Britain's favourite love story

Several newspapers echo the results of a poll conducted by UKTV Drama. It seems that Wuthering Heights is considered Britain's favourite love story (although is it really a love story anyway?):

The Guardian:

Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, recounting the doomed affair between sweet Cathy Earnshaw and the brutal outsider Heathcliff, has seen off Shakespeare, Gone With the Wind and everything by Barbara Cartland in a survey which shows the lasting power of classic works.

Almost all the entries in the top 20 choices of 2,000 readers are major works of English literature, with Jane Austen pipping Shakespeare as runner-up and Emily's sister Charlotte coming in fourth with Jane Eyre."It's really heartening to see how these stories, written so long ago, retain the power to captivate 21st century audiences," said Richard Kingsbury, channel head of UKTV Drama, which commissioned the study.

"We find that romantic drama is a very powerful kind of escapism for our viewers, and well-made costume dramas like Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre have an extra dimension to them. Viewers get caught up in the beauty and language of the period."(...)

Brooding was valued and arrogance also had its place, accounting in part for Heathcliff's appeal.

Tears, missed heartbeats and almost-fatal misunderstandings also helped plots to win top ranking, although happy endings - summed up by Jane Eyre's "Reader, I married him" - were considered essential. Forty per cent of women read romantic novels to feel better, 15% for nostalgic reasons and 10% to compensate for their own less highly-coloured love lives. (Martin Wainwright)

1 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë, 1847
2 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen, 1813
3 Romeo and Juliet William Shakespeare, 1597
4 Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë, 1847
5 Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell, 1936

Other news sites that cover this news are The Daily Mail, The Scotsman, u.tv, The Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, Yorkshire Post, Sky News, The Telegraph, Keighley News ...

EDIT: John Sutherland also talks about this on the Guardian book blog under two titles: These books are as romantic as anal rape or Murder, death, assault: what romance is made of? Take your pick, although the content is exactly the same. We agree with him on the following points:

Wuthering Heights and other classic novels are too big - and disturbing - for the chocolate box into which the latest survey tries to shove them. [...]
The trophy goes to Wuthering Heights. Not only that, just eight out of the top 20 are 19th-century titles. A great day for Victorianists.
None the less, Victorianists like myself may quibble. "Love story" is a too simple a formula. It coats these complex narratives with romantic syrup.

Yet we don't fully agree with what follows right after that:

Take the top title and its sister work, Jane Eyre (number four). Heathcliff and Edward Rochester are both, in my book, murderers. The first kills Cathy Earnshaw (he also savagely beats his wife, Isabella, till she runs away to a Victorian battered women's refuge). Mr Rochester, as I read the last chapters, pushes the first Mrs Rochester (infuriating woman) off the top of a burning building in order to marry the next Mrs Rochester. Divorce, Victorian style.

There's no denying what he says about Heathcliff, though Heathcliff-lovers could argue that circumstances had pushed him into that, however little defendable his acts are. As for Rochester - the good things about books is that readers can shape them into what their imaginations suggest. Yet Rochester himself defends himself very clearly.

I was wrong ever to bring you to Thornfield Hall, knowing as I did how it was haunted. I charged them to conceal from you, before I ever saw you, all knowledge of the curse of the place; merely because I feared Adèle never would have a governess to stay if she knew with what inmate she was housed, and my plans would not permit me to remove the maniac elsewhere -- though I possess an old house, Ferndean Manor, even more retired and hidden than this, where I could have lodged her safely enough, had not a scruple about the unhealthiness of the situation, in the heart of a wood, made my conscience recoil from the arrangement. Probably those damp walls would soon have eased me of her charge: but to each villain his own vice; and mine is not a tendency to indirect assassination, even of what I most hate. [Our bold] (Jane Eyre, ch. XXVII)

It's each reader's choice to decide whether he's speaking the truth. At BrontëBlog we believe him.

Categories: In the News, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights