Wuthering heights - new versions

Well, you would be banning many books that don’t meet today’s standards, not just WH.

If you are old enough to read and appreciate Wuthering Heights, then I would suggest you are old enough to form your own opinion. I was a prolific reader of adult books when I was young. I read it about the age of twelve and could recognise that Heathcliff was a product of his upbringing but that didn't make him likeable. I disliked the characters in it and didn't enjoy it even then

I hated it as a teenager but have read it three times since in various groups and appreciate it (the writing and plot far more.
Heathcliff was a psychopath, but Cathy was equally controlling; callous, spiteful and jealous.
A horrid warning.

Is this today’s Lang/Lt assignment? Filmakers return to WH for its dramatic appeal, windswept moors, isolation, be that geographical, emotional, social, educational, (well exploited by Dickens) some nudging as gently as they dare against the implied incest inherent in the tale.
I don’t believe we teach our girls to accept boorish manners and behaviour any more than we would expect our sons to hang kittens from the back of a chair.
WH is disturbing, but then so was East Lynne

But we still tell girls that when a boy is mean to you, he like you!

Why would anyone ever think that if they read about some glamourised villain in a book it might teach them to fall for one.

if someone's reading skills and intelligence are up to reading Wuthering Heights their intelligence is up to realising that it is fiction.

Perssonally, I disliked the book intensely when I read it. I thought the characters defied belief in their silliness and their actions went well past the boundary of stupidity.

I have never liked books that feature stupid women (that includes Madam Bovary among others)

I would never ever stop anyone reading them. They have literary merit and are works of fiction not fact.

Well said, M0nica! You can appreciate the literary merits of a book without necessarily having to like the characters, surely? WH wasn't my cup of tea either - but I'd never suggest anyone shouldn't read it and form their own opinions.

Who do you mean by ‘we’ Cabsnan ?I certainly don’t and never have.
Are we to restrict the reading of Shakespeare? Macbeth for one is not a character we would encourage youngsters to emulate, nor Lady Macbeth either.

Cambsnan

But we still tell girls that when a boy is mean to you, he like you!

O good grief

But television and film is full of stories about violence, misogyny etc portrayed much more graphically than anything in Wuthering Heights.

So much so that I find it difficult to find anything I want to watch.

Is this new version full of graphic violence?

also… it is the baddies we remember! (rather than any soft, wishy washy, good ‘hero/ine’ ) - now need examples -
Alan Rickman’s Sheriff of Nottingham ha ha

unless they are a piteous creature, as poor Ginger

What we need to do is to get in place a 'it is of its time and these views are reflected which are no longer tolerated today'. This should be done in schools, colleges, places of learning and publishing houses. If we dumb everything down to make it palatable to the work brigade nothing will be learnt from the past and possibly history repeated. History needs to be examined in its context: The past is another country in which they did things differently.

I admit it’s some years since I last read the book. I have read it three times I think, the first when I was about 12 and had no idea what was going on and got very muddled with the plot.

My recollection is that it is a book that deals with anger, betrayal, spite, misogyny, violence, obsession, desire and the destruction of lives through people deeply damaged by their experiences.

A dark book like, as I said, much drama today. I don’t think it at any point romanticises any of their actions and their consequences. It’s Hollywood that’s done that and what most people think Wuthering Heights to be now - without having read the book.

It is as much a book for today as any written today, because essentially the dark side of human nature does not change.

Good post Lathyrus.

We’ll just read nicey nicey pap shall we?

Cambsnan

But we still tell girls that when a boy is mean to you, he like you!

When were girls ever told that? No one ever said it to me nor was it ever said in conversation among friends when I was a teenager and early 20s.

In fact I had never heard the phrase until I read it on GN today.

I have not led a very sheltered life, so I am not particularly protected from these things.

I still hear mums say that in the playground at pick up time!

Pleasebenice

I still hear mums say that in the playground at pick up time!

Good grief! No wonder there is so much domestic abuse around. Women passing messages like that among themselves are colluding in their own abuse.

I can't pass this thread by without commenting. I feel so cross that anyone should suggest that some of our most classic literature should be abandoned because our girls may not be able to appreciate it for what the author intended. Emily Bronte was a strong and powerful woman of her time who wrote about the danger of jealousy and misused power. In my view a masterpiece of gothic literature.

Banning books because they don't fit in with today's ideas is pointless. I read a lot about Henry VIII but banning books about a dreadful tyrant won't change things. Surely the idea of a book is to inform, entertain and learn, do we really think that today's youngsters cannot understand, compare and come to their own conclusions as to whether the behaviour written about is accepatable today.

I've never managed to get to the end of Wuthering Heights - I've abandoned it three times. I disliked the book, the hero and the heroine - I always ended up thinking I'd like to give her a good slap and tell her to get a grip (no, I don't go round slapping people, before anyone asks).

I love some other Brontë novels, but could never get on with Wuthering Heights.

Violence and sex ...

So do we ban everything that doesn't fit today's standards? That would mean there'd very little left.

Rather than hiding history which then nobody learns from, we should be learning and teaching all of it the ugly, the grotesque, the beautiful... All of it.