Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë - Book Review

you insolent slot hi i'm jason mackay uh today we're going to be taking a look at wuthering heights by emily bronte first published in 1847 i mean everyone knows you know this book already i'm going to assume that most of the people subscribed to this channel haven't read wuthering heights um and i suppose i'm a little bit surprised that i'm covering it but i figured that one i have been quite critical of the romance or romance sorry or romantic kind of genre in literature shall we say and i was quite intrigued to take something that is as famous and infamous as wuthering heights and see what i really made of it see if i could actually um yeah formulate an opinion see if i could be enthralled by such a apparent narrative um and yeah i thought it'd be intriguing to actually take a look at i have always admired the character of heathcliff even in kind of an abstract sense i always liked the sound of him um and of their love story but i was always kind of put off reading it um i have read it before actually but a long time ago uh so so much so that i you know i was a i think i was a teenager forced to read it in school and i didn't have a fucking clue you know about anything back then so um yeah i wasn't i didn't enjoy it and there were only a few kind of sparkling moments in it where i thought okay yeah this is kind of interesting but the rest of it's dull um so i thought now now that i'm reading you know all the time i figured i'd get an opinion of this classic um it is one of the most well-known novels probably the most famous one i've now covered i would venture to say in a lot of regards and i do think um it is definitely worth looking into um a little bit about emily bronte she's got her own kind of historical fascination i would say um apparently she was a very very reclusive uh woman very little is known about her which puts her in my favor straight away uh she sounds a lot like my kind of lady to be honest um and yeah she died by the age of 30 i think only a few years after the release of wuthering heights most likely from tuberculosis from what i gathered um and though she did refuse medical assistance she later repented that decision um but by then it was too late and let's be honest back in that time it probably would have made very little fucking difference anyway um and it is intriguing just to see what what's the big fuss about this whole novel you know um i'm aware of its um i suppose um it does divide a lot of people from what i've seen um but i was just intrigued to see what i'd uh what perspective i've had of it i'd have of it just from my knowledge of literature and uh all of that kind of stuff really i thought it would be intriguing to actually put my theory to the test though after reading it i would actually say that it isn't really just a romance a romance story i don't know why i keep fumbling on that word but no it's not a romance story it's a a very very grim dark um miserable sort of epic i would say in some regard a kind of semi-epic portrayal of two families and how they collide that psychologically speaking i actually thought was really on the money the characters in it all have their flaws and weaknesses and certain strengths they do easily point one another out quite a lot of the time and although the katherine and heathcliff's story is the kind of main drive throughout it isn't the sole focus by any stretch of the imagination i was a little bit surprised by that even um we start off with the character of uh mr lockwood and he's a bit of a he's a bit of a schmuck kind of character i suppose in a way he's very like normal i suppose and i actually like that um introduction into it in a way because it gives you a good idea it's quite a classical approach to use somebody who isn't familiar with the conditions let's say of the place involved and he goes there to rent a place to stay just for a season and he immediately becomes kind of fascinated with the dynamic of the family involved he meets like heathcliff um the second catherine we don't know that at the beginning but yeah he kind of gets this kind of overview and then eventually one of the housekeepers who he's staying within the other um i think it's thrushcross grange i think it's called that's another house um that's about four miles away from from wuthering heights and that's where he's staying and he gets kind of chatting to this ellen her name is she's a housekeeper and she eventually starts to um unveil the story of of why the places is the way that it is and then we get to learn the actual history so she takes it 20 odd years back um and that's when heathcliff who was only a kid at the time around five years old he's picked up from liverpool by the father and not his father but of catherine's father and he's brought back to wuthering heights and then he's just introduced into the family and without any real explanation some theories out there say that he's black and that he hasn't been properly represented in the past throughout media and and the like but i don't he's not black i don't know where people are getting that impression he's dark-skinned he could be mixed i'm thinking he's definitely um you know quite possibly even indian in some regard like he's definitely been a you know kind of an illicit or illegitimate love child some say that of the fathers that is a possibility i don't think that that's the case um i think he's just for some reason he's picked up by the father um and he takes a kind of shining to him and he raises him um why he does this is kind of left a mystery and really people go on about the racial element and how that and how that impacted his life but even if racism didn't exist let's say in some utopian world um he would still be an outcast within this family i think people are failing to realize that not only because of his skin color but because he is an orphan that has no history no family of his own no education nothing like everything about him makes him an outcast and that therefore basically is the breeding ground for what he becomes um he isn't particularly welcomed inside the house at least at the beginning um he's looked at as a kind of gypsy um animalistic kind of type um but as he grows up here men catherine actually developed quite a well unique bond let's say and yeah they have a kind of a love between them that is is it's a little bit incestuous i would say um mainly because they are brought up in the same family household and so they do come to sort of see each other as brother and sister but because they're clearly not um some theories might argue otherwise but for me it was quite clear that he was just an outsider kind of type it definitely created a more dangerous dynamic i would say because although heathcliff is treated like an errand boy um scum basically most of his life catherine is equally treated in a kind of different way and i think a lot of the time because they have to be in cahoots and really kind of rely on each other to try and get each other out of trouble or to avoid the kind of anger of their masters essentially they form a bond which i think they confuse their own identities with so they actually identify themselves within each other and of course as they grow older and there is a kind of love and affection that grows from that and they do seem to be in a very passionate um standpoint with one another it actually creates all of the disaster that you're about to fucking witness uh to be honest i won't go too much into the plot um some people think it's very convoluted i would say it's only as a touch convoluted it's got multi layers throughout and it it goes through a history basically of around 20 odd years um so we were taken back into around i think just before the 19th century and then we're kind of brought back up to speed as the narration goes on over a period of 20 25 years something like that um what i uh i suppose what i'd smudge out is although this is a love story it's definitely not one that is conventional by any stretch of the imagination i would actually say that it's exploring the much much darker side of love and basically saying how it reminded me of the quote all is fair in love and war because essentially heathcliff declares war because of his love for catherine and he wants literally to bring everyone down to his level and make them suffer much like he suffered in his own childhood whilst catherine is so delirious at times that and i found that a little bit melodramatic in moments i thought fuck you know like someone calmed this bitch down but at the same time i think it was because she had a mental disorder um and because of the treatment that she had to endure during her childhood she goes from moments of feeling like the world is in love with her and charmed by her every grace and move to believing that she's worthless um not worth the air in which she breathes um and wants to die essentially so what i found especially interesting is how that juxtaposed with the narration of what was going on and a lot of the times it was mirroring either the present of what heathcliff would feel for instance or the other way around and historically even kind of played its own part as well so there was so there was a lot of symbolism going on um and the descriptions of wuthering heights and thrush cross grange i've got part of me thinking i'm getting that wrong like something like that um they even into change in how they're viewed by uh certain narrators throughout the piece although most of the story is told by ellen the housekeeper and i do think has a certain bias because of that because she wants to paint a picture of herself as being this kind of always kind of well to do and meaning well kind of woman whereas i think sometimes she's quite manipulative just like the characters within and although she might make promises to the children she's supposedly serving because she knows who her master is and what he may have demanded she she sometimes completely snitches them up and fucks them over and basically causes a lot more misery than necessary a lot of the time um but for me the the main thing uh the sick enjoyment i got out of it was how devilish heathcliff was he is an absolute fucking lunatic uh psychopath sociopath whatever you want to call it his main drive throughout the whole piece is venomous to say the least he has a kind of byronic um i would say i think a byronic kind of conception that kind of created his character but he also has a frankensteinian and i would say machiavellian element to him where he's cunning deceptive amoral he doesn't give a fuck basically like what happens to people around him in fact he wants to inflict misery on their lives he even like outwardly declares uh and there were moments where he was arguing with certain characters and he would refer to the person he was slamming in the third person and basically saying saying things in a kind of shakespearean manner of how he you know they're not even worth the shit on his shoe and stuff like that and they'll be present in the room and he doesn't he just doesn't give a shit he's violent towards men and women he's uh abusive to other children but in a very neglectful way more than anything uh there's a certain character towards who he basically treats like he was treated although i would say slightly worse where because of his because of this particular character's history he actually raises him to be a dunce and things like that like he he's demonic basically he doesn't give a shit um but i would also say that by the end of the story you kind of realize why he's been like that throughout most of his life and although you can you know obviously point it all towards his childhood i would actually say it's more that the relationship that develops between him and catherine and the sordid and demented um creation that that seems to spread along the moors and every it encapsulates everything essentially and i think that's what bronte's main skill in the story was is that although the dialogue could seem uh melodramatic and slightly heavy in moments um and over the top i mean there's moments over the top big time but i would actually say that that was totally permissible mainly because you would be a lot more melodramatic in this time i would think i mean the characters who are educated know how to speak they know how to argue um the the language itself puts us to shame um it really does it's eloquent sophisticated smooth um grandiose it's got to me i don't know i suppose as we advance with things that make our lives easier we lose things that we take for granted i would have thought um and like that with death which is another um subject that i've talked about in the past of how we don't even we just we snub it as if it doesn't exist now whereas for characters in this piece and much like for people in the mid 19th century death was just something that was around most kids even if they get through their infant years they still weren't out of the woods um if a lot of the time they get ill during their teens and they talk about it as if it could just happen at any moment it doesn't matter so there's a kind of added cruelty to that because there's a character a character called joseph who i couldn't fucking understand a word he was trying to say most of the time um his act the way his uh vernacular was written is difficult to say the least i did start to catch it as the story went on a bit more but most of the time i was looking at going i don't have a fucking clue what you're saying dude like it's his accent is hard to decipher i would maybe take a minute out to try and research his uh phonetical range because it's all written in that manner but it's it's difficult like it's not just uh phonetically written it's actually got a kind of twang to it as well and added kind of uh vehemence i would say and menace um and he's a complete prick as well to be honest but he lives throughout the whole piece i i don't know how old he was by the end but you imagine he must have been approaching his 70s roughly um and he's just he just managed he just lives it's like he's part of the grime and filth of everything going on and the death and decay but he's just there living there kind of thing and he's he's he's built up a kind of tolerance and immunity to it all because he is it you know there's a kind of reflection going on throughout um whereas other characters you know as soon as they become afflicted with a certain illness at a certain time and if they're going through a kind of dilemma a lot of the time they kind of invite their own death along a lot of the time but obviously if you do get the flu around this era and under the right conditions or let's say the wrong conditions rather that's just what's going to happen uh and the way they talk about death is brutal i would i'd say overall because sometimes there's a little hint about oh but you know i'm young um or this character's young they should get through this and all this guy i think uh the second kathy makes a reference to this in regard to somebody else um and the housekeeper kind of corrects her saying yeah but it doesn't matter you know we can all die at any moment kind of thing and in some ways i do think that that created a more melodramatic um excuse for melodramatic kind of reactions and stuff because it is just lingering everywhere that coupled with the misery of what's surrounding them with what heathcliff basically brings when he uh because he there's a moment where he disappears and when he comes back he's worse than ever ever um and he's accumulated riches by this point um in a mysterious manner but you kind of get a hint of how he's done it fucking people over um brutally as well he he plays to their weaknesses and charms them and just basically reels them into his uh world he's uh he's learned from his upbringing essentially without inadvertently so it's um it's definitely got a kind of uh commentary on the working classes rising up and then gaining power and then what that would mean because if they're still holding to on to a lot of resentments um of their history and of how they were brought into the world then obviously that's going to have a detrimental effect to those surrounding them but with heathcliff he feels betrayed by catherine katherine there's a moment in it particularly where you realize things are going to go shit um because catherine is talking about how she'd love to marry heathcliff but because of their um status or pig mainly because of his because of the system at the time but because he's basically a beggar they would be beggars so she and heathcliff only hears this and then he storms out but catherine goes on to say that she's only going to marry this linton character so she can help heathcliff and yeah because heathcliff doesn't hear this uh he and he subsequently disappears for quite a long time i can't remember specifically how long it is but it's a while um yeah we kind of with there it's all there in that kind of one moment but again because of their histories because of the uh because of the way they identify with each other essentially seeing themselves in a kind of conduit of each other so they're kind of always reflecting back um and of course the ghost element the kind of haunted aspect of the story which i thought was far more subtle than uh i was actually anticipating i thought it was going to be quite a prominent subject in it maybe kate bush's son gave me that idea i'm not sure but yeah it's um whilst it's kind of brushed upon i don't think it's actually given any conclusions um and it's kind of just a theory um some characters hold a belief in it and others don't um but there's definitely something haunted about just the novel in general um i think the presence of death which is rife throughout the book um definitely adds a kind of eeriness to the personalities of the characters involved because they're always kind of in a state of mourning or yearning quite a lot of the time and of course i think that would definitely add to how they view the world and of what the world will do to them uh so there is a kind of i mean the misery in this is kind of outstanding to behold at times even i was taken aback and i've read a lot of fucking miserable books but this one was had it in bucket loads it's like everything in it is grim um so there isn't much hope going on um some people i've read on fucking goodreads and some people are slamming the way it's delivered the narration style and all of that all of that kind of thing but i think they're completely wrong no surprise there um mainly because it is dealt with very well you couldn't just have the story about catherine and heathcliff and tell it in a third person i don't think i think it's important that there is an outside perspective and that it's told in first um and that it is told in a kind of traditional style in that regard although at the time it was quite unusual apparently um and yes but it's basically told in first person with our main character at the beginning who's kind of a similar one to the great gatsby character actually the one who admires him and he kind of he narrates the story in this one we have our lodger and then he relates the story via one of the housekeepers and they kind of interchange in that regard but for me that worked perfectly because the housekeeper essentially does have a kind of the most in different viewpoint because they can't meddle in it so they're the masters they can tell them to fuck off whenever they want go and do something else so essentially they have to kind of stand back and only intervene when it seems necessary to do so usually when violence breaks out so i actually thought that that was a clever technique to use and it because of their kind of seeming normality throughout let's say or at least um less expressed emotions because they are basically not permitted to do that because they're in a place of work that actually gave a nice balance to everything that was going on especially when it came to the dramatization of uh the relationship between heathcliff and catherine i mean heathcliff isn't just demonic in his actions either he actually or in his intentions with others he is with himself as well uh when it comes to realizations of how he's behaved throughout his life i actually found that that did answer quite a lot of what his intentions were but also the fact that he was just a broken man like overall and he's a very complicated character a very fascinating one uh one that were i to ever venture back into fucking acting that's the character i love to play like he he's always been the most fascinating but i'm the wrong type to do it i'm not dark skinned you know they have got that wrong in the past i think um but overall i thought it was a fucking great novel i mean clearly i've been banging on about it in a kind of kind of passionate sense um i loved some of the dialogue in it i thought it was great um it would be a lot of fun to see this portrayed in the right movie or on the stage even and i just felt the atmosphere how it mirrored everything that was going on and how it kind of everything that all the death that was present and that came about just kind of bled into the lives of those still living and they kind of lived hand in hand so that's where i kind of got this haunted element from it because death and disease and decay is so rife throughout the piece that it's kind of impossible to ignore it and not feel that there is some kind of weird ominous presence going on and a lot of the time there is the clandestine intentions of say heathcliff and what he really is up to and what he's doing and how manipulative and machiavellian he's being but also because of where that originates from and with the heirs that eventually are born later on in the story as we enter the kind of latter third we kind of see how each dynamic throughout these families and how they repeat themselves essentially there is a cycle element and i kind of thought that the ending though it's not i wouldn't say it's satisfying and i wouldn't say it's disappointing at the same time it's kind of inevitable um and there is a kind of standpoint of it of like this new marriage i'm just going to leave it at that is potentially going to be good or is potentially going to be bad we don't really know so we kind of sit in the same position but the way it mirrored what actually happened with heathcliff and catherine originally was quite masterful i thought there was there was a lot of um mirroring kind of symbolic references throughout and ones that i thought really worked uh but the main strength of it is the psychological element to me i thought uh bronte was spot on to be honest a lot of the time and and of the effect it had on these characters especially um and she really highlighted their faults and strengths well and yeah i bought it even in a modern sense with the kind of flowery language and everything i thought it really kind of stood out um and was very skillfully done um and yeah that's it um i check it out it's well worth it it's far more exciting than you all consider it to be especially if you're more familiar with the other books i've reviewed on here but the story is actually quite addictive like that's i found myself in a feverish kind of want of knowing what was going to actually happen next um i did find that by about the middle i thought it was a shame where it went in a way but then by the end i kind of realized what that what the reason for that was and especially with heathcliff's kind of realization at the end and what actually happens to him and yeah kind of it kind of all came together really well um but yeah initially i was kind of disappointed because i was kind of surprised i was kind of like wow she's or he's gone rather soon um but yeah it kind of managed to work that out i think there is a lot of other things that were only really subtly hinted at the potential abuse of the characters especially as children but also potentially by the husbands considering that uh the women were their property um there's a lot of kind of conniving being done by heathcliff to make sure that the women in his life know that they are his property once he manages to coerce them into say certain marriages either to him or to other people he wants them to marry um and yeah that definitely plays its own part um and the way he uses their other kind of family members as leverage a lot of the time it's just he's he's a he's a bastards but a kind of wonderful bastard at the same time like i wouldn't really say he's an anti-hero but he's definitely a villainous character but for me i couldn't help but feel something for him at times um and i suppose everyone wants to feel a psychotic love towards them in some regards i do i can definitely see why it is popular even if it is for all the wrong reasons a lot of the time and has it and narcissistic in a lot of regard but yeah that's where i'm gonna leave it on that one um it's a little bit different i haven't covered a female author for a while and i'm glad i fucking picked this up i really think it's worth worth your time i think you'd be surprised um if you're not english by you know your heritage i would pick it up in your mother tongue mainly because the language is i wouldn't say very difficult but it's definitely um not to modern tastes and also because of the uh slang that's used i think at times if you're not familiar with that it would be doubly confusing and slow your kind of pace down but again joseph who i'm referring to here his role though needed you can kind of ignore what he's saying because he's basically a mad fucking cunt i kind of found that he's a he's a bit he's more faithful to the kind of harsh and cold reality of the world so he wants other people to realize that so he doesn't have any sympathy for anyone throughout it um but yeah if you're a type who wants to really understand every word and you know really kind of analyze it do it in your native tongue because it's not um it's a convoluted novel um not as convoluted as some people will make out really um it's actually quite simple in a lot of ways it's just convoluted in the fact that it overlaps in history and refers back and kind of but really it's told in a linear fashion so i don't really understand that anyway i'm clearly one i'm clearly rambling off here so i'm gonna go uh thank you very much for watching this hope you enjoyed it uh if you've read it let me know what you think um and all of that bollocks and i'll see you next week thanks

Channel: g.c. mckay

Views: 8,391

Keywords: wuthering heights book review, wuthering heights emily bronte book review, emily bronte death, 19th century literature, gc mckay books, heathcliff and catherine, emily bronte books, byronic books, gothic literature, depressing books, lucythereader, lucy the reader, brontë 200, bronte parsonage, bronte book club, classic literature, gothic literature explained, byronic heroes

Id: 66jgadtNexw

Length: 32min 0sec (1920 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 09 2020