Communicator (communicator) wrote,
Communicator
communicator

Wuthering Heights

I'm listening to (the novel) Wuthering Heights on audio at the moment, read by Michael Kitchen. I haven't read it since I was a teenager, and it's absolutely mental. I mean, brilliant, but completely outrageous. I can't believe people talk about Darcy, Rochester and Heathcliff as if they were similar types of hero. Heathcliff threatens to punch his wife in the face. Can you imagine Darcy doing that? He writes fake sexy love letters to a 15 year old girl to make her fall in love with a boy he knows is going to die. He's a total shit.

I kept thinking about Dude Watching with the Bronte Sisters. It's more obvious to me than when I was a kid that Emily B is writing out her fantasy. And that her fantasy is 'fuck the weak'. It would be repulsive coming from one of your Tory boys who are going to take over the country any day now, but from an impoverished nineteenth century spinster, physically weak herself, it is courageous and exhilarating I think. It's exhilarating because she is pushing her own vision so intensely. But it is surprising how extreme her vision is.

The other thing that I'd forgotten is that it's so outrageous that it's often quite funny. It might be Michael Kitchen's dead-pan delivery.
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  • 14 comments

  • Phew what a scorcher

    I see Gove has backed down on climate change and it's back in the curriculum again.

  • GCSE Computer Science

    My book is now for sale

  • LJ Settings

    At the moment I have set up this journal so that only friends can comment. I hate doing this, but I was just getting too much Russian spam.