In which carbonel reads Wuthering Heights

[carbonel]

I have several multi-year projects going. For my Netflix watching, I've been slowly working my way through Leonard Maltin's four-star list since 2000, and am halfway done.

For my bathroom reading, I've been selecting unread or read-so-long-ago-I've-forgotten books from the paperback fiction shelves in alphabetical order. I've been at it several years, and am still on the B's. What came to my hand most recently was Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, which I'm now about a third of the way through. And honestly, if this were an SF or fantasy novel, it probably would have been put on the "take to the bookstore for credit" pile long ago. The only likeable character in the whole thing is Nelly, and she's basically a plot device.

So tell me, people who like this book -- why should I keep reading? Despite my OCD tendencies toward completism, I keep thinking how much I'm not having any fun. So what should I be learning, if there is a greater purpose than enjoyment in reading this? (For the sake of calibration, I love and reread all of Jane Austen's published novels (with modified rapture about Mansfield Park), and quite enjoyed Jane Eyre, the only other Bronte I've tried, the one time I read it.) I really do want to know; I'm not just kvetching. Though I will grant that I'm also kvetching.

Comments

[pameladean]

That's a different Bronte, though.

I have never really seen the appeal of Wuthering Heights, although it has some interesting uses of the setting as character. And the embedded narratives are interesting too, though not atypical of novels of the time.

Villette is equally wacked and much more interesting, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is better too.

P.

[ursula]

I agree that the embedded narratives are interesting.

Personally, I think the main reason to read Wuthering Heights is so you can get more of the jokes in Cold Comfort Farm.

[carbonel]

I thought Cold Comfort Farm owed more to the works of Thomas Hardy, but I hadn't read any of either when I first read CCF -- which I enjoyed immensely.