[ SECRET POST #2342 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2342 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 066 secrets from Secret Submission Post #335.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[amanuensis1]

-Narrator I don't care about
-Distant peripheral observation structure to the prose
-Main female character's motives still not comprehensible to me
-"Is this two books or one?" story structure

= me never comprehending the popularity of this book

[(Anonymous)]

YES, THANK YOU. I have no idea how people could question that it's badly written. Even if you like the book, that's got nothing to do with the fact that the structure is just terrible and the characters don't act like human beings who live on planet Earth.

[amanuensis1]

I definitely haven't had the life experiences that would let me identify with any of the main characters, I'll admit.

[(Anonymous)]

-Narrator I don't care about

Lockwood, you mean? (Could also be Nelly Dean, but I'll assume Lockwood.) I rather thought that was the point of his character. So much of the book is about damaged people being horrible to each other; it would be unbearable if it weren't lightened up a little. Hence, Lockwood, who's horrible in a funny way, and who provides a bit of comic relief without disrupting the overall mood of the book too greatly as a more sympathetic narrator might.

-Distant peripheral observation structure to the prose

I liked this because 1) as noted above, I think Lockwood serves an important purpose in the book, and 2) Nelly Dean is an excellent unreliable narrator, and I love watching Bronte reveal as much through Nelly's misperceptions and half-truths as she does through the narrative. I can see why others find the double framing structure off-putting, though.

-Main female character's motives still not comprehensible to me

As someone who grew up in a disordered and emotionally abusive family (though nowhere near as bad as the Earnshaws, thank God), I thought Cathy's actions and motivations were very accurately drawn. As a child, her need for familial love was twisted by her guardians' abuse, so that she cleaved too tightly to her foster brother, who was 1) as psychologically damaged by their guardians as she was, and 2) who would've been too young to provide her with all the love and support she needed in any case. As an adult, she recognized rationally that her and Heathcliff's too-close relationship was impossible to sustain and she took steps to remove herself from it. Yet she wasn't able to simply shut off the years of bad programming from her childhood, which kept pulling her in one direction even as her conscious desires pulled her in another, and the tension between her conflicting needs led to her breakdown.

-"Is this two books or one?" story structure

I'd say one, definitely. But since one of the book's focuses is the generational abuse cycle, it requires a second set of children to complete the story...and, not so incidentally to my enjoyment of the book, to allow Bronte to show how that cycle of abuse can be broken.

(Or, for a slightly different view, it's ellen_fremedon, I believe, who argues that Wuthering Heights is a saga, and it is very illuminating to compare it to Norse sagas and their series of conflicts and resolutions between feuding families.)

[amanuensis1]

Ooh, I love well-thought-out discussion!

-Lockwood in particular I couldn't bring myself to care about, especially with the further distancing of the main characters by having Nelly Dean tell the story. I couldn't find him someone who "lightened" the mood, I just found him blank.

-I'm actually really fond of Kate Beaton's comedic response of "what does that even mean" to Catherine's "I am Heathcliff"'s pronouncement, because it echoes my bewilderment. I understand Catherine's thought that she would rather marry well and save Heathcliff from poverty, but she's so vehement about the unconventional way she loves Heathcliff and I just don't feel why it's unconventional. It may be that I can't feel the way the family love about her has been twisted because I can't identify with it (which I suppose is a good thing!).

-Oh, I do like what you have to say about breaking the cycle of abuse. I hadn't quite had that feeling of it put into words.

(and I love ellen_fremedon's discussions too!)