Heathcliff, and bastids like him...

Do you love him or are you fascinated by him?

I love, love, love, WH. First read it when I was fifteen, cried, didn't fully understand it though. Read it again ten years later and it blew me away even more.

It fucking PWNs that piece of crap Jane Eyre.

He's petty, devious, obsessive, bitter, controlling...the ultimate bad boy tamed by what is definitely not love for Cathy.

People call WH a love story. Jesus. It's anything but. He digs up her body to look at her corpse, for Chrissakes. If that's anyone's idea of love there's something wrong with them.

WH has been misrepresented. People think if it's a love story, then Heathcliff is a hero. He's not. He's a complete shit. An anti-hero. And endlessly fascinating.

George Macdonald Fraser made an entire career, virtually, out of a complete shite of a hero, in his long Flashman series, based on the insufferable boarding-school bully from Tom Brown's School Days. Who's more interesting to watch on the screen, Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader?

caw

Heathcliff hates weakness. I think that's what's so intriguing about him. He has such a rough time and yet has no self pity and won't tolerate it in anybody else. I guess others who have been through hard times can admire him in a way for that.

Scarletpeaches--what does PWNs means?

P.S. Jane Eyre is the best book ever written.

PWNs = another way of saying OWNs.

And Jane Eyre relies on coincidence as a plot-device, which is, as I've said a thousand times before and will a thousand times again, a piss-poor way of developing a plot. So she falls asleep under a hedge on the other side of the country and is rescued by a man who just happens to be her cousin, then hears voices just when it's time to go back to Mr Rochester, who, by the way, can only love her properly now he's blind. What sort of message does that send? Hey, looks don't matter but it's better if your husband can't see you if you're ugly and oh, by the way, men who commit bigamy are COOL.

KTC said:

Oh god! A love story. Farthest thing from it. He's the ULTIMATE anti-hero. It's fun to like characters like that in fiction---just not in real life. I wonder how to make a character like that without making readers cringe. It's just so wonderfully represented in WH.

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Exactly! I loathe the way this book is often presented. I had a conversation a couple years ago with a girl on msn and we're both big Wuthering Heights fans. She mentioned something about me liking bad boys and I told her I disliked Heathcliff. She said, "What? but then, how did you like that book?"

I took me a long time to answer that question...

I hate the way Hollywood wants to portray him as a tortured lover. He wasn't that and I feel it weakens the book. It's a much better book IMO if you don't read it as a love story.

KTC said:

Oh god! A love story. Farthest thing from it. He's the ULTIMATE anti-hero. It's fun to like characters like that in fiction---just not in real life. I wonder how to make a character like that without making readers cringe. It's just so wonderfully represented in WH.


I'm on a just-read-it high. (-;

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Don't try to imitate. Just absorb. Your writing is the sum total of your life experience and everything you've ever read.

I want to write one so badly, too!!

Have y'all ever read Dangerous Liasons? If not, you must. That is the most cruel, fascinating group of characters I've read in a looong time.

scarletpeaches said:

Mr Rochester, who, by the way, can only love her properly now he's blind. What sort of message does that send? Hey, looks don't matter but it's better if your husband can't see you if you're ugly

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Whaaaatt? That is not in Jane Eyre. Mr Rochester pines for her and begs her to stay. Hell, he does everything short of locking her in to keep her. And he openly says in an early conversation that he does not mind her plainness.

Also, Jane Eyre does not rely on coincidence as a plot device. It's the story of a young girl who goes out and finds work as a governess and falls in love with her master. The entire plot of the book has nothing to do with coincidence. There is a coincidence (finding the cousins,) but it's at the end of the book and the plot does not rely on it. It would be pretty much the same book if those had not been her cousins.

I'm of the same mind about Jane Eyre that I am of Wuthering Heights--a better book if you read it as a story that is not romance-centered.

I think Rochester's a bigger bastid to be honest. What a completely unlikeable character.

At least with Heathcliff there's an honesty to his bastidhood. He makes no secret of it to Isabella. Rochester lies, lies, lies all the way through his relationship with Jane and dishonesty is the one thing I can never forgive. Heathcliff's a complete shit but you can understand why. Rochester's a shit and he gets away with it for much of the book. Sure, he loses his eyesight but he gets the girl, the devoted, holier-than-thou nursemaid who comes back to him for no earthly reason other than she hears voices in her head. They're both as fucking barking as each other.

HelloKiddo said:

Whaaaatt? That is not in Jane Eyre. Mr Rochester pines for her and begs her to stay. Hell, he does everything short of locking her in to keep her. And he openly says in an early conversation that he does not mind her plainness.

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Well that's big of him, seeing as he's a potential bigamist.

HelloKiddo said:

Also, Jane Eyre does not rely on coincidence as a plot device.

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Um, yes it does. St John is there to provide conflict with the "I love Rochester" nonsense. How does he arrive in the story? By coincidence.

HelloKiddo said:

It's the story of a young girl who goes out and finds work as a governess and falls in love with her master. The entire plot of the book has nothing to do with coincidence.

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Yes. It really, really does.

HelloKiddo said:

There is a coincidence (finding the cousins,) but it's at the end of the book and the plot does not rely on it. It would be pretty much the same book if those had not been her cousins.

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God, I wish. I wish, I wish, I wish.

HelloKiddo said:

I'm of the same mind about Jane Eyre that I am of Wuthering Heights--a better book if you read it as a story that is not romance-centered.

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Yeah, on that we can agree. I'd still happily burn every copy of Jane Eyre on the planet though. I hate it that much. I hate it with a passion unmatched since the dawn of time. If Rochester were real, I'd pay good money to rip his balls off and make him eat them. And poke his malfunctioning eyeballs out of his bigamous, fat head.

Heathcliff married a confused young girl and then beat her up all the time. He says at some point in the book that he dreams up new ways of torturing her until he becomes bored with the task. And he tortures little animals. He's not a completely honest character either. He misleads little Hareton Earnshaw about his father, all in the name of getting even.

Mr. Rochester cares for his deranged wife. In fact, he saves her--she would have been locked away in a nut bin, which was not a pretty place in England in the 1800s. The story about the madwoman in the attic is actually based on the story of a real family CB knew of.

Honesty in a character must be very important to you then.

A book not having plot holes you could drive a bus through is important to me.

Don't talk to me of Jane Eyre - DO NOT!!!

*gibbers in corner and clutches copy of WH, sobbing quietly*

scarletpeaches said:

I'd still happily burn every copy of Jane Eyre on the planet though. I hate it that much. I hate it with a passion unmatched since the dawn of time. If Rochester were real, I'd pay good money to rip his balls off and make him eat them. And poke his malfunctioning eyeballs out of his bigamous, fat head.

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HA! HAHAHAHAHA! HA!

Three of my favorite books all in one thread. Brilliant characters. Brilliant!

Yeah, even Jane Eyre, Scarlet.

I read Wuthering Heights when I was around 12 years old, but couldn't really remember much of it so have always gone by the films. I've seen it many times with different actors and actresses in it, I liked the one with Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche the best.
I personally do see this as a love story, a very bitter and twisted love, I can understand that kind of love because I used to live with someone similar. yes, i know most people wouldn't see it as a love story, as I had a huge row with an Australian writer friend of mine over it one day, but until you've encountered that kind of person you'll never understand them as loving you.

I haven't read Dangerous Liasons either, but I do love the film of it, more very twisted characters and their own strange version of love.

The film was wonderful, too. Malcovitch was amazing.

Never, never, never rely on films to tell you about WH. I've never seen one that was true to the book.

I promise to make it the next book I read, okay, then I'll come back and give my opinion about the 'real' story. I do know that films are never the same as books.

scarletpeaches said:

Never, never, never rely on films to tell you about WH. I've never seen one that was true to the book.

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The first Wuthering Heights I saw was the Lawrence Olivier/Merle Oberon black and white version. It was absolutely fantastic, but not a patch on the book.

Definitely, and Glenn Close, what a bitch!

backslashbaby said:

The film was wonderful, too. Malcovitch was amazing.

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I'll probably get lynched for saying this but what the hey, I've already ripped into Jane Eyre.

I cannot STAND Olivier's Heathcliff. There was more ham in that performance than a pig farm. The guy was useless in front of a camera. He was made for stage, not cinema.

Gah.

Okay. I'll take a beta-blocker and take a few deep breaths. Promise.

Pretty much the absolute height of social bitchiness, yeah... Glenn nailed it! Oooo, I'll have to rent that again soon.