Modern Novels Book Club: Wuthering Heights (Part 1 of 3)

Emily Brontë's only novel published just a year before her death in 1847 (and under a male pseudonym), Wuthering Heights is considered by many critics to be the best of the novels produced by the Brontë sisters. In its day, the novel created an intense critical reaction because it squarely portrayed the personal ramifications of contentious social and legal issues of contemporary concern, including women's rights and unjust laws of inheritance. It also presented characters possessed of psychologically realistic traits, including calculating ambition and outbursts of emotional candor, all of which flew in the face of bourgeois propriety and sensibilities. Most early critics agreed, however, that the novel's language and plot were intensely gripping, even while disturbing in its antisocial depictions of human relationships. Taking place in the tough rural environment of the Yorkshire moors, the novel's anti-hero Heathcliff and its heroine Isabella are now literary archetypes.Registration will begin in early May and is required. The first fifteen people to register will receive free copies of the book.Our discussion leader will be Dr. Nicole Reynolds, Associate Professor of English Literature at Ohio University.Sponsored by the Friends of the Athens Public Library.