#She often gets painted as if she were romanticising Cathy and Heathcliff's relationship for some bizarre reason

[the-busy-ghost]

You know I used to beat myself up a bit for not reading/studying enough, and especially for wasting time during my teenage years because I stopped reading/trying and now have to catch up when it no longer matters or can do any good. 

But I’m slowly realising of late that there are a lot of books I’m glad I never read before I was ready to seek them out myself. Currently reading “Wuthering Heights” and I am so so glad I didn’t read that book in high school- I would have wildly misinterpreted the premise (even if I liked it), and that would have been a great disservice to the author and the book itself. Now I can really try to understand it on a different level and I think I will only grow to appreciate it more in time.

#Also- I'm not quite finished it so I might be wrong in this but don't think so- having read it myself #I feel like social media and popular culture (or at least the opinions I have heard personally) do a real disservice to Emily Bronte #She often gets painted as if she were romanticising Cathy and Heathcliff's relationship for some bizarre reason #The narrator may be an unreliable one but the whole tone of the book shows that there are sooo many problems with their relationship #I won't say Emily Bronte CONDEMNS the relationship- I doubt she would do anything so stuffy and Victorian #But she's very clear about showing us how toxic their relationship was (and Heathcliff's character in particular) #But also how it stems from longstanding childhood abuse and neglect as well as issues of class and gender #And how nobody in the book no matter how nice can really claim to be exempt from blame on some level #As they all participate in a society that treats children as property and turns a blind eye to abuse #Or at the very least washes its hands saying 'well it's sad but that's the law and it's really the parent/master's problem' #And that abuse and neglect turns Heathcliff into a genuinely abysmal and horrifying person #Cathy's not in the same league but she's still a rather unpleasant person in the grand scheme of things #That being said! They are both sympathetic in different ways even as adults #They have some good qualities even under all that horror and Cathy in the end really does cut a pitiful figure #Let her breathe in the open air #Also like I think Bronte gives us a good idea of how things wouldn't necessarily be solved if Heathcliff and Cathy had stayed together #The effects of their childhood traumas have shaped them #Heathcliff sees anyone who isn't absolutely for him as being against him and would expect Cathy not just to be loyal but utterly partisan #Cathy must have her way and I don't think she would take kindly to Heathcliff disagreeing with her idea of what was best for them #Maybe I've just been reading the wrong media but because of its popular image I went into this book expecting to have to struggle through #some bizarre romanticisation of a toxic relationship where the reader is expected to totally fall in love with Heathcliff and excuse him #Or where Cathy is some kind of author's self-insert or the twentieth-century stereotype of how All Women Are Repressed And Only Want Sex #How lucky I am that a) that's really really not the case and b) that I am reading it at an age where I won't misinterpret it #Or allow my own judgement of the book and its merits to be clouded by some English teacher's Accepted Intepretation of Literature #Not that other people's interpretations haven't been absolutely fascinating and helpful #The pop culture view I was given was definitely based on only one particular type of interpretation of the novel #Also why do so many film/tv adaptations of the book seem to leave out the second bit of the story with the children etc? #I didn't even know that it isn't set in the Victorian era but the late eighteenth century! (Even if Victorian mores are important) #And god I love an old Yorkshire farmhouse with a cavernous kitchen and a date on the door lintel and a strange family history #reading log