Monday, February 13, 2006

BOOKS: Wuthering Heights - NOT a Love story

The Washinton Post recently has a book feature: Editors' Choices: Who Wrote the Book on the Brokenhearted?. It's a Valentine's Day thing everyone's doing. This is the entry on Wuthering Heights:
Wuthering Heights , by Emily Brontë. Gothic romance endures in the haunting love story of stubborn, stormy Catherine and wild, dark Heathcliff. This is a classic tale of "what becomes of the brokenhearted who had love that's now departed," made all the more heartbreaking by the fact that Brontë died in 1848, just a year after the book was published.

Are you fine with this? I'm so NOT.

Wuthering Heights is not a love story. I read it when I was young and naive - when I was too ignorant to ask the question: if Heathcliff never laid a hand on Isabella as they claim, how the hell did she get knocked up?

BUT - I was still sober enough way back then to realise Wuthering Heights is an S&M novel. And Catherine Senior is the sexiest sadist ever in literature - not that it's a bad thing.

The next person to call Wuthering Heights a love story needs to be kicked in the teeth for sheer NOT GETTING IT!

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