Heathcliff - why were ( & probably still are ) so many women in love with him?

grumppa

I agree about Villette, MayBee70. As for WH, I am 100% with MOnica.

Thank you!

I agree about Villette, MayBee70. As for WH, I am 100% with MOnica.

I agree with lots of comments here, what seems attractive to a young teenager is not what we want as adults. I think depending on our age, we may each have our own image of Heathcliffe. Mine is Ian McShane from the TV series in the mid 1960s. It was quite scary at times. I was babysitting at a remote farm on a 'wuthering' kind of night. I was watching the series and it was getting very tense when there was a terrible screeching noise just outside the window of the room I was in. In great terror I moved the curtain and looked out. There was just enough moonlight to see a load of pigs just outside.

M0nica

hollysteers

M0nica

Iam64

Monica - ‘silly’ is a withering assessment of the wuthering story. I enjoyed it, thank you

I am sure I have read and enjoyed books you would consider silly. I do not retract that adjective.

“Silly” is a very strange summation of an acknowledged masterpiece of English literature, even if it is not to your taste.
It has a complicated plot, dramatic storyline and written by a twenty seven year old living reclusively.
Would a silly book engender so much academic interest and many dramatisations?
I think not.

I see Wuthering Heights as a 'cult' book. the Emperor's new clothes of fiction. So many people who consider themselves intellectual and deep and like to think they lead culture decide to take up a book aand then othes follow because they are afraid that if they say the book is ridiculous people will laugh at them. the Emperors new clothes comparison. Then the book takes on a life of its own and everyne just thinks its great because everyone thinks it great.

It isn't. It is a silly book about unreal people posturing and posing. Give me Anne Bronte's books any day, just as dramatic and based on reality.

Monica you say ‘as I see it’ which is fair enough as that’s your own opinion of the book.
I don’t recognise the Emperors new clothes of fiction as why would anyone think it was an intellectual or deep novel?
It’s an emotional and dramatic story with a ghostly element to it set on the bleak Yorkshire Moors.It’s unusual as well that the ‘heroine’ of the story is a nasty piece and so is the ‘hero’.
Each character feels well rounded and you can connect to them.
All the Bronte sisters were very good writers.

SueDonim

This thread has reminded me that I recently found a video of a song that Jim Steinman wrote, which was based one of his favourite books - Wuthering Heights. He said of it

This song is an erotic motorcycle. It's like Heathcliff digging up Cathy's corpse and dancing with it in the cold moonlight. You can't get more extreme, operatic or passionate than that. I was trying to write a song about dead things coming to life. I was trying to write a song about being enslaved and obsessed by love, not just enchanted and happy with it. It was about the dark side of love and about the extraordinary ability to be resurrected by it once dead. It's about obsession, and that can be scary because you're not in control and you don't know where it's going to stop. It says that, at any point in somebody's life, when they loved somebody strongly enough and that person returns, a certain touch, a certain physical gesture can turn them from being defiant and disgusted with this person to being subservient again. And it's not just a pleasurable feeling that comes back, it's the complete terror and loss of control that comes back. And I think that's ultimately a great weapon.

I’m not sure about the motorbike bit, mind! In the accompanying video there are brief glimpses of a character who is either Heathcliff, taken from the film with Lawrence Olivier, or a modern reenactment. I was mesmerised by it, I must admit! It’s decades since I read the book, though.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=By82Udvc53w

One of my favourite Jim Steinman songs - although love anything he wrote!

He always struck me that he would need a good wash😄😄.

My paternal ancestors came from Haworth. All worsted weavers. Extraordinarily hard life. I guess some would have known the Brontes. They are all buried in the very overcrowded church cemetery. Whole families from tiny children upwards.

hollysteers

M0nica

Iam64

Monica - ‘silly’ is a withering assessment of the wuthering story. I enjoyed it, thank you

I am sure I have read and enjoyed books you would consider silly. I do not retract that adjective.

“Silly” is a very strange summation of an acknowledged masterpiece of English literature, even if it is not to your taste.
It has a complicated plot, dramatic storyline and written by a twenty seven year old living reclusively.
Would a silly book engender so much academic interest and many dramatisations?
I think not.

I see Wuthering Heights as a 'cult' book. the Emperor's new clothes of fiction. So many people who consider themselves intellectual and deep and like to think they lead culture decide to take up a book aand then othes follow because they are afraid that if they say the book is ridiculous people will laugh at them. the Emperors new clothes comparison. Then the book takes on a life of its own and everyne just thinks its great because everyone thinks it great.

It isn't. It is a silly book about unreal people posturing and posing. Give me Anne Bronte's books any day, just as dramatic and based on reality.

M0nica

Iam64

Monica - ‘silly’ is a withering assessment of the wuthering story. I enjoyed it, thank you

I am sure I have read and enjoyed books you would consider silly. I do not retract that adjective.

Oh dear MOnica, I typed in haste and gave the wrong impression, I’d meant to say how much I enjoyed your use of ‘silly’ to describe what has long been seen as a masterpiece.
Not, how much I enjoyed Wuthering Heights.

Even before my training and work introduced me to domestic abuse, I recognised it when I saw it.

Kandinsky

Dee1012

I think you’ve nailed it.
Plus Heathcliff is always played by very good looking actors.

Oh I loved Timothy Dalton playing the Dark, brooding Heathcliff. My hormones must have been raging back in the day, ha. I have just watched him in 1883, playing a sexual deviant, put me right off him.

M0nica

Iam64

Monica - ‘silly’ is a withering assessment of the wuthering story. I enjoyed it, thank you

I am sure I have read and enjoyed books you would consider silly. I do not retract that adjective.

“Silly” is a very strange summation of an acknowledged masterpiece of English literature, even if it is not to your taste.
It has a complicated plot, dramatic storyline and written by a twenty seven year old living reclusively.
Would a silly book engender so much academic interest and many dramatisations?
I think not.

Iam64

Monica - ‘silly’ is a withering assessment of the wuthering story. I enjoyed it, thank you

I am sure I have read and enjoyed books you would consider silly. I do not retract that adjective.

Wuthering Heights is a masterpiece. I always felt so sorry for Heathcliff, but thought Cathy was a disturbed and totally selfish character.
I never found him attractive in any way.

Monica - ‘silly’ is a withering assessment of the wuthering story. I enjoyed it, thank you

eazybee

^My youngest dd can’t abide WH.^

Tell her to read it in 30 years time!
It works in reverse as well; I cannot read any Louisa M Alcott now.

Still cannot abide the book, neither can DD. We are aged 82 and 52. In fact the older I get the sillier I think it.

grumppa

Give me Anne's books any day, in preference to Charlotte's as well.

It’s a long time since I read it but I remember rather liking Villette.

👍 Eazybee. My book group read Jane Eyre a few years ago. It seemed to be a totally different book from the one we all read as teenagers!

Give me Anne's books any day, in preference to Charlotte's as well.

My youngest dd can’t abide WH.

Tell her to read it in 30 years time!
It works in reverse as well; I cannot read any Louisa M Alcott now.

Thank you for all your thoughts regarding Emily’s ‘research’ that allowed her to write the book. It’s given me food for thought. My youngest dd can’t abide WH. Bizarrely, she now lives not that far from Haworth.

The Brontes were an intelligent, well-educated family with the run of an extensive library and the time to employ their vivid imaginations. I think some of their characters, particularly Heathcliff and Cathy, Mr. Rochester and Arthur Huntingdon, owe much to Greek and Roman myths and legends, displaying the self-centred entitlement of the gods and a complete lack of concern for others.

I think her sister, Anne's experiences as a governess would have also fed into Emily's fevered imagination and sexual desires that had no outlet.

I much prefer Anen Bronte's books. Matter of fact books based on her experience as a working governance. No less shocking nevertheless. But Agnes Grey based n the life of a governess is the more horrific than Emily's silly book because she is writing in fictional form of what was happening in everyday wealthy families. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is more melodramatic, but again the reality of what she is writing about sheds daylight on what life in some households were like behind all the glamourous tv representations of life in the mid 19th century.

I hated Wuthering Heights (the book, not the song). I thought it was dreary and depressing.

I couldn't see the attraction of Heathcliffe at all.

Back to the OP I don’t understand why any woman could be attracted to Heathcliffe.

Emily wrote this as 27, Anne wrote the Tennant of Wildfell Hall, another dark, gripping tale of the victim of domestic abuse who gets away
I suspect the Brontë sisters learned about domestic abuse of women by often drunken men by living in the vicarage. I read Wuthering Heights was in part based on the experience of a vicar’s wife who sought help from Mr Brontë because of violence and abuse from her drunken husbsnd, another vicar
I bet the Brontë sisters heard reality when they visited parishioners and listened to other women

SueDonim

I wonder how Emily Brontë was able to write it, given her sheltered life in such a remote place. Did she hear of such a character in the area? Was her brother the catalyst, given his proclivities? I guess I could ask AI but I’m more interested in what GNetters think!

The father Patrick educated the children and they were extremely well read. He had published books himself so they inherited the gift. It was the vogue to read ‘gothic’ novels and WH to a large extent carried on this theme.
Apart from that she was a genius!