Wuthering Heights...and the other Brontës

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 4:48 pm

A relationship like that can be highly dramatic if it is the entire focus of the story (or the people's lives, if they're real).

But I think that stories and lives can be much more interesting if major relationships are stable enough that the people involved can think about more than each other and how happy or miserable they are together. Tempestuous, dramatic relationships so often seem to be narcissism for two.

Post by **Inanna** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 5:49 pm

And so exhausting! Can you imagine actually being in such a relationship. I simply find Wuthering Heights depressing.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 6:56 pm

Yes, and they tend to strew a lot of wreckage around in the families, friends, and (heaven forbid) children who come into their orbit.

Post by **vison** » Tue Feb 24, 2009 8:16 pm

Lord_M, I, and probably half the women in the English speaking world, have been in love with Mr. Rochester forever.

Post by **Impenitent** » Wed Feb 25, 2009 1:00 am

I am repelled by Rochester. Sorry.

Post by **Túrin Turambar** » Wed Feb 25, 2009 2:03 am

Elentári wrote:a love hate relationship actually represents a stronger bond than a simple love relationship does. I think we find couples who can't live together but can't live apart more fascinating - think Taylor & Burton

I just find such relationships bizarre and incomprehensible, and usually symptomatic of profound issues with both parties. I can't relate to stories built around them - I just don't 'get' them.

Post by **vison** » Wed Feb 25, 2009 8:48 pm

Impenitent wrote:I am repelled by Rochester. Sorry.

Care to elaborate?

Post by **axordil** » Wed Feb 25, 2009 9:36 pm

I just find such relationships bizarre and incomprehensible, and usually symptomatic of profound issues with both parties. I can't relate to stories built around them - I just don't 'get' them.

If you're lucky, you never will. You really have to have been close to one, or even in one, to understand the destructive beauty of the slow-motion train wreck they evoke.

Post by **vison** » Wed Feb 25, 2009 10:52 pm

axordil wrote:
I just find such relationships bizarre and incomprehensible, and usually symptomatic of profound issues with both parties. I can't relate to stories built around them - I just don't 'get' them.
If you're lucky, you never will. You really have to have been close to one, or even in one, to understand the destructive beauty of the slow-motion train wreck they evoke.

Destructive beauty? Not that I ever saw. What I saw was 2 self-absorbed, dysfunctional, immature, needy morons.

And I don't mean Heathcliff and Cathy.

Post by **Impenitent** » Thu Feb 26, 2009 1:24 am

vison, re Rochester

While I've felt empathy for him as a man stuck in an untenable situation, I think his behaviour towards the woman (girl is more descriptive) he supposedly loves is awful. He deceives her with elaborate devices, he outright lies, he coerces, he bullies. He is unscrupulous and I don't see how it could be seen as being loving.

And I know that matches between two with such disparate ages were a dime a dozen during that period, I still feel repelled by the idea of a man of his broad experience setting his sights on a girl still in her teens who has lived such a sheltered existence. Yes I know she's more than his intellectual equal and has great emotional insight but it makes me squirm.

Rochester has always seemed like an ogre to me.

I'm sorry.

Really.

I know it's an unorthodox position but I can't help it.

And I'm sorry you've witnessed a real life Cathy & Heathcliffe situation - would be a very unpleasant thing.

Post by **vison** » Thu Feb 26, 2009 1:38 am

I see your points! Very incisive. My reaction to Rochester is the common one - the brooding romantic hero who hides a tragedy, etc., etc. I never thought of him as being that much older than Jane, though. I wonder how old he was? Never stopped to figure it out. If the girl (can't recall her name) was his daughter, which I always assumed she was, and if he had begotten her when he was in his twenties - which he could have, he would have not yet been 40. He must have been very young when he married The Loony in the Attic. Does it ever say? I haven't read the book in a long time. Now I have to dig it out!

The BBC version, which I wish I had on DVD, had one of my fave British actors playing Rochester, and for the life of me I can't recall his name. He also played Lt. Whatsit in Persuasion.

Post by **Túrin Turambar** » Thu Feb 26, 2009 2:38 am

Rochester is implied to be about 35. From memory, he married the loony in the attic at around 21.

Post by **axordil** » Thu Feb 26, 2009 4:52 am

vison--

You need to see it with a better class of dysfunctional person involved.

Post by **Elentári** » Thu Feb 26, 2009 11:22 am

Vision - you mean Toby Stephens...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/drama/janeeyre/cha ... tors.shtml

Post by **Pearly Di** » Thu Feb 26, 2009 2:20 pm

Impenitent wrote:I know it's an unorthodox position but I can't help it.

It's not an unorthodox position, Impy, someone on my Harry Potter board said exactly the same thing about Rochester.

And I see where you're coming from. His behaviour towards Jane is completely unethical.

Having said that, I do really like him as a fictional construct! And I think that Jane is more than a match for him.

But, like Severus Snape, Rochester is probably best encountered in the pages of a book rather than in Real Life.

However, the 2006 BBC adaptation of Jane Eyre, which I really loved -- best adaptation of the book I've ever seen -- portrayed Jane and Rochester very much as a relationship of equals. The sexual chemistry between them was delicious and very believable, thanks to the superlative casting of the lovely Ruth Wilson as Jane and Toby Stephens as Rochester (Toby, your finest hour.

)

This version also humanised Bertha and Rochester's attitude towards her ... I find it pretty unpalatable in the book, and obviously Jean Rhys did too, resulting in her awesomely anti-Rochester 1960s novel Wide Sargasso Sea.

The scenes in which Bertha roams around Thornfield, terrorising all and sundry (of course you don't see her), were wonderfully creepy though.

Wuthering Heights is a crazy book! I must read it again.

I agree that Cathy and Heathcliff are pretty repulsive characters.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Sat Aug 01, 2009 1:02 am

Dude Watchin' with the Brontës.

Via the redoubtable Making Light.

No more need be said.