Just got finished with the audiobook of Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey, the story of a young vicar's daughter who goes off to become a governess, bears her trials (and troublesome employers) with much fortitude, and eventually lands the curate of her dreams. The end.

OK, so I can't help being a little cynical. One of the reasons I love the Brontes' work is their passionate arguments for self-expression in a repressed society. Agnes on the other hand spends so much time repressing herself that - as noble an expose as it may have been at the time - her story becomes if not outright boring then at least intensely frustrating. I kept wishing she'd just haul off and sock one of those little brats...or at least be a bit more honest about her desire to do so.

It is rare for a book in literature class to be unreadable trash. Wuthering Heights is a rare book. (Ask my old college roomate how fast he can duck books being thrown against the wall.)

One year I decided to try reading all the "classic" literature I'd been hearing about. It was very disappointing. IVANHOE was tedious (Scott seems to go by the rule of "never use one word when you can stuff in five") except for the sheer absurdity of finding that the hero's first name was...Wilfred. THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES was ruined by the fact that the fool who wrote the blurb on the back of the book gave away the ending!
And WUTHERING HEIGHTS? I couldn't believe it! Classic romance? Those were THE two most OBNOXIOUS characters I've ever read. I couldn't find any redeeming quality in either of them. When Heathcliffe finally died, I could only think, "Good riddance; it took you long enough!" I haven't seen the movie versions; maybe they are the reason the book is considered such a great romance. You certainly can't find it in the book. It could be used as a manual on how NOT to behave.

D.K., you sound exactly like the book reviewers in Emily Bronte's day, most of whom thought Wuthering Heights was, quote, 'coarse and brutal.'

I can't really defend it from that charge; I've never tried to define the unsettling effect the book has on me. I think it has to do with the sheer uncompromising power of that 'brutality', the suggestion that the passion Heathcliff and Cathy share is some sort of force of nature. 'Love', a la today's romance novelists, looks a little silly in comparison.

(That said, I also freely admit that this particular theme may hold much more interest for female readers. )

One thing you've got to remember is the time period in which Wuthering Heights was written. (Think Jane Austen or Thackeray - all those genteel, mannered, tea-in-the-drawing-room types.)
The Bronte sisters were among the first English novelists to try writing about real people and their raw passions. If they went overboard in spots - and they surely did - they also get all the credit possible for the attempt.

My exact point when I had enough of Wuthering Heights came when Heathcliff's second wife (I think it was his adopted sister) ran pregnant, through the snow, barefoot. I forget the exact distance given, but it wasn't across the street. I also forget if there was a blizzard she had to go through. Don't ask me what happened then, I never picked the book up after it hit the wall. (I think my roommate did.)

Um--it's been a while since I read the book--but I don't remember Heathcliff having two wives. As far as I recall, he married his sister in law (NOT sister) and proceded to make her life miserable as a sort of revenge against the people who'd made him miserable.

(And Ivanhoe is so a good book! (but then, one of the reasons I like it is the author's habit of using five words rather than one). (-=

It's been forever since I either read WH or saw the movie, but IIRC, Cathy and Heathcliff were lovers, but Cathy married the boy next door. Heathcliff then in a rage of jealousy, seduced and married Cathy's husband's fragile sister. In the second generation (only Heatcliff and the housekeeper are still around), Cathy's daughter married Heathcliff's sickly son, and after he died, another cousin (Cathy's brother's son). Of the four marriages this is the only one based in love and mutual respect. The whole story is told in flashbacks by Heathcliff's housekeeper, who had been Cathy's maid and confidante.

The movie only covered the first half of the book, and I think that it had Cathy and Heathcliff get together instead of torturing themselve and each other in loveless marriages.

Ah, yes. Wuthering Heights. As I recall, when we read it in High School English -- more years ago than I care to mention -- we referred to it as "Blithering Idiots", because that's what we thought Heathcliff and Cathy were.

Thanks, Tom. That sounds much more like I remember.

The housekeeper is an interesting character; very contradictory.

Who made the movie & when?

The movie I referred to was made in 1939 with Lawrence Olivier and Merle Oberon as Heathcliff and Cathy. In double checking these details at IMDB, I discovered that the book has been adapted to film 12 times. Presumably, at least some of those other 11 were more faithful to the original text.

Amazingly the IMDB doesn't list the semaphore version! ;-)

One thing you've got to remember is the time period in which Wuthering Heights was written. (Think Jane Austen or Thackeray - all those genteel, mannered, tea-in-the-drawing-room types.) The Bronte sisters were among the first English novelists to try writing about real people and their raw passions.

Woah! Just caught that. I take issue with your claim that Jane Austen was not writing about "real" people.

She's not writing about the "raw" side portrayed by the Brontes but about the everyday life experienced by most people.

And, even if we do not, today, ask our fathers if we can have the carriage in order to go visiting, we do spend the majority of our lives doing small things.

Which is not a bad thing.

. . . . . . .

Hm. Let's see, tone doesn't carry over very well on internet, so for that reason: This is meant more in the spirit of debate than attack--I happen to have a soft spot for both the Bronte's and Austen, and value them for different reasons

Me too, Jessica. (Ask me how many times I've reread the last chapters of Pride and Prejudice.)

'Real people' was putting it sloppily....maybe 'honest' would've been a better adjective.

What I was basically trying to get across was the contrast between the manners-conscious heroine of the traditional English novel of the time and the Bronte characters' splendid - to me - disregard for same.
Their books openly questioned society's conventions; showed characters frustrated and angry and even hurt deeply by them (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall); and just generally showed off human behaviour as it really is under the surface gloss. More, they argued passionately that it was that under-surface that really counted.

No wonder the critics of the time - most of whom quite sincerely believed that God had pre-placed all men in their correct station in life - were in an uproar...

Continuing a discussion started and stalled a while ago on Austen v. the Bronte's:

Charlotte Bronte to George Henry Lewes, 12 Jan, 1848:

"Why do you like Miss Austen so very much. . . . I had not seen Pride and Prejudice till I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate, daguerreotyped potrait of a commonplace face; a crefully fenced, highly cultivated garden with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognamy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen in their elegant but confined houses . . .

C. Bronte to W. S. Williams 12 April, 1850:

I have likewise read one of Miss Austen's works-- Emma--read it with interest and just the degree of admiration which Miss Austen herself would have thought sensible and suitable. Anything like warmth or enthusiasm--anything energetic, poignant, heart-felt is utterly out of place in commending these works: all such demonstrations the authoress would have met with a well-bred sneer, would have calmly scorned as outre and extravegant. She does her business of delineating the surface of the lives of genteel English people curiously well. There is a Chinese fidelity, a miniature delicacy in painting. She ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs him by nothing profound. The passions are perfectly unknown to her . . .