Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte

After reading Jane Eyre & Wuthering Heights back-to-back, we compared the two. 

I liked WH more than JE, because WH kept my attention (with JE, I was driven to skip over many parts out of tedium).  "L" preferred Jane Eyre to WH because she liked JE's storyline better. She said WH lost her in the second half. While I agree that JE's storyline has more bite, WH kept me turning pages. However, I kept waiting for a ghost story, and instead, got more and more meanness from Heathcliff. 

Emily Bronte chooses names in this book that are so close they confuse the reader. Such as Hareton and Hinton and Hindley. Throughout the book, there are very few characters. And there are only two settings in which they dwell - at WH, home of the Earnshaws, and at Thushcross Grange, where the Hinton family lives. 

Main plot: The elder Earnshaw, the dad, brings home (to WH) an orphan from his travels. The orphan is called Heathcliff. Mr. Earnshaw's 2 kids, Catherine and Hindley, are close to the age of Heathcliff. Hindley dislikes him; but Catherine and Heathcliff grow close. Eventually, Catherine Earnshaw befriends the Hinton family, which are their closest neighbors. The tangling of these two families plays out in the rest of the book. 

What got really tiresome (besides getting lost due to the similarity in the character names) was Heathcliff's cruelty. He never found joy beyond Catherine, and he made it his mission to make everyone around him as miserable as he was. 

Still, I think reading the book is worthy. Bronte wrote WH in 1847, and well-written novels by women are few from the 1800s. The view of women's lives in this period is both interesting and puzzling. I think Bronte questioned the idea that women "should" get married. SPOILER AHEAD -- SPOILER AHEAD -- TURN BACK NOW -- Catherine marries to "improve her station" (she marries Edgar Linton) and ends up dying from sadness over Heathcliff.  Isabel Hinton marries for pure passion and ends up miserable. So, what was a woman to do in that time period?

Neither of the Bronte sisters ever married. Emily died at age 30, Charlotte at 38.  TB and unsanitary water took a lot of lives in the 1800s (as well as early 1900s).