Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë - So You Haven't Read

literature gives us the opportunity to experience lives perspectives and worlds different from our own though remember friend a good story has many readings and this is but one the woman you loved spurned you for another man because of your social class her brother mocked and abused you but now you've returned to wuthering heights self-made and wealthy ready to enact a little payback on her and her brother and their spouses and their kids actually oh and did we mention that she's your half-sister yeah things are darkly complicated for heathcliff the protagonist of emily bronte's wuthering heights that inspired quite the scandal in its day and of course in our day it inspired the wonderful kate bush song no not that one fekna stans the other one the one with the same name wait a minute you didn't know it was a book before it was a song well we would seriously be letting down kate bush if we didn't take the opportunity to introduce you to this steamy gothic classic and we would never let down kate bush [Applause] [Music] thanks so much to nebula for being in our opinion the best streaming service around more on that and how you can watch your first video free after the episode so you haven't read withering heights by emily bronte that's a dang shame because literary experts have ranked it amongst the greatest works in the english language and the bad romance between heathcliff and catherine has inspired dozens of derivative works including that kate bush non-stranger things track of the same name that we mentioned before we're going to keep mentioning it by the way because it's awesome in withering heights bronte created a prime example of what is known as a gothic novel a book that relies among other things on a frighteningly claustrophobic atmosphere the presence of the supernatural and plots where the past is messing with the present however it's often further identified as a female gothic novel because it replaces the supernatural with the actual daily horrors women faced as second-class citizens in the 19th century and it also should be noted that these genres tend to be crammed to the brim with sexual tension and desire on the surface level but especially in the subtext actually you can see our episode on dracula for more on that but for now prepare yourself to get hot and heavy because you are heathcliff oh no zoey sorry not that heathcliff bud man she's been crushing on that animated bad boy since she was a kitten as our story begins you are a bitter man living on a run-down estate named wuthering heights in the yorkshire moors with the daughter of your former lover and the son of your bitterest rival which might seem odd right now but trust us it's all part of your elaborate multi-generational revenge scheme one day you're visited by a man named mr lockwood who's renting another one of your properties and while staying the night at withering heights he finds a diary by someone named katherine earnshaw a long-dead former resident of the estate and is eventually visited by her ghost which of course inspired kate bush's chorus but no no we are talking about the book spooked by that spirit mr lockwood flees back to his rental where his housekeeper nelly recounts to him the whole backstory decades ago wuthering heights was owned by mr earnshaw who had two children catherine and hindley but one day mr earnshaw returns to the estate with a new adopted child which is you heathcliff and he proceeds to spoil you rotten at the expense of his other kids hindley does not take kindly to this and beats you plus when he becomes master of the estate later on he does let you stay but only as a servant you and catherine however become fast friends and as you got older romantic sparks started to smolder despite the fact she's your stepsister and way above you in social class and then there's the neighbors the lintons who also have two children edgar and isabella that are the same age as you and catherine edgar and hindley immediately bond over the fact they enjoy physically abusing you and what's worse catherine decides to marry edgar even though she loves you because your social class gap is just too great yeah it's at this point you decide to bail and catherine becomes so distraught by your departure that she falls ill but while you're off plotting your revenge let's take a moment to visit the bronte household emily bronte and her sisters charlotte and anne demonstrated a gift for storytelling from an early age and because they lived in yorkshire rather than a literary hub like london they developed their talents in relative isolation and all three women wrote now classic novels including emily's wuthering heights charlotte's jane eyre and anne's agnes gray while many contemporary critics praised withering heights immediately a scandal erupted because some scathing reviews banned the book for defying victorian beliefs about gender equality class structure and depictions of cruelty not to mention the burning love between different socially classed step siblings but you know what happens when something is denounced as depraved that's right sales went through the roof however emily died at the age of 30 of consumption after her death charlotte became the curator of her work and her reputation and tried to make excuses for emily's depraved writing claiming for example she was more of a child of the moors than of civilized society there was also evidence to suggest charlotte actually burned emily's second novel because of the scandal that wuthering heights had caused i guess the survivors do really get to control the history which is coincidentally part of your heathcliff's master plan when you return three years later you are miraculously wealthy not sure exactly how that happened but okay catherine pregnant with her husband edgar's child is overjoyed at your return nah but you don't have time for that you're on the revenge path now so to make her jealous you start pursuing isabella who's always kind of had a thing for you in the background you also win the deed to wuthering heights from your old rival hindley while gambling ah yes everything's coming up heathcliff you elope with isabella which you both quickly realized was a horrible mistake but your marriage sends catherine into a tailspin and when you return to withering heights you learn that she's dying that was not part of the plan so you decide to sneak in to see her one last time she subsequently dies in childbirth leaving you absolutely distraught now most people would probably back off a revenge scheme at this point but you are not most people see hindley dies a few months later leaving you at wuthering heights with his son hairton who you then make a servant take that dead hindley and a bunch of years later you pressure edgar and catherine's now adult daughter also named kathy to marry your son who you had with the now dead isabella so that you can inherit edgar's estate when he dies take that dead edgar and then your son dies and oh uh uh take that alive you and somewhere within all of that you terrorize your household by describing how you dug up katherine's coffin with an intent to embrace her corpse an iconic literary moment sure but yeah which brings us back to the present day haunted by catherine's ghost you lock yourself in a room until you die but this frees a delighted young kathy inherton to marry even though their social classes don't match and local residents report seeing you and catherine's ghosts walking together through the morse withering heights is sometimes described as a love story but there's also a strong case to be made that it's more of a horror tale heathcliff might not have supernatural powers but his malice ends up ruining the lives of everyone around him the first sign of new joy in the lives of any of his relatives doesn't happen until he's dead and catherine and heathcliff for their part can only truly be together as ghosts and like his bro count dracula heathcliff is a compelling often sympathetic character despite his monstrous actions but as always don't just take my word for it you should go read it and decide that for yourself withering heights is a terrific gothic novel that showcases emily bronte's skill at storytelling characterization and dialogue it offers a compelling honest look at what life was actually like in victorian england and it stands out from its romantic heir appears not just because it inspired kate bush which it totally did but because bronte's innovations to gothic romance helped set the stage for 20th and 21st century literature so head to your local library and check out this steamy all-time classic oh but double check the book before you go home because if it features a whole lot of pictures of an orange cat somebody has tricked you into picking up the wrong book ask me how i know though you want to know another thing i know you could be watching this video and thousands more all ad-free over on our streaming service 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Channel: Extra History

Views: 89,031

Keywords: Classics (Field of Study), So you Haven't Read, Education (TV Genre), Wuthering Heights (Book), Humanities (Field Of Study), Literary Criticism (Field Of Study), Book Review (Award Discipline), Classics (Field Of Study), Literature (Media Genre), Literature Review (Literature Subject), animated, summary, explained, Analysis (Quotation Subject), reading, book recommendations, booktok, book, booktube, popular books, Wuthering Heights (Movie), Emily Brontë (author), Gothic fiction

Id: Pm54yK_npUI

Length: 11min 24sec (684 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 21 2022