# Wuthering Heights Vs Jane Eyre



## bookuniverse (Jul 1, 2012)

I prefer Wuthering Heights...what about you?


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## Alexandra Sokoloff (Sep 21, 2009)

Both are favorites but... Team Rochester, here.


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## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

Team Heathcliff here!  In fact, while I would never make a pronouncement as bold as this, but I consider "Wuthering Heights" the greatest English language novel.  For beauty of prose (truly poetry in prose), for emotional impact (hits you like a truck), for psychological insight (Emily was decades ahead of her time there).  I re-read it every few years and every time I can't help but bang my head against the wall (in a good way) because I get so emotionally wrapped up and want the story to go differently - but it never does.  

I read "Jane Eyre" once and enjoyed it.  But I remember thinking the first part goes on forever.  I kind of want her to go out and hang out with Rochester already.  I also always really liked that BBC miniseries with Timothy Dalton.  I first saw that in the Soviet Union in the 1980s.  Yes, they played that in the USSR and it was the talk of the country.  Total watercooler type stuff; everybody would discuss things the day after.  The novel wasn't well known, so most people were discovering the crazy wife for the first time.


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## Alexandra Sokoloff (Sep 21, 2009)

----I read "Jane Eyre" once and enjoyed it.  But I remember thinking the first part goes on forever.  I read "Jane Eyre" once and enjoyed it.  But I remember thinking the first part goes on forever.-----

DYB - I felt EXACTLY that about Wuthering Heights the first time I read it!  Funny.

Honestly, I think the two novels (and the whole history of the Brontes) have to be taken as a package.  Each informs the other. It's staggering brilliance and eerie psychological insight, no matter how you look at it.


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## Harry Shannon (Jul 30, 2010)

Wuthering Heights by a nose


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## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

Alexandra Sokoloff said:


> ----I read "Jane Eyre" once and enjoyed it. But I remember thinking the first part goes on forever. I read "Jane Eyre" once and enjoyed it. But I remember thinking the first part goes on forever.-----
> 
> DYB - I felt EXACTLY that about Wuthering Heights the first time I read it! Funny.
> 
> Honestly, I think the two novels (and the whole history of the Brontes) have to be taken as a package. Each informs the other. It's staggering brilliance and eerie psychological insight, no matter how you look at it.


I understand what you mean. I think for me the difference was that with "Wuthering Heights" you just saw all these weird people doing stupid and horrible things - and you just have no idea where it's going, but it's disturbing and creepy. Which is what keeps me reading. (Even though now I know where it's going.) With "Jane Eyre" it just sort of reads like Dickens in the beginning - and I never care where Dickens is going!


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## Laura Lond (Nov 6, 2010)

Jane Eyre. 

When I had read Wuthering Heights, I intensely disliked Catherine, so intensely that I nearly confused it with disliking the book itself. Then, of course, I realized that the book was excellent in its portrayal of everyone, with all their faults & quirks.


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## James Everington (Dec 25, 2010)

Wuthering Heights every time...

Jane Eyre was a bit of a chore to read, whereas the Heights really grabbed me with its atmosphere.


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## Alexandra Sokoloff (Sep 21, 2009)

Laura, I hadn't thought of it that way, but you're right - I really disliked Catherine my first read, too, thought she was an appalling excuse for a woman, and that probably colored my feeling about the whole novel.

Hi Harry and James!  Can I just say I LOVE that you guys love these books?  It should be a no-brainer, but you'd be surprised.


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## Alle Meine Entchen (Dec 6, 2009)

I dislike them both, but I dislike Jane Eyre less so (Heathcliffe just really really ruins it for me, but on the other hand, why lead a girl on when you have your crazy wife locked up in the attic?)


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## James Everington (Dec 25, 2010)

Alexandra Sokoloff said:


> Hi Harry and James! Can I just say I LOVE that you guys love these books? It should be a no-brainer, but you'd be surprised.


You mean because men aren't supposed to like 'romance' books?

To be honest, if any book was going to put me off relationships for life, it would be Wuthering Heights..!


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## Laura Lond (Nov 6, 2010)

Alle Meine Entchen said:


> I dislike them both, but I dislike Jane Eyre less so (Heathcliffe just really really ruins it for me, but on the other hand, why lead a girl on when you have your crazy wife locked up in the attic?)


Well, see, Rochester seemed to consider himself single since his wife turned into a violent monster and was no longer a "real" wife to him. The whole neighborhood considered him single as well, based on his presentation of himself. Yes, he was deluding himself, but he honestly meant to "marry" Jane.


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## Alexandra Sokoloff (Sep 21, 2009)

James, it's funny, I don't ever think of those books as romances.  But no, what I was really talking about was that a lot of men won't touch or even acknowledge classics written by women.


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## charlotteunsworth (Jul 1, 2012)

Alexandra Sokoloff said:


> I don't ever think of those books as romances.


I agree! Seems very odd sometimes that Wuthering Heights is classed as romantic when all they do is tear each other apart.

Wuthering Heights for the emotional impact, and the claustrophia it manages to evoke is superb, but both make fascinating books to study in terms of the narrative reliability - after all, WH is a story of a storyteller, and Jane Eyre's narrative is seriously flawed in many places (can't trust her!).


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## Nicole Ciacchella (May 21, 2012)

Jane Eyre is my all-time favorite book, so I'm sure it'll surprise no one when I give it my full support.  I *adore* Jane.  I love that she's unwilling to compromise her principles and that she knows the most important thing is to be true to herself, even if it means she has to leave the man she loves behind.  When you couple this with the fact that she survived an extremely messed up childhood, she's just an awesome woman.  For me, she is the standard toward which all authors should look when they're trying to create a strong female character.

Still, I'm not only prejudiced because Jane Eyre is my favorite book, but also because I frankly loathe Wuthering Heights.  I couldn't stand either Catherine or Heathcliffe.  It might be worth a reread to see if I still feel the same way, but those two make me shudder.


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## Amy Corwin (Jan 3, 2011)

Interesting topic.
I liked the writing and sense of characters better in Wuthering Heights than Jane Eyre, but I liked Jane Eyre's story better. Neither was a great romance, but at least there is the semblance of "things being restored to rightness" in Jane Eyre that is completely absent in Wuthering Heights. As someone already said, the characters in Wuthering Heights spent the novel tearing each other, and themselves, apart, which is really a rather miserable thing to read about in the end. I kept wanting to rewrite it so that one or the other (preferably both) of the characters found a better path to pursue through life. Jane, however, seemed less open to the reader, more stilted and Rochester was simply walled off--it was difficult to understand him, but at least they were finding a way to move forward.

In the end, I prefer books that end with a sense of hope and moving forward. Shallow, I know, but life is hard enough without submerging yourself in misery in your limited free time.  Even in the horror I read, I like at least one character to survive otherwise the story seems pointless.


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## Paul Reid (Nov 18, 2010)

Wuthering Heights most certainly. I've never forgotten the emotional impact of it, I was left reeling. Some years ago I visited the village of Haworth in northern England where the Bronte sisters were raised, and you can certainly understand how the isolation of the place must have driven this dark, brooding story. All the more stunning an accomplishment, though, given that Emily Bronte had access to very little tools beyond her own imagination.


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## NogDog (May 1, 2009)

I vaguely remember _Wuthering Heights_ and do not recall particularly disliking it. I do not recall ever reading _Jane Eyre_, so am not sure if it made no impression on me or was never assigned to me to read in school. (Nope, neither is one I'd pick up on my own.  ). Therefore, WH wins on a technicality.


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## ciscokid (Oct 10, 2010)

I've read Wuthering Heights once and Jane Eyre 3 or 4 times.  I think that says it all.


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## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

I think the point someone made above hating "Wuthering Heights" - and disliking Heathcliff and/or Catherine - are two very different things.  Yes, they are awful people.  So is almost everyone else in that novel.  But the visceral emotional impact and power of it can't be denied!  And the deep psychological insight Emily had into human nature; decades ahead of medical psychology.

Incidentally, I think "Wuthering Heights" does end on a note of moral order restored.  Remember that final chapter where we are told the children have managed to overcome their parents' madness and have reconciled, and plan to marry.  And as Mr. Lockwood makes his way from Wuthering Heights and comes across the graves - he remarks on how surprisingly peaceful everything now is.


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## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

Incidentally, it is fascinating that after so much time "Wuthering Heights" is still disliked by many for the same reasons it was disliked upon publication. _Graham's Lady Magazine _wrote: "How a human being could have attempted such a book as the present without committing suicide before he had finished a dozen chapters, is a mystery. It is a compound of vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors."

PS> Interesting that they assume that author was a "he."

I am much more in agreement with _Literary World:_ "In the whole story not a single trait of character is elicited which can command our admiration, not one of the fine feelings of our nature seems to have formed a part in the composition of its principal actors. In spite of the disgusting coursness of much of the dialogue, and the improbabilities of much of the plot, we are spellbound."


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## kindlegrl81 (Jan 19, 2010)

I hate them both but I was at least able to actually finish Jane Eyre.  With Wuthering Heights I have tried to read it more than once and while I get a little farther each time, I have yet to be able to read it all.


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## Alexandra Sokoloff (Sep 21, 2009)

The Brontes published under male pseudonyms.


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## alawston (Jun 3, 2012)

I find it interesting that we now know the Brontes under their true names, but Mary Ann Evans is _still_ better known as George Eliot - even in her 'home town' of Nuneaton.

Rather more on-topic, I too prefer _Jane Eyre_ and have struggled to get through _Wuthering Heights_. The constant melodrama just bored me, really.


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## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

alawston said:


> I find it interesting that we now know the Brontes under their true names, but Mary Ann Evans is _still_ better known as George Eliot - even in her 'home town' of Nuneaton.


True. But "Mary Ann Evans" is kind of a boring name for a writer! There's not even an umlaut in there!


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## James Everington (Dec 25, 2010)

I know - if you're going to pick a pseudonymn, go hog-wild!


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## alawston (Jun 3, 2012)

Gosh, I clearly need to sharpen up my formatting-fu too, sorry for the wonky italics tags! Square brackets, Andrew, always square brackets.

I may just have another crack at _Wuthering Heights_ soon, I've got some serious travelling coming up in the next few weeks...


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## CoraBuhlert (Aug 7, 2011)

Believe me, you don't want an umlaut in your pen name, because people will only misspell and mispronounce it.


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## TiffanyMonroe (Jul 7, 2012)

Jane Eyre all the way. =-)


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## anguabell (Jan 9, 2011)

I prefer Jane Eyre as well. Wuthering Heights seem to be so full of those romantic and melodramatic cliches that were apparently rather typical at the time the novel was written, while Jane Eyre is definitely ahead of its times. Jane is all the "typical" heroines of the 19th century novels weren't - she is self-reliant, strong, intelligent and sensible. Most importantly, she doesn't believe her feelings are the most important thing in the world. She is perfectly capable to use her common sense and her brain even where Mr. Rochester is concerned. Actually, I am sure she would get along without Rochester just as well, and had a happy and fulfilling life even without him. She is someone I'd rather enjoy knowing.


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## DYB (Aug 8, 2009)

anguabell said:


> Wuthering Heights seem to be so full of those romantic and melodramatic cliches that were apparently rather typical at the time the novel was written


Surely if the novel was full of cliches it would not have caused the furore it actually did cause. Whatever one might point to as its limitations, I'm not sure "full of cliches" is one them.


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## LauraB (Nov 23, 2008)

anguabell said:


> I prefer Jane Eyre as well. Wuthering Heights seem to be so full of those romantic and melodramatic cliches that were apparently rather typical at the time the novel was written,


Wuthering Heights themes are about being rejected by one who is loved and that rejection leading to obsessive love and revenge. The idea of rejected person being willing to take the obsession (and perceived need for revenge) to the point of destruction of the loved one and the self. I can't think of many books written during that time period that cover those ideas.

I haven't read Jane Eyre, so I can't comment on which I think is better  .


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## Alexandra Sokoloff (Sep 21, 2009)

I can't possibly comment on cliches as they would have been perceived at the time, but I do know - kind of - enough history to know that BOTH books would have been shocking and revolutionary in their time. (And there was a third Bronte sister, Anne, who died at 29, and had a much more modern style of writing... it is tragic that her writing career was cut off before she had time to revolutionize the form.)

I do think both books are interesting for a style of writing that was typical in the time that we think of as anathema in ours: the slow and painstaking backstory!

Think how many pages an editor, agent or producer would have cut from these novels in order to start (as cliches go) _in media res._

Would that have made for a better book? I wonder....


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## anguabell (Jan 9, 2011)

DYB said:


> Surely if the novel was full of cliches it would not have caused the furore it actually did cause. Whatever one might point to as its limitations, I'm not sure "full of cliches" is one them.


Well, you might be right, in a sense that despite using some of the traditional tools of romantic literature (brooding hero of a mysterious literature, revenge, dreams and ghosts, and above all, the dramatic atmospheric setting that is a character by itself) the novel definitely takes the characters to the extremes, in emotions and actions. It would be unfair to say any of the two novels is truly "better". Both books are an incredible achievement. It is still hard to imagine they were written by women who led such a secluded life. What power of spirit and imagination, and what an amazing level of intelligence, they must have had.


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## Alexandra Sokoloff (Sep 21, 2009)

Anguabell, I agree with you entirely - that Jane is really a remarkable heroine for the time. Not just all those self-reliant qualities that you mention but she's also incredibly intuitive - the romanticism of Jane Eyre is really about the PSYCHIC connection between Jane and Rochester, and who hasn't had a little bit of that in a great love?

And I said it too and want to underline what you said - these are BOTH such brilliant books, coming from the same DNA, I think it's impossible to take them separately.


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## herocious (May 20, 2011)

Both books my mother read to me.


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