Wuthering Heights

My attitude to Wuthering Heights is high regard as an important piece of literature but not something I particularly enjoyed at the time. I read it in my early 30s and struggled, probably while looking for love or something more meaningful beyond the push and shove of getting on in the rat race.

I searched for meaning but didn't find it here...

It's dark, gothic and eerie, but also depressing and not as rewarding as work written by Emily Bronte's sister, Charlotte, and her incredible novel Jane Eyre, which I enjoyed around the same time as this in my early 30s.

It's too bleak, unbalanced and stressed out for my tastes. After suffering and being subjected to many instances of family mental health issues, relating to Cathy was too much for me and probably always will be. Call it mental block or failure to accept the past if you like, but this book is harrowing and stressful and will not make you a better person or enlighten you if you approach it the wrong way.

Maybe I need a new perspective and a re-read to grasp the nuances of this famous book. As a more experienced, battered and hardened person, I'm sure I can handle it now.

It's the sort of book that captures your imagination, take Kate Bush, for example, who went to No. 1 in the UK on the back of her incredible eponymous single. "Heathcliff, it's me, Cathy, I've come home now, so co-o-o-old, let me in at your window-ow-ow-ow."

God almighty, I love that song!

Out on the moors, lost, terrified, madly in love, screeching, yearning for unrequited passion.

Yes, I missed something on first read, perhaps the brilliance hidden under the surface of this gothic novel.

It's hard to read and perhaps my expectations were too high anyway?

In the meantime I'll put this book down as decent, a classic, important and profound literature but not quite right for me, especially as I prefer George Eliot, Daphne Du Maurier and Jane Austen over this material, and similar style male authors such as D.H. Lawrence.

It's my fault, I accept it, for missing something for now.