Wuthering Heights
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- 4,99 lei
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- 4,99 lei
Publisher Description
Without a doubt, today Wuthering Heights is one of the most loved and treasured novels ever written in English – an absolute “must read”. Although Wuthering Heights is now widely regarded as one of the most important classics of English literature, contemporary reviews for the novel were deeply divided, as it was considered controversial because its depiction of mental and physical cruelty was unusually stark, and it challenged strict Victorian ideals of the day, including religious hypocrisy, morality, social classes and gender inequality. At times dark and sinister, the novel broke with many contemporary ideas as to how romantic literature should be composed. Wuthering Heights is Emily Brontë's only novel, written between October 1845 and June 1846, and published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell; she sadly died the following year, aged just 30. Though Emily would not live to experience it, Wuthering Heights rose to become a model of a romantic, gothic novel full of passion, jealousy and tragic love. The main characters Heathcliff and Catherine have been firmly established as the most tragic couple in literature since Romeo and Juliet.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The main drama in Bronte's novel happens in a long narrative told by an elderly housekeeper to a convalescing new tenant. This story-within-a-story setup makes it well suited for audio adaptation, as Scales takes the housekeeper's part and relates the past, while West performs as the tenant and describes the present. Scales primarily uses a folksy lower-class accent, but she also makes her voice harsh and threatening when speaking as Heathcliff, the surly man at the novel's heart. West, as the bewildered tenant, manages to sound both nervous and pretentious, but his part is fairly small, especially with this abridgment, so he mostly serves to provide transitions for the housekeeper's story. The extensive abridgment generally deletes sentences and phrases rather than entire paragraphs or sections. One drawback for the audio format is the difficulty of clarifying the novel's convoluted plot and family tree, since it's harder to search back through long CD tracks than through earlier chapters of the paperback. While a little of the depth of Bronte's writing is lost in abridgment, the novel's emotional core remains intact and wrenching, and the actors' heartfelt interpretations make it easy to imagine being curled up by a warm fire listening to an absorbing tale. In June, Penguin Audio remastered and released on CD for the first time nine other Penguin Classics: Crime and Punishment, Dracula, Frankenstein, Great Expectations, Jane Eyre, Moby Dick, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Tale of Two Cities.
