Problematic, toxic books

Wuthering Heights is one of '5 books to add to your TBR list this fall' according to Deseret News.

‘Wuthering Heights’

Author: Emily Brontë.

Publication date: 1847.

“Wuthering Heights” is a Gothic novel set in Yorkshire, England. The story is told by Mr. Lockwood, who is describing his interactions with the housekeeper, Nelly.

Their conversations revolve around the doomed love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, the vibrant daughter of the Wuthering Heights estate. Catherine marries a different man, and Heathcliff is consumed by jealousy and revenge.

Brontë explores obsession, vengeance and the impact of destructive love.

Notable quotation:

“I have not broken your heart — you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.” (Eva Terry)

Tor features Mari Ness’s The Girl and the House.

Ness points out that the mid-20th-century Gothic romancers “drew pretty heavily on Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.” She’d like to think, though, that Jane eventually “conked Rochester hard over the head, and headed off to explore the world,” certainly a diversion from Gothic traditions. One midcentury novel plays brilliantly with those traditions, to literally divert into tragedy at its close. Or does it? That’s Shirley Jackson’s Haunting of Hill House. (Anne M. Pillsworth and Ruthanna Emrys)

A contributor to Scottish Daily Express tackles so-called problematic books.

The University of Cambridge has asked lecturers to flag up books that might be deemed “problematic” or “offensive”: what on earth is going on in the place? When I was there a couple of decades back, lecturers provoked thought and encouraged debate; now they just seem intent on shutting debate down and raising a generation of ignoramuses.

And what on God’s Earth does “problematic” mean anyway? I googled and came up with a list, which includes Heart Of Darkness, which certainly doesn’t fit today’s standards of political correctness, both in its attitude to what is now the Congo and its frequent use of the n-word (which I find as offensive as everyone else), but which also happens to be one of the best books about Africa I have ever read

Jane Eyre is also up there in the problematic pile, which is rather more mysterious, but apparently is to do with its treatment of Bertha, aka the mad woman in the attic, and so is To Kill A Mockingbird. When I was growing up in the States, it was considered to be a powerful diatribe against the evils of racism, but now gets it in the neck for coming at the story solely from a white viewpoint. (Virginia Blackburn)

DMT reviews Netflix's Burning Betrayal.

Coming to the character of Marco Ladeia, did we have to see him in the light of Mr. Rochester (Jane Eyre)? We are not contesting the tired trope of the woman saving the man from his emotional troubles, but this was not even a problem that demanded too much from Babi. Where is the expected toxicity because, in the absence of that, what was Marco bringing to the table other than how he looked? (Divya Malladi)

Gacetín Madrid (Spain) mentions Emily Brontë's most autumnal poem while ABC (Spain) quotes from Elizabeth Hardwick's description of the Brontës.

My travels with the Brontës has a post on Arthur Bell Nicholls at Lichfield Cathedral and Ripon Cathedral.