0484 | Wuthering Heights | Emily Brontë
Well this got off to a pretty good start with some excellent characters and plenty of tension between them. And then, about halfway through or even, probably, less than that, it all just petered out into nothing at all. Such a shame after waiting so long to read this that it really failed to deliver for me. As it brings to a close my reading of the Brontës’ works, it has failed to oust Villette from top spot. Charlotte wins, and it’s a tie between Emily and Anne for second.
So, of course, there’s Heathcliffe. He’s a raging beast of a character and he totally dominates the narrative whenever he’s around as he should do. Everyone cowers before him except Cathy. But just when things are getting interesting, Emily decides to kill her. But here’s something I didn’t know before reading this: everyone’s called Cathy, or at least it seemed that way. Anyway, before I knew it, I was dealing with completely different characters and a far less interesting storyline.
It had such promise, this novel. Heathcliffe and Cathy are legendary characters who deserve to have a novel to themselves. But they have to share it with various progeny who contribute very little to the scenery. In the end, the novel just kind of collapses in on itself in mediocrity and fizzles out. Before you get there though, you are treated to some great
And because the second half is so watered down, I’m not really sure what Emily was trying to communicate with her art as a whole (for this is the entire sum of her work as she died shortly after it was published). This seems a terrible shame, but somehow we’ve managed to build the 21st century without Wuthering Heights II.
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| RATING |  Key: Legacy | Plot / toPic | Characterisation / faCts | Readability | Achievement | StyleRead more about how I come up with my ratings |