Wuthering Heights: romantic? worth it?

Libby Brooks, in the Guardian (UK) newspaper, calls Wuthering Heights, “passion and romance written like they ought to be.”  How much or how little do you agree with the assessment of Wuthering Heights as a great romance novel?

Stephenie Meyer’s Eclipse (the third book in the Twilight series) includes several references to Wuthering Heights, spurring book sales among today’s teens, especially in France. (Here’s a clip of Stephenie Meyer talking about Eclipse and Wuthering Heights — it’s about halfway through the clip.) What does this say about the staying power of Emily Bronte’s book?

Are you glad you read it? And why would you recommend (or not recommend) Wuthering Heights to others?

Catherine and her relationships with Edgar and Heathcliff

In Wuthering Heights, how does Catherine’s marriage to Edgar compare with her relationship with Heathcliff? Catherine says that she can’t marry Heathcliff because it would be degrading, but is that worse than the unhappiness she feels married to Edgar? Do you think that if Catherine and Heathcliff had been able to marry in life, that they would have lived “happily ever after” or as least, contentedly? Why or why not?

Heathcliff, Edgar & Cathy and Heathcliff, Hindley & Catherine

Consider the generational relationships in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights – Cathy, Heathcliff, and Edgar vs. Catherine, Hareton, and Heathcliff. What parallels are there? What significant differences are there? What changes that allows the second generation to find some measure of contentment in life? Is it personality, economics, social class changes? Do you think that Catherine and Hareton in particular learned anything from seeing how the adults around them behaved and the consequences of that behavior?