Maura’s review of Wuthering Heights > Likes and Comments
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I told a Victorianist friend about your Cathy 3 idea and she asked me to thank you! 🫡
I think there's =definitely= a decent sequel there!!! :-)
I was telling a friend at lunch today how I had to study this for 'A' level at school and hated it. I thought it was just because it was too hard for me, with all its nested narrators, extended flashbacks, characters with the same name in different generations, and all set in another age, in another county far from mine that might as well have been a foreign country with its own impenetrable passions, mores and language.
I was the son of idiot Lockwood, in other words, and had a shrewd idea that was who I was.
Though I've since read two or three novels by her sisters, I've never felt moved to reread Emily's, beyond reading a chapter aloud to Susanna once, when she was needing help with research. Everything I have come across about the Brontes has always made me think they're not for me. I'm sure if I reread it now I shouldn't hate it, but I'd rather leave it securely in the hands of others with more patience than I.
That brief revisit, on Susanna's behalf, makes me feel sure your essay is absolutely right, Maura, every word, except "mildly" in para.10. I doubt any Bronte ever did or wrote anything mildly in their life. I can quite imagine Emily, as you portray her, lashing out at rudely and, for want of a better word, snobbishly at their social inferiors. You're quite right, they surely saw the locals in that way, if only some of them, most of them, sometimes, most of the time, and that's part of the passion that throbs through the whole throbbing book. I can't, won't, condemn it, but I'm even more convinced than ever, thank you, that I need to stay away from it.
"This is a book that has been poorly served by its many adaptations…"
I also wanted to say, but I had to come out of the tiny Comments box to do it, that I wondered if you include Kate Bush's famous song among them. Though I did love that, in 1978, and am still fond of it, I think we must, not least because it wasn't her response to the novel, which everyone knows she hadn't read, but to That Movie.
So strange to revisit a review I wrote almost five years ago, thanks to you and my friend Erin commenting on it. I certainly go carried away!! I LOVE Kate's Bush's song, and yes, I count it as an adaptation -- I knew the story that she'd never read the book before writing the song, but emotionally, I think it's the truest to the spirit of the book.
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Erin
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Jan 28, 2026 10:03AM
I told a Victorianist friend about your Cathy 3 idea and she asked me to thank you! 🫡
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I think there's =definitely= a decent sequel there!!! :-)
I was telling a friend at lunch today how I had to study this for 'A' level at school and hated it. I thought it was just because it was too hard for me, with all its nested narrators, extended flashbacks, characters with the same name in different generations, and all set in another age, in another county far from mine that might as well have been a foreign country with its own impenetrable passions, mores and language.I was the son of idiot Lockwood, in other words, and had a shrewd idea that was who I was.
Though I've since read two or three novels by her sisters, I've never felt moved to reread Emily's, beyond reading a chapter aloud to Susanna once, when she was needing help with research. Everything I have come across about the Brontes has always made me think they're not for me. I'm sure if I reread it now I shouldn't hate it, but I'd rather leave it securely in the hands of others with more patience than I.
That brief revisit, on Susanna's behalf, makes me feel sure your essay is absolutely right, Maura, every word, except "mildly" in para.10. I doubt any Bronte ever did or wrote anything mildly in their life. I can quite imagine Emily, as you portray her, lashing out at rudely and, for want of a better word, snobbishly at their social inferiors. You're quite right, they surely saw the locals in that way, if only some of them, most of them, sometimes, most of the time, and that's part of the passion that throbs through the whole throbbing book. I can't, won't, condemn it, but I'm even more convinced than ever, thank you, that I need to stay away from it.
"This is a book that has been poorly served by its many adaptations…"I also wanted to say, but I had to come out of the tiny Comments box to do it, that I wondered if you include Kate Bush's famous song among them. Though I did love that, in 1978, and am still fond of it, I think we must, not least because it wasn't her response to the novel, which everyone knows she hadn't read, but to That Movie.
So strange to revisit a review I wrote almost five years ago, thanks to you and my friend Erin commenting on it. I certainly go carried away!! I LOVE Kate's Bush's song, and yes, I count it as an adaptation -- I knew the story that she'd never read the book before writing the song, but emotionally, I think it's the truest to the spirit of the book.
