Heroic Fails: Literary Heroes That Are Secretly Awful

[catlover79]

Wow - no one has yet mentioned Scarlett O'Hara? I would have to add Rhett Butler as well, just because of his tendency to...ravish.

[auntlada]

I'm not sure Scarlett is secretly awful. I think she's pretty overt about it.

[peacheslatour]

5 hours ago, auntlada said:

I'm not sure Scarlett is secretly awful. I think she's pretty overt about it.

Most of what Scarlett did was what she felt she had to do to survive. I didn't agree with everything she did but I agreed with a lot of it.

[auntlada]

Oh, I agree she did what she felt she had to do to survive (minus most of the stuff with Ashley, which was mostly stupid, but she was young and selfish), and no one else seemed to appreciate the seriousness of their situation. I just don't think that she was meant to be solely a hero without faults.

I think she was incredibly selfish, but I also think that her father spoiled her rotten, and that her selfishness was a result of that. I think people may have seen her as a great hero (heroine, whatever), but I don't think readers were supposed to overlook her faults, so I don't think it was a secret.

[peacheslatour]

1 hour ago, auntlada said:

Oh, I agree she did what she felt she had to do to survive (minus most of the stuff with Ashley, which was mostly stupid, but she was young and selfish), and no one else seemed to appreciate the seriousness of their situation. I just don't think that she was meant to be solely a hero without faults.

I think she was incredibly selfish, but I also think that her father spoiled her rotten, and that her selfishness was a result of that. I think people may have seen her as a great hero (heroine, whatever), but I don't think readers were supposed to overlook her faults, so I don't think it was a secret.

I agree, I don't think Mitchell meant us to see he as a heroine. She described her as being selfish, hard headed and not at all self aware. I also agree that I give the crap she pulled with Ashley a pass being that he was such a spineless milquetoast who was probably using her for some kind of sexual gratification/ego boost. She was smart enough to realize that a bunch of ladylike affectations were not going to put a roof over her family's heads nor food in their bellies. She had enough courage to do what she had to do.

[HazelEyes4325]

I have a hard time saying Scarlet was "secretly awful."  I mean, yeah...she's a raging sociopath.  But she's a compelling raging sociopath.  And, sometimes, when she was considering doing something awful, I was completely on her side ("Go ahead, Scarlet, leave laboring Melanie in Atlanta as it burns down!  She's so not worth it!")  I would never want to have Scarlet as a friend (if she actually had friends), but I would always want to be a fly on her wall.

Rhett, yeah, I'd have to put him in the secretly awful category.  In some ways, he's as compelling as Scarlet.  On the other hand, he raped her.  That's a hard one to swallow.

But, you know who I really think are awful?  Melanie and Ashley.  Not that there is anything "bad" about them, but sweet Lord Almighty, they are the dullest, most saccharine characters I've ever read.

[andromeda331]

11 minutes ago, HazelEyes4325 said:

I have a hard time saying Scarlet was "secretly awful."  I mean, yeah...she's a raging sociopath.  But she's a compelling raging sociopath.  And, sometimes, when she was considering doing something awful, I was completely on her side ("Go ahead, Scarlet, leave laboring Melanie in Atlanta as it burns down!  She's so not worth it!")  I would never want to have Scarlet as a friend (if she actually had friends), but I would always want to be a fly on her wall.

Rhett, yeah, I'd have to put him in the secretly awful category.  In some ways, he's as compelling as Scarlet.  On the other hand, he raped her.  That's a hard one to swallow.

But, you know who I really think are awful?  Melanie and Ashley.  Not that there is anything "bad" about them, but sweet Lord Almighty, they are the dullest, most saccharine characters I've ever read.

I agree about Ashley, Scarlett and Rhett.  Scarlett did end doing a lot stuff to survive when it became clear no one else was going too. But the book and movie are both pretty upfront with how awful she was. Rhett and Ashley might be the ones that are more hidden. Rhett is an asshole. He treats Scarlett like crap, cheats on her and rapes her. The only thing I liked about him was early when he rightly pointed out that the South was going to lose. Which of course everyone ignored. Ashley is weak and doesn't have a problem with flirting with Scarlett.

[catlover79]

57 minutes ago, HazelEyes4325 said:

But, you know who I really think are awful?  Melanie and Ashley.  Not that there is anything "bad" about them, but sweet Lord Almighty, they are the dullest, most saccharine characters I've ever read.

Again, I think they were supposed to be boring. It's a credit to Olivia de Havilland that she made Melly so compelling in the movie.

[andromeda331]

4 hours ago, catlover79 said:

Again, I think they were supposed to be boring. It's a credit to Olivia de Havilland that she made Melly so compelling in the movie.

I think they were too. Whether it was how Scarlett saw them as boring or her not realizing how boring they were given how great she thought Ashley was and how long it took her to realize he wasn't anything like she thought he was. He was a boring guy, he was weak and she would have been miserable if she married him.

[peacheslatour]

I agree that Ashley was weak. He knew he was weak as he feared being "winnowed out". He knew that the race goes to the swift which is why he "admired" Scarlett so much. Melanie, on the other hand was not weak. She was Scarlett's mainstay, she stuck by her through all the shit she pulled and dared the wrath of friends and family to do it. Melanie was kind, gentle and made of steel. She was Scarlett's only real friend.

[dubbel zout]

Melanie is the epitome of a steel hand in a velvet glove. I think in some ways she was tougher than Scarlett.

[peacheslatour]

58 minutes ago, dubbel zout said:

Melanie is the epitome of a steel hand in a velvet glove. I think in some ways she was tougher than Scarlett.

Yep, she had no ego to get in the way.

[Black Knight]

Melanie was indeed kind and gentle - to other Southerners.

I just re-read the part where she expresses utter horror and loathing at the thought of her child interacting with black children - except she uses another term for them - or white Northerner children, when discussing the potential move to New York.

I know, she's "of her time." (Except unfortunately she's not out of place in this time either.) The issue is not so much that as it is that Margaret Mitchell presents Melanie as the epitome of moral perfection. Quite different from Scarlett, where I agree with those upthread who say that Mitchell was upfront about Scarlett being deeply flawed and didn't want readers to think otherwise. In that respect, Melanie fits the "Heroic Fail" title of this thread better than Scarlett. She comes off as well as she does because she's kept in her own milieu - if she had gone North among the Yankees and free, non-servile black people and the book had followed her there, well, the awful side of her would've been on full and constant display.

[peacheslatour]

Quote

 if she had gone North among the Yankees and free, non-servile black people and the book had followed her there, well, the awful side of her would've been on full and constant display.

That's an intriguing idea. I would read that book. 

[nodorothyparker]

Gone With the Wind is steeped in Lost Cause romanticism, and I say that as someone who otherwise enjoys it in the same way that I enjoy the gooiest cheesiest mac and cheese.  There's more of it there than probably needs to be and you know it's not really the greatest thing for you, but damn if it isn't satisfying while you're consuming it.   I mean, this is a book where all the named male characters are part of the Klan after the war.  The big "political meeting" that results in Ashley being shot and Frank killed that Rhett has to rescue them all from is a night of Klan night riding and terrorizing the black settlement out in the woods where Scarlett was attacked.  All of our main cast know this.  So all of the characters need to be seen through that prism.

[Spartan Girl]

Bilbo Baggins.

Yes, stealing the ring from Gollum ultimately led to the destruction of the ring and saving Middle Earth. But it also wound up putting the burden on Frodo and psychologically scarring him for life. And in the end Bilbo still has the nerve to whine about wishing he could hold the ring one last time....and yes, he was senile by then, but still.

He at least showed slightly more remorse about what his actions did to Frodo in the movies (the first one anyway). All the same, I feel like Bilbo should have been the one to haul his ass to Mount Doom.

[Neko]

If Bilbo was senile, and the ring had corrupted him by that point, how was he supposed to haul his ass to Mount Doom?

[Black Knight]

Yeah, this seems a harsh critique to me. For one thing, it overlooks Bilbo's journey. He doesn't start as a traditional hero, so that alone rather makes this nomination of him fail. He's essentially hired to be a burglar by Gandalf. Along the way, he learns and grows, making mistakes, and by book's end has learned something of wisdom. It's fair not to give him credit for ultimately saving Middle Earth through the destruction of the ring because he didn't know that taking the ring would result in all that, but then by the same token it's also not fair to give him blame for the effect on Frodo because he certainly didn't know that this was going to affect Frodo either. He was just trying to save his life. I don't know who would have done any differently. The consequences that followed from taking the ring were completely unpredictable and unknowable to anyone, like Bilbo, who didn't know what the ring was.

Of course Bilbo wanted to hold the ring again; that's what the ring does. The moment is there to show us what a powerful corruptor the ring is, that after all this time he still feels such a strong pull. It reinforces what Boromir experienced, what Frodo experienced, and Galadriel's wisdom in recognizing that even one such as she should not have the ring.

And Bilbo volunteers in his grumpy way to do the mission to Mount Doom. He isn't fit for it, but he's perfectly willing to go and assumes he will go. Gandalf overrules him.

[Spartan Girl]

1 hour ago, Shakma said:

If Bilbo was senile, and the ring had corrupted him by that point, how was he supposed to haul his ass to Mount Doom?

He wasn't actually senile until close to the end of Return of the King, which is when he talked about holding the ring again -- after it's been destroyed and all that.

Okay, maybe I was being a little hard on Bilbo. I forgot that in the books he does volunteer to go to Mount Doom. But he still annoys me.

[HazelEyes4325]

On 6/8/2019 at 10:29 AM, dubbel zout said:

Melanie is the epitome of a steel hand in a velvet glove. I think in some ways she was tougher than Scarlett.

I won't argue that Melanie was strong.  But I still found her insufferable and boring (and, frankly, very one-dimensional).

I also believe that Ashley was supposed to be weak and both Ashley and Melanie (and, well, any characters not named Scarlett or Rhett) were intentionally one-dimensional as a way to keep the spotlight on the central two characters.  It wasn't an ineffective choice--I still find both Scarlett and Rhett compelling (and, ugh, I hate that he's a rapist!), but there is a part of me that wishes they weren't two flesh and blood characters in a sea of paper cut outs.  

On the other hand, the book is long enough as it is.  I hate to think how much of a door stopper it would be if Mitchell had spent time developing even a couple of the supporting characters!

But back to Rhett being secretly awful.  Look, the rape is horrible.  And he did terrible things to Scarlett (and, yeah, Scarlett did terrible things as well), but what I find more troubling about all that is the way the book treats it.  Sadly, Rhett raping Scarlett wasn't out of character, but then it was totally written off by Mitchell and THAT is what pisses me off most of all.

[BookWoman56]

I don’t want to defend Mitchell, because I think GWTW is mostly overly sentimental trash, but at the time it was written, and in the time it was set, most people in this part of western civilization didn’t think there was such a thing as marital rape. Fundamentally, once a woman was married, her husband could use her sexually any way he wanted, and her own family members would likely have told her it was her duty to accept whatever he did. I fully understand the anger with how this was portrayed, but I also have to keep in mind a criticism of historical fiction that I have heard many times, about how disconcerting it is to read a book set in the 18th or 19th century, and to encounter modern day sensibilities. So my own reaction when reading something like this is to feel anger on behalf of the victimized character, but be glad I am not living in a setting where treating a wife like a piece of property is still the norm. 

[HazelEyes4325]

6 hours ago, BookWoman56 said:

I don’t want to defend Mitchell, because I think GWTW is mostly overly sentimental trash, but at the time it was written, and in the time it was set, most people in this part of western civilization didn’t think there was such a thing as marital rape. Fundamentally, once a woman was married, her husband could use her sexually any way he wanted, and her own family members would likely have told her it was her duty to accept whatever he did. I fully understand the anger with how this was portrayed, but I also have to keep in mind a criticism of historical fiction that I have heard many times, about how disconcerting it is to read a book set in the 18th or 19th century, and to encounter modern day sensibilities. So my own reaction when reading something like this is to feel anger on behalf of the victimized character, but be glad I am not living in a setting where treating a wife like a piece of property is still the norm. 

I completely get that, and I will own my unwillingness to put aside my 21st century viewpoint on it.  I have read a lot of "classics" (i.e., books written long enough ago that one has to accept that different mores were in play) and it is always a struggle for me to put things like this in its historical context, even though my background is in history and I *know* how such things were seen by contemporaries.  Still, I'm actually okay being upset about rape--especially since I know people who use that "ravishing" as an example of something romantic and/or passionate.

However, this brings up one of my big issues with GWTW.  I think it is an excellent snapshot of race relations in a particular point in history.  The problem is that it isn't the point in history when the story is set, but rather when the story was written.  I'm not saying that racial issues were better or worse in the 1861-1872 (or whenever the books ends, I can quite remember) than they were in 1930's Georgia, but they were different.  And, when I look at it with my historical mind, it drives me crazy that it is so anachronistic.  The way the African American characters are portrayed and they way they interact with the main characters is just not accurate for Civil War and Reconstruction Georgia, even if it is spot on for Jim Crow Georgia.

[Black Knight]

On 6/10/2019 at 9:51 PM, HazelEyes4325 said:

I completely get that, and I will own my unwillingness to put aside my 21st century viewpoint on it.

I don't get caught up in the rape in GWTW for quite a different reason, a meta one. BookWoman pointed out that at the time the story is set, marital rape wasn't considered to be a thing that existed - well, at the time Mitchell was writing GWTW, allowing female characters to enjoy sex wasn't permissible unless they were evil and/or going to be horribly punished in short order for it. Mitchell wanted to show Scarlett finally enjoying sex, and with the real love of her life, Rhett, but the only way Mitchell could do that is by having him dominate, rape Scarlett. Because Scarlett wasn't a classic heroine, Mitchell had been able to push the boundaries of her sexual desires (see the earlier scene with Ashley), but she still could only get away with so much in a book published in 1936. She couldn't actually write Scarlett enjoying sex entirely through her own agency.

So to me, getting upset at GWTW/Mitchell over the rape scene in that book would be like me getting upset over the endings to the 1950s lesbian pulp novels, the ones where the lesbian romances would end rather abruptly with one girl being crazy or dead and the other "And then she realized she had never really loved her." A writer putting out a novel like that today would rightly be called homophobic, but the writers of those pulps weren't homophobic - at that time it was the only way that these writers could get lesbian content out there to be read and enjoyed by women, by having the fig leaf of an unhappy ending where heteronormativity reasserts itself. And lesbian readers knew to just disregard the last few pages. Likewise, I'm deeply bothered by 50 Shades and other problematic rape romances that come out in our times, but GWTW, in 1936, I get it. To show Scarlett sexually satisfied, that was the required fig leaf. I don't take it seriously any more than I do the obligatory publisher-mandated unhappy ending to a 1950s lesbian pulp.

Now all the glossing over of the horrors of slavery, on the other hand...

[Anduin]

Gandalf. In addition to shoving Bilbo and Frodo out into peril that they were deeply unequipped to handle, it's the council of Elrond that always gets me. He relates his captivity by Saruman. Fair enough, everyone needs to know that. But at one point, Elrond asks him to hurry the tale up. Just the essential parts. But I swear, he actually slows down the pace and goes into even more detail!

I know Gandalf is immortal, but not all his listeners are. Furthermore, people say things like "Every moment we delay, the enemy grows stronger." FFS, Gandalf.

Edited June 26, 2019 by Anduin

[Spartan Girl]

It's one thing for a lead character to do morally gray things, but it's quite another when they do morally gray things and then clutching and their pearls to judge other characters for doing similar morally gray things.  For that reason, I think Patrick Kenzie of the Denis Lehane mystery novels -- Gone Baby Gone, Moonlight Mile, etc -- is a sanctimonious hypocrite. 

There is NOTHING heroic about taking a child away from a loving couple that legally kidnapped her and returning her to a neglectful, abusive, alcoholic mother, then after seeing for yourself that the "mother" is still an abusive neglectful bitch, just walking away with a "I did my job, not my problem anymore" instead of at least trying to inform Social Services.  It doesn't even make you a good guy.  It just makes you another asshole.

Edited July 3, 2019 by Spartan Girl

[proserpina65]

On ‎07‎/‎03‎/‎2019 at 12:18 PM, Spartan Girl said:

There is NOTHING heroic about taking a child away from a loving couple that legally kidnapped her and returning her to a neglectful, abusive, alcoholic mother, then after seeing for yourself that the "mother" is still an abusive neglectful bitch, just walking away with a "I did my job, not my problem anymore" instead of at least trying to inform Social Services.  It doesn't even make you a good guy.  It just makes you another asshole.

The kidnapping was absolutely wrong, and revealing it and taking the child away was the right thing to do, but call Social Services, damn it.  Don't just give the kid back to her horrible mother.

[Spartan Girl]

23 hours ago, proserpina65 said:

The kidnapping was absolutely wrong, and revealing it and taking the child away was the right thing to do, but call Social Services, damn it.  Don't just give the kid back to her horrible mother.

Seriously.  Also, thanks to Patrick, the bitch abusive mother was able to sue the police department and make it impossible for the authorities to even touch her.

I'm so glad the teenage Amanda was able to call out Patrick on his hypocritical bullshit in Moonlight Mile.  He had it coming to him for a long time.

[Spartan Girl]

Charity Camber in Cujo. We are supposed to sympathize with her because she's stuck in a toxic marriage and wants a better life for her son Brett. But for me, she loses any sympathy when Brett tells her that Cujo looks sick and is acting violent and she. Does. NOTHING. Because Cujo being sick messes up her plan to take Brett to visit her sister and show him how decent people live. She just tells Brett they'll mention it on the phone to his father later.

And because of her inaction, Cujo winds up killing four people.

Maybe I can overlook her not being torn up over Joe because he was an asshole and obviously too stupid to get Cujo vaccinated. But what about Gary Pervier and the sheriff?! What about Tad, a little boy who died in the hot car that Cujo trapped him and his mother in?! I didn't see Charity express that much horror and remorse over any of them (other that the typical sympathy statement in a news article). Nope, the book ends with her and Brett -- who still is distraught over losing his father AND his dog -- starting over. Gee, Charity, I'm so glad your life got better while the Trentons had to BURY THEIR ONLY CHILD.

[Dr.OO7]

On 6/7/2019 at 7:02 PM, andromeda331 said:

Rhett is an asshole. He treats Scarlett like crap, cheats on her and rapes her.

I HATE him. I'm sick of him being described as this "charming rogue" when he's an emotionally and verbally abusive jerk. From the very beginning, he gets a sick thrill out of provoking her to anger, then laughing in her face at her reaction.

[Spartan Girl]

So the Raoul that's in the original Gaston Leroux novel of The Phantom of the Opera...he's kind of an ass. Not only does he jealously jump to the conclusion that Christine has a secret lover, but when Christine tries to tell him about the Phantom kidnapping her, he doesn't believe her and slut-shames her. Woooooooooow.

[Blergh]

Does anyone else detest Wuthering Heights' greedy, selfish so-called heroine Catherine Earnshaw Linton? She constantly teases Heathcliff and declares him to be her soulmate (and even saying that she herself IS Heathcliff) but marries the hapless Edgar Linton so she can somehow show up her hateful brother Hindley by being richer. Despite Edgar loving her and being a faithful husband (and her already carrying her husband's child), she's gleeful at Heathcliff's return as a wealthy man and then sneaks off to confess her passion for him only to faint when Edgar catches them.  She  gives a long speech declaring her undying love for Heathcliff while she herself dies in childbed not saying a peep about her own newborn daughter, Cathy. Then her ghost appears to taunt Heathcliff to join her thereafter (never mind that he married her sister-in-law to the latter's almost instant regret) but never bothers to visit ,much less attempt to comfort, her surviving, griefstricken widower or even her own guilt-ridden daughter Cathy. Her ghost also doesn't bother to say anything when Heathcliff schemes to deprive  her  orphaned facial-lookalike nephew Hareton ( Hindley's son and heir to her family's legacy) of his birthright and cruelly turns him from  early childhood onward into an illiterate unpaid peon  on what would have been his own estate. Nor does the ghost  attempt to plea for Heathcliff not to force her surviving daughter into a loveless marriage with his sickly,spoiled son Linton just to get Catherine's dying widower Edgar's estate  for vengeance nor does this ghost attempt to plea with Heathcliff for mercy on her own imprisoned, freshly widowed daughter (who had shown infinite more caring for own husband than Catherine had done Edgar despite the girl having been forced into the union and only agreeing just to try to see her dying father one last time) . But throughout this, Catherine's ghost DOES keep calling for Heathcliff and only when  he decides showing a tiny bit of mercy by not crushing a romance to develop between the crude, physically strong but caring and intelligent   Hareton and Heathcliff's forgiving and encouraging widowed daughter-in-law Cathy that Heathcliff dies (and ironically Hareton alone genuinely grieves for him). The BIG ending  the readers are all supposed to be gaga  and be enthralled about is that Heathcliff and Catherine are FINALLY reunited and walking the moors again but big woo -they do so after spending decades at best, ignoring and, at worst,rejecting & being deliberately cruel to those who loved them including their OWN innocent children and her nephew. Who needs THEM?!

    If you ask me, the REAL heroes of this novel are Hareton Earnshaw and Cathy Linton Heathcliff Earnshaw who fall in love, marry   (and, in doing so, HARETON winds up the master of both estates with him eagerly learning to read while flirting with Cathy)  , emerging from this far stronger, selfless, likable individuals (despite their earlier deprivations) and seeking new horizons together in the new century! 

Edited June 1, 2020 by Blergh

[peacheslatour]

Wow, now I really want to read Wuthering Heights.

[Wiendish Fitch]

Cathy Earnshaw is utterly horrid, almost as bad as Heathcliff. I refuse to call her a "heroine", and not because she was "unlikable". No, Cathy loses heroine points with me because she didn't actually accomplish anything (save for making everyone around her miserable).

Say what you want about Scarlett O'Hara, but that bitch got shit done. Cathy was just a waste of oxygen. 

[peacheslatour]

Quote

Say what you want about Scarlett O'Hara, but that bitch got shit done. Cathy was just a waste of oxygen. 

Damned straight.

[Athena]

3 hours ago, Blergh said:

Does anyone else detest Wuthering Heights greedy, selfish so-called heroine Catherine Earnshaw Linton?

Oh yeah. I couldn't stand Heathcliff either. I finished the book with much difficulty because I found Catherine so loathsome. Another fictional Catherine that I hate is Cathy Ames from East of Eden, but she was at least better written and intended to be a villain. I still wonder if Emily Bronte seriously wanted us to root for Catherine and Healthcliff? I wanted to throw them both off the moors. 

[Mabinogia]

1 hour ago, Athena said:

Oh yeah. I couldn't stand Heathcliff either. I finished the book with much difficulty because I found Catherine so loathsome.

You're a better reader than me. I don't care if it is a classic, I could not read anymore about those two horrible, destructive people. I'm not even sure I made it half way. I have just never enjoyed reading about terrible people, even if they get what's coming to them, or it is a deep, brilliant character study etc, my life is just too short to spend time with people like that, either in person or on paper. 

 

I am all for a good complex villain type, but these two were just hateful. 

Someone like Scarlett O'Hara I see as a person who has done bad things, but I don't believe she's evil, just spoiled and then thrust into a situation where she had to look out for herself and would do whatever she had to to survive.  Heathcliff and Catherine just seemed like a pair of unrepentant psychopaths. 

Edited May 31, 2020 by Mabinogia

[Ohiopirate02]

59 minutes ago, Athena said:

Oh yeah. I couldn't stand Heathcliff either. I finished the book with much difficulty because I found Catherine so loathsome. Another fictional Catherine that I hate is Cathy Ames from East of Eden, but she was at least better written and intended to be a villain. I still wonder if Emily Bronte seriously wanted us to root for Catherine and Healthcliff? I wanted to throw them both off the moors. 

I dont think Emily wanted anyone to read her book and come away with the idea that Heathcliff or Cathy were romantic ideals.   The book is about the dangers of romantic obsession,  and her characters are intentionally the opposite of Jane Austen's.   Heathcliff and Cathy are terrible people who do terrible things to everyone around them.  

[Wiendish Fitch]

Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair is an awful, awful, awful person... but William Makepeace Thackeray knew it, acknowledged it, and the fact that she's surrounded by people little better than she is makes her entertaining. Cathy is just an abusive little turd who's a blight on everything good in the world (for the record, Heathcliff is worse, but Cathy's still terrible), and I shed not one salty tear when she croaked. 

[andromeda331]

I hate Cathy and Heathcliff equally. Their both really horrible people. I do like her daughter and Hareton. They went through so much and had nothing to do with anything that happened. Its amazing how they turned out.

[Haleth]

I can never understand why they are considered one of the great romantic couples in movies.  (Or by anyone who has not read the book.)  Really?  Both were horrible people.

Edited June 1, 2020 by Haleth

[Athena]

14 hours ago, Ohiopirate02 said:

I dont think Emily wanted anyone to read her book and come away with the idea that Heathcliff or Cathy were romantic ideals.   The book is about the dangers of romantic obsession,  and her characters are intentionally the opposite of Jane Austen's.   Heathcliff and Cathy are terrible people who do terrible things to everyone around them.  

I agree to a point. Emily is still quite a mysterious figure and while I think there is morality tale in it, I also didn't think it was that well written or worked as a cautionary tale. I have issues with Charlotte's Rochester as well, but I ended up enjoying Jane Eyre much more.

My favourite Bronte is Anne.

 

14 hours ago, Mabinogia said:

You're a better reader than me. I don't care if it is a classic, I could not read anymore about those two horrible, destructive people. I'm not even sure I made it half way. I have just never enjoyed reading about terrible people, even if they get what's coming to them, or it is a deep, brilliant character study etc, my life is just too short to spend time with people like that, either in person or on paper. 

I read Wuthering Heights as an adolescent for fun. It is shorter than some Classics at least. I do find I have less patience to read about terrible people now. I don't know if I would have made it through today. As I mentioned above, I do think Emily was trying for some sort of cautionary tale, but it didn't end up working.

[Ohiopirate02]

1 hour ago, Haleth said:

I can never understand why they are considered one of the great romantic couples in movies.  (Or by anyone who has not read the book.)  Really?  Both were horrible people.

From what I can gather, many people confuse romanticism with what we today call a romance novel.  When Wurthering Heights was published it was considered a romance because of 19th century conventions.  Pretty much any work published in the 19th century that would not be considered realist was classified as romantic.  Mary Shelley, Walter Scott, Lord Byron, and the Brontes wrote romances.  Jane Austen who's books all had HEA endings for her main characters was not considered a romantic writer.  She wrote about contemporary society so she is a realist.  As more novels were published, these classifications changed.  More genres were developed.  No one in the last century would classify Frankenstein as a romance for example.  Also the 20th century saw the rise of what we now call a romance novel--a book who's central plot is a couple falling in love that contains a happily-ever-after ending for them.  The definition of romance changed, and less sophisticated readers missed the distinction.  It also doesn't help that people paid to write about books always want to stick a Nicholas Sparks novel on a list of romance novels every February.  

 

Setting aside the academics, people also just read a love story and project.  Scarlett and Rhett in Gone with the Wind are also horrible people who fall in love, Rhett even rapes Scarlett, and women fawn over him.  

[krankydoodle]

5 hours ago, Athena said:

I agree to a point. Emily is still quite a mysterious figure and while I think there is morality tale in it, I also didn't think it was that well written or worked as a cautionary tale. I have issues with Charlotte's Rochester as well, but I ended up enjoying Jane Eyre much more.

My favourite Bronte is Anne.

If anyone hasn't read them yet, Kate Beaton's comics on the Brontes and Wuthering Heights are hilarious:

http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=202

http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=322

[Melgaypet]

I like Wuthering Heights, but it's not a love story. It's a horror story, with Heathcliffe and Cathy as the monsters. And that's the point - this isn't a case of an author somehow failing to notice that her perfect lovers are sociopaths and her love story is a portrait of an abusive relationship, and yes, I am looking at you, Stephanie Meyer.

ETA: I got distracted. What I meant to say is that I don't think Cathy and Heathcliffe are Secretly Awful at all, their awfulness is open, blatant, and deliberate on the part of their author.

Edited June 13, 2020 by Melgaypet

[Spartan Girl]

Sue Snell in Carrie. Wait, hear me out....

The book version makes it pretty clear that Sue's motivations for getting Tommy to take Carrie to the prom weren't exactly altruistic. Yes, she does feel remorse for her bullying Carrie, but the thing that finally makes me wake up after years of joining in on torturing her isn't so much the realization that Carrie has feelings like everyone else, but the fact that she wants to keep being the "nice girl" everyone thinks she is, and not a horrible mean girl like Chris. Getting Carrie to the prom was a way of cleaning her own conscience, which is understandable but it wound up doing more harm than good. 

The most powerful part of the novel, IMHO, is after the prom destruction, Sue finds Carrie dying. Carrie accuses her of being a part of the pig blood prank, and Sue tells her she wasn't. And while Carrie confirms this by looking into her mind (part of her psychic powers in the book) she still blames her, saying, "Why couldn't you have just left me alone?" Because one good deed doesn't wipe out the fact that Sue was a bully for all those years and even though Sue had no idea of what Chris was going to do to her, it still helped set everything in motion. 

No good deed goes unpunished.

[Mabinogia]

2 hours ago, Spartan Girl said:

Because one good deed doesn't wipe out the fact that Sue was a bully for all those years and even though Sue had no idea of what Chris was going to do to her, it still helped set everything in motion. 

If she didn't know, it's because she chose not to concern herself with it. I mean, did she really think/believe that these people who constantly attacked Carrie for just existing were going to be all fine and dandy with her at the prom? Really? REALLY? Maybe being the bully and not the bullied gave her a lack of insight, but I think a blind dodo bird could have anticipated that something was going to happen. 

Sue was extremely selfish and didn't care about Carrie at all. If she did, she would have genuinely tried to get to know her, and actively stand up for her when she got bullied. Instead she set her up on a date that, even without the pigs blood incident, Carrie really wasn't prepared to handle. Also, I just can't get past the fact that Sue knew what these assholes were like. How could she possibly think this was going to be a good night for Carrie? Grrrr I hated Sue more than any of them, and that's saying something since I was cheering hard for them to all die. 

[Spartan Girl]

57 minutes ago, Mabinogia said:

Sue was extremely selfish and didn't care about Carrie at all. If she did, she would have genuinely tried to get to know her, and actively stand up for her when she got bullied. Instead she set her up on a date that, even without the pigs blood incident, Carrie really wasn't prepared to handle. 

Excellent point. Sue could have tried to reach out to Carrie or at the very least stand up for her, which would have meant a lot more than making a Grand Gesture that was more about her own absolution. And it wasn't just Sue who belongs in that category: all of the adults in Chamberlain, including Ms Desjardin the gym teacher, failed Carrie by not doing more to protect her from her classmates AND her own mother. 

[Mabinogia]

56 minutes ago, Spartan Girl said:

And it wasn't just Sue who belongs in that category: all of the adults in Chamberlain, including Ms Desjardin the gym teacher, failed Carrie by not doing more to protect her from her classmates AND her own mother. 

So true. I feel like they all just tried to fix Carrie so they didn't have to feel so bad/sad seeing her but no one really wanted to get in there, get their hands dirty, really try to help Carrie feel better. They were helping her for their sake, not for hers. 

Carrie really had no one on her side, no one who was willing to really inconvenience themselves to help her. It's an interesting commentary on community if you look for it. 

[GreekGeek]

On 6/7/2019 at 7:02 PM, andromeda331 said:

 Rhett is an asshole. He treats Scarlett like crap, cheats on her and rapes her. The only thing I liked about him was early when he rightly pointed out that the South was going to lose. Which of course everyone ignored. Ashley is weak and doesn't have a problem with flirting with Scarlett.

I've written about him elsewhere, but my impression is that Rhett is whatever he needs to be at the moment for plot purposes. At times he's written as an ahead-of-his-time male feminist. Scarlett doesn't have to hide her intelligence and anger from him to stroke his ego, and he has no problem with her being a smart and ruthless businesswoman. He also is delighted that his child is a girl, at a  time when boys were prized. Elsewhere, he's the stereotypical sexist--he tells Scarlett she needs a good paddling, and yes, he rapes her. I never got the sense that he was changing because he was growing as a person; Mitchell just changed his character as needed so every woman could see her ideal man in him. You want someone who treats you as an equal? You got him. You want a strong man who will protect and dominate you? He's that too. He's inconsistent in other ways too: He knows the South is going to lose and refuses to enlist--until he does. It seems Mitchell didn't want her hero to be a "draft dodger." In fairness to him, though, his final departure did feel convincing, showing that that even the most devoted lover reaches a breaking point.

Edited September 1, 2020 by GreekGeek

[peacheslatour]

7 hours ago, GreekGeek said:

I've written about him elsewhere, but my impression is that Rhett is whatever he needs to be at the moment for plot purposes. At times he's written as an ahead-of-his-time male feminist. Scarlett doesn't have to hide her intelligence and anger from him to stroke his ego, and he has no problem with her being a smart and ruthless businesswoman. He also is delighted that his child is a girl, at a  time when boys were prized. Elsewhere, he's the stereotypical sexist--he tells Scarlett she needs a good paddling, and yes, he rapes her. I never got the sense that he was changing because he was growing as a person; Mitchell just changed his character as needed so every woman could see her ideal man in him. You want someone who treats you as an equal? You got him. You want a strong man who will protect and dominate you? He's that too. He's inconsistent in other ways too: He knows the South is going to lose and refuses to enlist--until he does. It seems Mitchell didn't want her hero to be a "draft dodger." In fairness to him, though, his final departure did feel convincing, showing that that even the most devoted lover reaches a breaking point.

This is an excellent analysis.