opinion.
The final chapters of the book were my favourite. I was so worried that Cathy and Hareton - who I forgot to mention before, but who is the son of Hindley, and about five years older than Cathy - would have an unhappy ending. I think my favourite character of the story was Hareton; he was clearly a man of bad temper due to his surroundings of his awful father, and then being taken from Nelly and placed under the care of Heathcliff. I think Cathy and Hareton are the only two characters I actually liked, though Cathy is slightly lower in the rankings due to how often she insulted Hareton! Though I can kind of understand that she was probably just trying to have some power over the place where she was captive, I still felt so sorry for Hareton! It was not his fault he was never taught to read. But this is why the last two chapters were my favourite; I thought it was so cute when Cathy was finally teaching Hareton to read!
I was worried this book would follow the trend of a lot of classic books where they had a sour ending, but I was so happy to see that Cathy and Hareton were, hopefully, able to break the small cycle of abuse present throughout the novel, and I was so happy to see that they would be getting married at the end and moving back to Thrushcross Grange! Yes, I am ignoring the fact that Cathy is cousins with Hareton and Linton, as I am assuming this was normal at the time. But no, I don't support cousins marrying cousins - especially since they are aware they are cousins and address each other as such!
This book was so brilliant, and I definitely recommend that they read it, or at least to listen to the dramatic reading I linked above on YouTube; I thought it made the book much more digestible and enjoyable. It likely made volume two easier as well, since so many characters had the same name, or their names were surnames, as in the audiobook, I could differentiate them by their voice.
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