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4thofelevenAssigned this as part of a literature unit; more readable than I expected.
- I was somehow under the impression that this was more of a ‘romance novel’ than a ‘nineteenth century people are horrible to each other novel’.
- Are we meant to be sympathetic towards… well, anyone? Is it just the passage of time and change of culture which leads me to dismiss virtually everyone as smug, self-absorbed, classist, racist, upper class twits who deserve to lose all their property and assets to the first person who comes along who’s willing to put a bit of effort into it?
- I think it is a great loss to literature that improved medical technology and life expectancy have meant that modern novel writers can no longer realistically dispose of characters no longer necessary to the plot by having them abruptly drop dead.
- Heathcliff’s a great character; I rather feel he deserves a better setting and storyline. Granted, a great deal of what makes him interesting is how petty he is in his obsessive pursuit of inflicting suffering on others… putting him in a setting where he could be a villain with grandeur would rather defeat the point. Still, he seems rather wasted in such a miserable location as Wuthering Heights.
- There’s some unusual plot structuring here; we have the narrator, who tells the story he’s been told by another narrator, who is in turn often telling the stories she’s been given by other characters via letters. I don’t read much from the early nineteenth century; is this sort of structure common there? It makes Tarantino films look like models of linear storytelling.
- I am very glad the edition I purchased provides translations for the characters who speak in strong accents.
- The second half of the novel seems to me to be greatly inferior to the first. The subtle supernatural elements of the first half are gone entirely, and the resolution of the main story seems to come out of nowhere. A happy ending feels very out of place after the story so far.
- I was somehow under the impression that this was more of a ‘romance novel’ than a ‘nineteenth century people are horrible to each other novel’.
- Are we meant to be sympathetic towards… well, anyone? Is it just the passage of time and change of culture which leads me to dismiss virtually everyone as smug, self-absorbed, classist, racist, upper class twits who deserve to lose all their property and assets to the first person who comes along who’s willing to put a bit of effort into it?
- I think it is a great loss to literature that improved medical technology and life expectancy have meant that modern novel writers can no longer realistically dispose of characters no longer necessary to the plot by having them abruptly drop dead.
- Heathcliff’s a great character; I rather feel he deserves a better setting and storyline. Granted, a great deal of what makes him interesting is how petty he is in his obsessive pursuit of inflicting suffering on others… putting him in a setting where he could be a villain with grandeur would rather defeat the point. Still, he seems rather wasted in such a miserable location as Wuthering Heights.
- There’s some unusual plot structuring here; we have the narrator, who tells the story he’s been told by another narrator, who is in turn often telling the stories she’s been given by other characters via letters. I don’t read much from the early nineteenth century; is this sort of structure common there? It makes Tarantino films look like models of linear storytelling.
- I am very glad the edition I purchased provides translations for the characters who speak in strong accents.
- The second half of the novel seems to me to be greatly inferior to the first. The subtle supernatural elements of the first half are gone entirely, and the resolution of the main story seems to come out of nowhere. A happy ending feels very out of place after the story so far.
no subject
on 2009-03-18 06:54 pm (UTC)I think there's a good reason the move version cut the second half. On the other hand, if done right, it could provide a nice "all this has happened before, and all this will happen again" resolution. After all, Cathy doesn't seem all that much sweeter than her mother when you get down to it (slapping her husband for stumbling over words!). And Hareton is the name carved over the door from 1500. So it's the beginning of a new cycle, really.
Hm, I remember reading a lot of epistolary/"someone said that someone said..." kind of stuff in my eighteenth century Brit Lit class. I think it was more common when they hadn't gotten this whole novel thing down yet and were using familiar forms? So maybe she was deliberately using older methods for artistic effect? Or maybe Bronte wanted to make you really really question everyone's interpretations...
It is interesting to try to figure out nativeness in this novel. There's "native to the moors" as contrasted to pansy Londoners, but also "native" in the sense that Heathcliff is really dark and constantly compared to "gypsies," etc. And he came from the port city Liverpool. On the other hand, he gets the name of one of the family's sons, and who the heck brings back random orphans unless they're secretly bastard children? So he might be both a native of one of the Empire's colonies and of the moors. Which is both superior to the pansy south and scarily savage. Not sure what to make of that.
no subject
on 2009-03-19 01:45 am (UTC)I was actually thinking that myself; that it doesn't matter that Heathcliff will lose personal control of the estates, because the... I don't know, 'Heathcliff culture', is now so ingrained that he doesn't need to remain alive, doesn't need to be physically there to maintain it.
no subject
on 2009-03-19 03:46 am (UTC)