A Wuthering Heights for the 21st century

Englizy Journal reviews, or comments on, Myths of Power: A Marxist Study of the Brontës by Terry Eagleton as far as Wuthering Heights is concerned.

1. Contradictions in Wuthering Heights:Wuthering Heights deals with the terms “Romance and Reality” with an “astonishing unity”. A single incident can reflect a dramatic or farcical tone exactly like Catherine’s mixture between “Passionate and Pettish”. The kind of realism presented in Wuthering Heights is tragic in the sense that passion and society have no reconciliation, and the contradiction between them is “ineradicable”. However, this tragic opposition produces this superior work and presents the “shattering passions” along with the “realist control” more obviously. (Walaa Khorshed)

Author Linda Gillard comments on Transita Author's Blog on how it feels to have her book, A Lifetime Burning, reviewed and somehow compared to the works of the Brontës. She's thrilled, of course.

The reviewer Daisy Mackenzie [from Northwords Now] wrote, [...] The emotional power in these novels makes this reviewer reflect on how Charlotte and Emily Bronte might have written if they were living and writing now."Now not even my Mum would think my work merited being mentioned in the same breath as Charlotte's or Emily's, but I was pleased Ms Mackenzie realised that in A LIFETIME BURNING I was trying to write a WUTHERING HEIGHTS for the 21st century. I may not have succeeded, but my goodness, I had some fun in the attempt. The undertaking only increased my huge admiration for Emily Bronte, her technical brilliance and the way she negotiated a moral maze.

We recently talked about a review by Justin Tadlock on Wuthering Heights. He has now written to say that he has created a new website where he will post reviews and such things: Books in Bed. His review of Wuthering Heights has been honoured as being the first review on the new site.

Categories: Books, Brontëites, Scholar, Websites, Wuthering Heights