I gave myself eye-strain when reading Wuthering Heights in two days. When I’d finished, I set aside my kindle with … complicated emotions.
I suppose it’s widely known that it is not a romance, but I hadn’t expected it, you know? There’s dog strangling, so. much. violence, hatred of babies (babies really suffer in this novel, you know? They’re born and the characters are like WELL I HATE *THAT*), and just … so much muchness. All the main characters are reprehensible and I’m blaming the setting. It’s the moors. I feel like if this was set in the city it would be an entirely different story.
Cathy would have more of a social life than the blond siblings (I feel like they were blond. I don’t want to consult the book again to check. You cannot make me) and Heathcliff would absolutely thrive as a Peaky Blinders enforcer. Yes, I know history mmkay?
I am not overly fond of moors. As a concept. As a spiritual concept. I object to them. I cannot tell you why. (This could change at some point. I might be declaring my love for them after all. BUT FOR NOW … they are not on my top twenty three list. That’s a scathing indictment, let me tell you).
But I digress, after I put the book down I thought: gasp, Twilight. (Bella loves Wuthering Heights. I know this because I’ve now read Twilight.)
The thing about Twilight is … it’s not a romance either. It’s a dark horror about a teenage girl succumbing to a vampire’s thrall & erasing all personality and personhood whilst complaining about the local area’s excessive rainfall. Sorry, let me expand upon something: she succumbs to a vampire who is also a living statue.
Somehow it makes it worse. Meyer really wants me to believe that Edward, a statue, is the bee’s literal stone knees. I feel insulted.
(When two vampires body slam mid-air during a baseball game it sounds like ‘two boulders colliding’ and I enjoyed this description very much.)
Honestly it reminded me of that one book where a woman falls in love with a literal statue and kisses it and it turns out it wasn’t a statue all along it was a cursed! handsome! knight! except that it’s nothing like that, and the statue (*cough* Edward *cough*) doesn’t become a real boy ever. Because, let’s not forget, his heart literally does not beat.
It’s not that I object to statues, mind you – I’m sure there’s some gargoyle romance out there that’s exceptionally well-written and moving etc etc etc, it’s simply that Meyer tells us Edward is The Most Romantic Thing Ever OMG but shows us quite the opposite. He is a predator and not in a good way. If there ever is a good way.
I’m telling you; if you read Twilight as though it’s a horror novel it changes everything. It’s utterly hopeless. Poor Charlie is ill-equipped to save his daughter from a monster who’s repeating high school so … *consults memory* … the townsfolk won’t think it’s strange that the vampires don’t age?
Sure sure sure.
Suresuresure.
Though the books are set centuries apart and a world away, the parallels of Heathcliff/Cathy and Bella/Edward (which the internet tells me get more referenced in Eclipse) cannot be avoided. As much as you’d like to avoid all four of them.
Both are supremely toxic and I shan’t hesitate to say: anti-romantic. Horrific in many ways. Whilst Wuthering Heights displays the ugliness of obsession for all to see, Twilight conceals it, rebranding it as ‘love’ and expecting the reader to read on with a thudding, trembling, fluttering heart.
Reader, puh-lease.
(I’m not certain that I can read further into the Twilight series.)
(Though I’m tempted to watch the new Wuthering Heights movie. But not in the cinema. My eyeballs need the mercy of a skip button, I survived Saltburn okay? I have no trust in the director. She scares me.)
of words & books 