Wuthering Hearts Blog Tour: Why I Love the Brontës

The new YA novel by the author of Jane Airhead is also based on another Brontë book:

Wuthering Hearts
Kay Woodward
Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Andersen (7 July 2011)
ISBN-10: 1849392994
ISBN-13: 978-1849392990

Passion, the Yorkshire moors, a wild and handsome stranger . . . sound familiar?
When Robert arrives in town with his dark good looks and mysterious background, Emily has a huge crush! It’s almost enough to take her mind off this year’s school play . . . miserable, wailing Wuthering Heights.
But Robert is no prince, with his black moods and fierce temper. The beautiful untamed moors would be the perfect backdrop to their fiery romance, if only Emily could work it out.

On stage or off stage, will Emily ever be the Cathy to his Heathcliff?

The Wuthering Hearts Blog Tour arrives to BrontëBlog after two stops on Chicklist and Daisy Chain Books and just  before visiting Mostly Reading YA (check the rest of the tour clicking on the right hand picture). Kay Woodward shares with us why she loves the Brontës:

Why I love the Brontës

Why do I love the Brontës? How long have you got?

First of all, I love their books, especially those by Charlotte and Emily Brontë. Jane Eyre is my favourite book of all time and Wuthering Heights is a close second. I actually wanted to be Jane Eyre when I was younger. (I still hanker after a windowseat, though I’m never going to be painting any rooms red, no matter how many times I hear that it’s a terrific colour for a dining room.) Catherine Earnshaw was harder to get my head around. I could never have been as naughty as her, though it didn’t stop me gasping at her sheer nerve.

But it’s not just what they wrote. I’ve always been fascinated by their whole lives. How did they manage to pack so much in to so few years? How did the daughters of a curate, who spent most of their time squirrelled away in a parsonage in a remote Yorkshire town in the middle of a moor, write such fabulously passionate and original books? I’m in total awe.

Then there’s the whole business of their pseudonyms. I’m appalled that, in the 1840s, which isn’t that long ago, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë felt that they had to publish their books under Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell so that no one knew they were women. That is so sad. On the other hand, the names that they came up with are great.

Which brings me back to their books.

I love that Brontë heroines don’t go for demure walks around the library and that they run across moors and shout and scream instead. I love that they don’t pine wordlessly after the men they love and that they give it to them straight. I think that’s fabulous.

And then there are the men. How on earth did Charlotte and Emily come up with both Rochester and Heathcliff? Two of the best male leads in the whole of English literature were created in the same house. Seriously, what are the chances of that happening?

I just love the Brontës. I can’t imagine a world without them.

Categories: Books, Wuthering Heights