f**k the poor, am I right? and
I already hate everyone in this book. if less than two people
die I'm gonna be surprised. okay let's play never have I ever. never
have I ever gone up in a hot air balloon. never have I ever fallen asleep and fell
off a toilet while drunk. never have I ever read Wuthering Heights. yeah I can't drink to
that. I don't have a big reason why, apart from it was never assigned to me during any of my
studies and therefore I never got around to it, even though through roll of the dice I was
assigned Jane Eyre three times. and it's one of those ones that's always hung over me,
something that people always reference. I've always been interested in. people that I trust
like it. and I just thought now there's a film coming out about Emily bronte's life and how it
differed from her sisters and its stars Maeve from sex education… obviously I'm gonna have
to see that. and I think that my experience of watching that film in a few weeks is going
to be significantly enhanced if I've read her most famous work. so I grabbed one of the
two Wuthering Heights copies I own, because I'm an optimistic book buyer and a pessimistic
reader, and I thought I would get cracking. the only things I really knew about this book before
getting into it was the main character's names: Heathcliff and Kathy. one of my aversions
in teenager that I'm now remembering to read in this book is because I used to go by the
name Kathy because my whole name is Kathleen, so everyone at school always used to sing the
song at me. ‘Kathy, oh kathy. Oh come hooome.’ so that made me want to not read the book. so I
know their names and I know that it's major tradg, and I know that it's set on the Moors, and
I know that it's Moody as hell. that's it. I don't know any of the plot, I don't know if
anyone dies. although this cryptic drawing on the inside of my copy is giving me Vibes that
somebody does. the only quote I know from it is this one on the back that I've heard read
at weddings: ‘whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same’, which sounds
very sweet but I have feelings from previous experiences, it’s probably not
as romantic as it seems. and I thought, whether you have or haven't read Wuthering
Heights before, I would take you along for a journey. so here is the story of Leena Norms
reading Wuthering Heights for the very first time. So i’m at greenbelt Festival. it might not like
it. it's over there. it's day two of me reading along to this book, and I can tell you that
last night I got to the grand total of eight pages before falling asleep in my tent. I've got a
little bit of time this afternoon so I'm hoping to get a little bit further through, but my first
shock… again, an assumption that I didn't know that I was holding, was that I thought that the
book would be narrated by a female character, or like from a female… over the shoulder of a
female character. I guess because Jane Eyre was narrated that way and I was lumping all the Bronte
b****s in the same little Den. but it's not. it's narrated by this other man who is renting the
cottage from Mr Heathcliff. already grumpy, loving it. and that's frankly all I
remember because I only got back to my tent at like 1am. so let's see how
this little afternoon read-along goes. look, I told a lie. I told a.. I told a lie.
I have.. I… I have lies in my head and I let them out of my mouth. and I didn't realize that
I was telling a lie at the time, but I feel like I really thought that I didn't have any ex… these
glasses aren't going in my hair are they? I keep trying to make… come on! I really thought that I
didn't have any expectations about this book, and I don't know if you've had this too when you go
in feeling like you don't have any expectations. and then it becomes clear quite rapidly that
you, in fact, did have some expectations and they are not being met. while on the surface
you want to be hyper-aware that all three Bronte sisters are.. like.. different people…
uh… writing in different ways. they are also, compared to all of the books that have stood the
test of time and actually survived long enough to be available at my water stones, some of the only
women writing during this period. and they were all living in a very specific town, in a very
specific society. and as unexperimental as the form of the novel was back then, you would kind of
assume that they would be similar. now obviously there are lots of things around language that are
quite similar, because they're writing books set generally during their time. but here are some
things that I was surprised I was disappointed not to find. a linear narrative. look, if I'm
going to be reading old words and grasping a family tree that makes less sense in the Coventry
Ring Road… I'm gonna need at least a timeline that stays put. I knew that this wasn't going to
be a romance. no, no. that's not true. I knew that there was a love story in it, but I knew it
wasn't going to be an idyllic romance. however, I'm on page 78 and I already hate everyone in
this book. everyone. with no exception. I know that a lot of books aren't there to have lovable
characters. and I actually think that's a fault of a lot of readers expecting loveable characters.
but I was at least expecting some of them to be nice. none of them are nice. Jane Eyre is your
every woman. she's blank to a certain extent, but also.. you know.. incredibly pure in some ways.
endures a lot of stuff. none of these characters are blank. they wear their trauma on the outside.
in fact, I actually found a graph in the guardian of the amount of assaults in the book. and you
can see that most people are both perpetrators and victims. from the offset Heathcliff… incredibly
unpleasant. and not in a sexy way. don't look at me like that. you know that there's a way in
19th century novels that men can be unpleasant in a sexy way. I don't want it to be true. but
here we are. and also there's this famous quote from the book: ‘whatever our souls are made of,
his and mine are the same.’ and at the moment I'm not actually seeing that much of their romance.
it's being reported, but I don't really feel like I'm getting invested in what's being reported.
Heathcliff and Kathy have almost been like Jack and Jill when it comes to my cultural staples,
like… I know they're the couple from this book, and I know that they're perpetually unhappy, so
I thought that the novel would follow them and it kind of follows them but so far it's feeling not
as cohesive as that. it's told from an unreliable narrator who doesn't really seem to be part of the
plot. he's a guy who rents one of the houses out from where the main plot did happen before. but
he's unlikeable. I don't even like him. I hate him actually. and then we're getting some of the
story from their servant. so it's very whisper, whisper, pass it on. and I'm feeling quite
distant from all the characters at the moment. I'm not … not to say that I am hating it, but
I definitely am struggling with it more that I have a lot of classic novels and maybe that's
because I haven't read a classic novel in a while and for the majority of my masters and my degree
I read quite a few of them. but I'm not like… every time I pick this book up I'm not like…
zinging to go, you know? but deeds, not words. I've got two solutions. one, I didn't know why I
didn't know who all the characters were and why I kept losing the thread of who they were talking
about. I was like… am I sleep deprived. have I hit the menopause? what's going on. I feel like I'm
tripping. but no, then I found this diagram that explains that, in fact, all the characters have
the same freaking names. look at it. just… just pause the video. take a look at this. it's
a mess. it's a mess. Everything in this book only has one of three surnames. they often share
first names. one man has a surname as a first name and another surname as a second surname.
one woman, Catherine, not to be confused with…. Catherine (don't even get me started) has had all
of those three surnames at different points in her life. she has been Catherine earnshaw, Catherine
Linton and Catherine heathcliffe. which is, of course, obviously very different to the famous
Kathy, who is known at certain points in the book as Catherine Linton and Catherine Earnshaw.
following? so here's my plan of action. I'm gonna set aside 15 minutes solid just to stare at
this diagram. just to stare at it. and then I'm going to restart the book, because it's come to my
attention that Aimee from sex education (Northern icon) has read the audiobook, so I'm gonna get
that and I'm gonna let her explain it to me from the beginning while staring at this map. why
this isn't printed in every copy of Wuthering Height seems like a publishing error. but I.. I
have faith. look, there's also a graph here that shows that Wuthering Heights has sold collectively
more than any other Bronte novel and collectively there are more TV and film adaptations of
Wuthering Heights in existence than all of Charlotte's novels combined. combined! so I'm
gonna keep going with the hypothesis that it's me, not you… Emily. and we're gonna gonna keep trying,
because God loves a tryer. God loves a tryer. okay so I am 193 Pages through this darned book,
and I think we're starting to make friends. we're friends, aren't we? we're well past the point
of no return. my dnf rules are usually if I'm not enjoying it at all and I see no hope by the
time I get to the 100 page mark I am allowed to do that. but I didn't feel that way when I got to the
100 page mark. I did feel like things were getting going and, to put it mildly if you've already
read the book, s**t started kicking off. what I would say for this book is that it doesn't dwell
on description or keep you held in one pen for too long. it's very much like jungle run when it comes
to family drama, it's like pow pow pow pow pow. I think I might even call it a… dun dun dun… pacey
classic. so there's that. my issue at the moment with sinking into it is that it's not that the
characters are unlikable, because I can deal. it's that I feel, without further reading, that
the characters are acting irrationally. now we all know that cruelty is irrational. it can't
be justified but it can sometimes be explained. and without me snooping on sparknotes.com I
wasn't really getting why Heathcliff was being the way that he was. now, I understand that it's
probably just through like… straight up Revenge, which isn't an incredibly complex motive for a
character. like.. it's not a very complicated kind of Revenge. he just kind of hates everybody
he grew up with apart from Kathy and he's just ready to be as evil as possible to them. I'm not
that interested in Heathcliff as a character, but I am interested in various aspects of the book. so
the adaptation I've got my eye on watching after I finish this is this one. and in this one they
have cast Heathcliff as black. or as some of the articles are saying: mixed race. so what I found
weird when I went online was that it seems that casting him that way was controversial, whereas
somebody going into the book who only knew the names of the two main characters and didn't know
anything about the plot or the context… it's been clear to me as a reader for most of it that he's
not white. it's directly referenced quite a lot. I mean this… this example on page 69 (wheey). I've
got something in my eye, I'm not crying because of the plot. hasn't got me that deep yet. it says: ‘a
good heart will help you to a bonny face my lad, I continued. if you were a regular black and a
bad one…’ and then it goes on to say: ‘you're fit for a prince in Disguise. who knows, but your
father was an emperor of China and your mother an Indian Queen. each of them able to buy up.’ it's
suggesting that easily in Disguise he could pass for the descendants of people from China or India.
he's often referred to as a ‘gypsy boy’, which I recently learned is a phrase coined only a couple
of hundred years before this book was written because when Romani Travelers came to Britain
people in Britain thought they looked Egyptian. so it's wild to me that all of these men were
cast as Heathcliff before this man. but sure. I am getting more invested in the love between Kathy
and Heathcliff as much as I hate both of them. and I think that's possible and the mark of clever
writing that you care about the love between two people you individually don't like. so really what
what's getting me through this is trying to work out what… what happens between them. you kind of
get told in the first third and, thanks for this copy, on The Flipping flap. thanks vintage. you
do kind of get told how things pan out for them both. but I'm interested to see how that happens.
at the moment… favorite character: Nelly, the ultimate s**t stirring servant. total t**t, but
enjoyably so. I also think it's been helping me read the physical book with the audiobook because
all the chapters are quite short and everything in my audiobook is bookmarked correctly, I can just
be like… right. okay. I'm on chapter 15. I'll play that in my audio while I'm assembling
a trolley, which is what I did last night, or cooking or whatever. so I think the combined
mediums are working for me for this, especially as I'm really out of practice with reading Classics.
and yeah I still don't feel like this is ever going to make it into my favorite books. like the
language just isn't exciting me or making me feel the big feels. but there's still time. there's
still time. and I will give it that. let's go. So if i was going to summarise this book in
six words it would be: hell is other people, the novel. you don't realize how small or how
large your life is as a modern person until you read books like this and you see how low people's
standards had to be to find friends or lovers. in fact, I looked a little bit more closely at this
family tree and the more you look at it the more you think… what the f**k. and not only that, but
I had another Revelation. so when Heathcliff comes into their life it is because Mr Earnshaw goes
on this trip. and before he goes he asks his two children and Nelly, who at that point is kind of
a foster child but she will eventually turn into their servant because f**k the poor, am I right?
he asks each of the children what he should bring back for them from the trip. very reminiscent, I
realize, and i’m probably not the first person to realize this because there's lots of scholarly
stuff out there about wuthering Heights, but I realized it really reminded me of the beginning of
Beauty and the Beast. in that he asks each of his daughters what they'd like to bring back and Bell
simply really asks for a rose. Catherine asks for a whip, because she's kind of a violent child,
I guess. her brother asks for… I don't really remember, it's not relevant. and Nelly asks for
some fruit. nothing of that comes back with their father. no, no. but Heathcliff does. Heathcliff,
who will eventually turn into the Beast of this Fable. okay, it started raining. what do I do? do
I stay? I'm British. I should stay Outdoors. I'm gonna try. so Heathcliff is the Beast of this
book and he is coded as not white and also the trip that their father goes on and comes back with
this vagrant Heathcliff is Liverpool. Liverpool being the main slavery Port. so is Heathcliff the
descendant of a former slave? and / or is he of more significance than it is letting on? I don't
know if they're going to tell us that in the last part of the book, but I'm like… Mr Earnshaw isn't…
he doesn't seem to be the most charitable man ever. he also doesn't seem to be against slavery
in anything. he doesn't seem like he hands like a particular skew towards adopting children and
charity. so why did he bring back this specific child? well, maybe it's his. maybe it's his.
and I was then reading an article and I realized that other people suspect that maybe it's his.
which would make Kathy and Heathcliff siblings. so if they are siblings and Mr Earnshaw had a
salacious affair with somebody in Liverpool who was not white or potentially a slave, then this
becomes even more complicated when Heathcliff is the bad guy. apart from he's not the bad guy if
you really listen to what the narrator's saying, I think. he is definitely a monster, he's… he's
a horrific man. there's so much violence in this. a lot of it comes from him. but a lot of it
was taught to him by his supposed Guardians, the people in the world that were supposed to keep
him safe. they treat him awfully as a child. the only person that treats him nicely is Kathy, even
though she's super neurotic and annoying and kind of rude to him as well. he's rude back. there's no
good guys, but it's also just like… if it was to be read as a fable it would be like.. ‘see, this
is why we shouldn't integrate race and class.’ but I don't think that's what Emily Bronte is saying.
I think because all of the other characters are so blatantly horrific and there's loads of times
where they could have fixed it and they didn't. I think this is more of a like… what if everybody
within a five mile radius of where you were born is awful and you can't leave? I hope she's okay.
how is Emily? I guess we'll find out in the film. another thing that I thought about when I was
thinking about why I started reading this book and the film that's gonna come out… the kind of…
I guess it's going to be a creative biopic… is that kaya scodelario, I think I'm saying that's
surname right, it's a joyous surname whatever it is. I'm just gonna keep dry with this and
carry on. so she was in the last adaptation of wuthering Heights playing Kathy. and she had
just become recently famous for her casting on skins. and she was like the Moody, alternative,
sexy girl who stirs all the s**t up. that was what she was famous for and I'm guessing that's
why they got to commission the film with such a high budget because she was in it and at the time
she was super super famous. is that not on that massive parallel with Emma Mackey, who is like…
currently very famous for being the Moody, sexy, slightly poverty-stricken girl who stirs s**t
up in Sex Education? and don't they look really similar as well? and do we only get Wuthering
Heights adaptations or Emily Bronte justice when there's like… a super attractive but
alternative woman who is in between shooting for a teen series and needs like… an outlet?
no? is anybody else seeing that parallel or am I imagining it? I'm probably imagining it.
let's march on with this bloody book. I.. I'm not gonna say I'm not enjoying it, but it would
be weird to say I enjoyed it. because it's such a depressing book. Emily, you okay? I'm presuming
not. let's see how this ends. I'm guessing it's a bloodbath. if less than two people die I'm gonna
be surprised. so uh… you and me. let's do this. So here we are. We’re at the end of the journey, me and you. and what a journey it
was. I finished reading this last night and I do definitely feel like I have a bit of a
book hangover this morning. like some books I read and they don't affect me at all and I kind
of forget that I read them, emotionally, straight after I finished them, maybe I remember reading
them but you know what I mean. but with this I definitely felt like there was a moment at the
end of the book where I was like: wow, I've been on a journey. I'm at the end of the journey. so
it definitely did affect me. as far as books go, I would say this is definitely one of the pacier
classics that I've ever read. the language is quite dense, but the action is on every page. I do
think the choice to not ever explain heathcliff's history to any of us ever was something that was
like an interesting choice that she probably had a massive reason for it. I mean this kind of idea of
the ‘other’ coming in to a small, mean community and being shrouded in this mystery may be part
of the point. and also I was reading about how she could have been implying that he was picked
up from Liverpool because he was a slave or the son of a slave or he was picked up from Liverpool
because it's also a port where, at that point, a lot of Irish people were fleeing the Irish
famine. so he could have been maybe Irish Romani, something like that? I think what was most
intriguing about the book to think about was how nothing is told from first person, everything is
repeated through other characters. I read somebody calling it like a ‘Russian doll of narratives’,
where you pull them apart and there's a smaller one inside. you're always hearing from Mr Lockwood
who is telling you what Nelly told him and Nelly is telling you what Heathcliff told her. so the
way the text is wrapped up and its structure is really unusual, really interesting for that time.
but I think in general I am way more excited to hear about the life of Emily Bronte and her
Sisters in this film and the kind of rivalry and the f****d-up-ness and and all of that, like
I'm interested in the real person behind this book rather than the actual characters in the book
itself. for me, I wouldn't say it was an enjoyable experience. I guess on some level would be weird
for anyone to say that they enjoyed it because it's such a cruel, violent, horrible book in a lot
of ways to read. but it's also obviously a piece of literature and literature isn't supposed to
be cozy and comforting and idealistic all of the time. so that's not a criticism of it, but I think
it would be weird if I had enjoyed reading it, you know? and I know that if I'd read this as a
teenager I might have romanticized heathcliff and Kathy's relationship and … i’ve been around the
block three times to do that now. but maybe as a as a teacher I might have enjoyed it more,
even if that was in an unhealthy way. but in general I was kind of like.. it's definitely…
it's definitely not one I'm gonna reread, even though my addition is beautiful. I don't
know if I'm gonna keep it… like… i definitely … I didn't feel like I had a personal connection
to the book, which is fine. I am, however, now very excited to see Maeve in the film. have
you read Wuthering Heights? were you a fan? let me know in the comments below. and let me know
your favorite classic book, because I definitely want to keep going through the backlist of
Classics that I haven't read. because I know there are some gems in there, even if this one
wasn't really for me. thank you for watching. this video was made possible by the gumption Club,
who tip me per video so they can keep happening. that's nice. if you like this video you might like
any of these videos that I've made recently. I upload every Monday so press that subscribe
button and do stick around. frog snog out.
