Wuthering Heights is the story of a group of people who eat the most miserable meals imaginable, and cannot experience love as a result. Sometimes they have tea, but more often they are merely offered it, and decide they are too furious to have tea, and die instead. Here is every meal the characters of Wuthering Heights almost eat before being interrupted by sex-rage and dying.
Almost-Mulled Wine And Laughter, But Don’t Get Used To It
“She brought me some warm wine and gingerbread, and appeared exceedingly good-natured, and Linton sat in the arm-chair, and I in the little rocking chair on the hearth-stone, and we laughed and talked so merrily, and found so much to say: we planned where we would go, and what we would do in summer.”
The Smell Of Spices And The Promise Of Future Beer
“I smelt the rich scent of the heating spices; and admired the shining kitchen utensils, the polished clock, decked in holly, the silver mugs ranged on a tray ready to be filled with mulled ale for supper.”
Almost Enough Cake
“There’s a little cake for each of you, nearly enough.”
Literally A Spoonful Of Wine And A Compliment
“He bid her add a spoonful of wine from a bottle on the table; and having swallowed a small portion, appeared more tranquil, and said she was very kind.”
Candy And Apathy
“Linton lay on the settee, sole tenant, sucking a stick of sugar-candy, and pursuing my movements with apathetic eyes.”
A Little Wine
“I gave her a little wine.”
Angry Breakfast
“‘And my money,’ she continued; returning his angry glare, and meantime biting a piece of crust, the remnant of her breakfast.”
Almost Not Crying Long Enough To Have A Bite Of Goose
“I waited behind her chair, and was pained to behold Catherine, with dry eyes and an indifferent air, commence cutting up the wing of a goose before her. ‘An unfeeling child,’ I thought to myself; ‘how lightly she dismisses her old playmate’s troubles. I could not have imagined her to be so selfish.’ She lifted a mouthful to her lips: then she set it down again: her cheeks flushed, and the tears gushed over them. She slipped her fork to the floor, and hastily dived under the cloth to conceal her emotion.”
Cold-Hand Bread
‘Come now,’ I exclaimed, pushing some bread against his hand, ‘eat and drink that, while it is hot: it has been waiting near an hour.’
No-Hand Bread
“I vainly reminded him of his protracted abstinence from food: if he stirred to touch anything in compliance with my entreaties, if he stretched his hand out to get a piece of bread, his fingers clenched before they reached it, and remained on the table, forgetful of their aim.”
Basin Tea And Dirty Bread
‘The clown at my elbow, who is drinking his tea out of a basin and eating his bread with unwashed hands, may be her husband.’
A Tray Someone Looked At But Didn’t Want
“Joseph rattled some fire into the shovel, and went: but he brought it back immediately, with the supper-tray in his other hand, explaining that Mr. Heathcliff was going to bed, and he wanted nothing to eat till morning.”
Porridge Someone Put Their Hand In
“The contents of the pan began to boil, and he turned to plunge his hand into the bowl; I conjectured that this preparation was probably for our supper, and, being hungry, I resolved it should be eatable; so, crying out sharply, ‘I’ll make the porridge!’”
Beer With, I Guess, Oatmeal In It? Was That A Thing? The Thing That’s ‘Bristling’ Is The Quart Of Ale, Not The Table, Right?
“Joseph seemed sitting in a sort of elysium alone, beside a roaring fire; a quart of ale on the table near him, bristling with large pieces of toasted oat-cake.”
Drinking Tea From A Plate
“At first she sat silent; but that could not last: she had resolved to make a pet of her little cousin, as she would have him to be; and she commenced stroking his curls, and kissing his cheek, and offering him tea in her saucer, like a baby.”
It Just Sucked, I Will Not Be More Specific
“I made a somewhat cheerless meal, and bade adieu early.”
The Promise Of As Many Apples As Can Fit In A Man’s Pocket So At Most Three
“He promised to bring me a pocketful of apples and pears, and then he kissed his children, said good-bye, and set off.”
A Milk Jug What’s Had Lips On It
“It was rather a rough mess, I own, when poured into the basins; four had been provided, and a gallon pitcher of new milk was brought from the dairy, which Hareton seized and commenced drinking and spilling from the expansive lip. I expostulated, and desired that he should have his in a mug; affirming that I could not taste the liquid treated so dirtily.”
Shan’t Porridge
“While he was speaking, Joseph returned bearing a basin of milk-porridge, and placed it before Linton: who stirred round the homely mess with a look of aversion, and affirmed he could not eat it.”
Nope
“I can’t eat my dinner.”
Neither Of These Things Are Food, Though
“‘Don’t mention his mother to me,’ said the master, angrily. ‘Get him something that he can eat, that’s all. What is his usual food, Nelly?’
I suggested boiled milk or tea; and the housekeeper received instructions to prepare some.”
And Yet More No
‘I wouldn’t eat or drink here, if I were starving.’
I Don’t Know What That Is But It Is Obviously Terrible Based On Context Clues
“He told me to let her live on whey and water-gruel.”
Uuuuughhhh
“The meal hardly endured ten minutes. Catherine’s cup was never filled: she could neither eat nor drink. Edgar had made a slop in his saucer, and scarcely swallowed a mouthful.”
Not-Wine
“‘Take a glass of wine?’
‘No, thank you.’”
Dry Toast Followed By Passing Out
“I kept it to myself and brought her some tea and dry toast. She ate and drank eagerly, and sank back on her pillow again.”
No Cheese And Also No Cake
“His cake and cheese remained on the table all night for the fairies.”
Being Locked In An Attic
“Send him into the garret till dinner is over.”
Fruit-Induced Frustration
“He jumped at the fruit; I raised it higher.”
Murder Formula
“You’re to nurse it, Nelly: to feed it with sugar and milk, and take care of it day and night.”
Ice Water And Fury
“‘How long is it since I shut myself in here?’ she asked, suddenly reviving.
‘It was Monday evening,’ I replied, ‘and this is Thursday night, or rather Friday morning, at present.’
‘What! of the same week?’ she exclaimed. ‘Only that brief time?’
‘Long enough to live on nothing but cold water and ill-temper,’ observed I.”
Why Bother
“Nelly, there is a strange change approaching; I’m in its shadow at present. I take so little interest in my daily life that I hardly remember to eat and drink.”
I Said I Didn’t Want Anything
“As she never offered to descend to breakfast next morning, I went to ask whether she would have some carried up. ‘No!’ she replied, peremptorily. The same question was repeated at dinner and tea.”
Hallucinations
“Afterwards, she refused to eat, and now she alternately raves and remains in a half dream; knowing those about her, but having her mind filled with all sorts of strange ideas and illusions.”
Death Singing
“From dinner to tea she would lie in her breeze-rocked cradle, doing nothing except singing old songs.”
An Actual Just Straight-Up Curse
‘Oh, I hope you’ll die in a garret, starved to death!’
Man, how bad must that “somewhat cheerless meal” be if it doesn’t even merit the depressing description afforded to the rest of the food?
I’m guessing it’s “whey and water-gruel” and the water-gruel contains floating dead flies.
I love this. And I think the table was bristling. And I love this. At least Charlotte occasionally let her sad characters eat a nice meal. Miss Temple gave Jane and Helen some seedcake one time.
Every time I read that passage I want tea and toast and seedcake before a hot fire. (No matter that I have never had seedcake and indeed wouldn’t know it if it rose up and kicked me in the groin.)
It’s cake with caraway seeds in it, it’s nice!
Googling leads me to believe this is a sweet cake… Is that right? I’ve only ever tasted caraway seeds in savory things like rye bread.
Yep it’s sweet. It’s an old fashioned thing to have with tea and such, but not dainty tea, hearty fireside tea
It is clearly Joseph that is bristling. Maybe he stuck all the oat cakes in his pockets so no one else would get them, and now they are bulging out unattractively?
If you were in Wuthering Heights and you saw actual food like oat cakes, you’d stuff your pockets with them too, to guard against fruit frustration, murder formula, and so on.
Never underestimate the capacity of 18th century pockets. I mean, imagine the pockets behind these flaps, and this is just a coat for the fancypantsed and servanted.
Also, this guy….
Cargo Coats
To quote #theboy “he has a ham in one pocket and a beef wellington in the other. Would you like CLARET or PORT?”
He has been caught in the act of SOMETHING, that is for sure.
Much confusion about what is food and what is drink. Of actual food I count only the dry toast and, maybe, the floating oatcakes (eew). Well, and the whey, perhaps.
I WORKED WITH THE TOOLS WHAT I WAS GIVEN
It works out to a lot of unpleasant meals for one book. It makes Wuthering Heights sort of a food counterpoint to Game of Thrones.
There is also cake of an unspecified but definitely too-small amount!
Whey is the watery-milky stuff the squeeze out of cheese curds, isn’t it? Hence Miss Muffet ‘eating her curds and whey’?
Google confirms that, yes, it is essentially cheesewater.
I mean. It would be a terrible drink, but I can’t imagine it counting as food either.
Whey can be used to preserve some foods, which is all I know about it as a foodstuff.
It makes a fine marinade for cheap tough cuts of meat–the whey enzymes break down the toughness.
I had no idea. Thank you for teaching me something new today – I revise my original position thusly:
It would be a terrible drink, but it would also be a terrible foodstuff.
I also want to take the time to point out my glee at the fact that food + stuff = legitimate word.
Or is it… Joseph? Bristling??? I feel like any which way you put it bristling is the wrong word choice probably.
Anyway I did not enjoy this book in high school and reading this now I can only assume I would enjoy it the same amount (which is to say none) or possibly somehow even less.
I tried to read it in high school but never finished because everyone was so terribly grumpy and I really did not see the romance in that.
People who tell you it’s supposed to be a romance are reading it wroooooong.
Sorry, had to drop in and say it; “Wuthering Heights is the best” is my “Have you tried the DivaCup?”
“Wuthering Heights is not a romance” is my “have you tried a neti pot.”
(To be fair, “have you tried a neti pot” is also my “have you tried a neti pot.”)
i didnt know what a neti pot was and i googled it and i’m traumatised now
Oh my god, it’s amazing though. You get used to the sensation fairly quickly, and it cleans your sinuses right out! But never use too much baking soda, because then you will cry.
/netivangelism
Wuthering Heights is a psychological horror story about how the concept of soulmates is actually terrifying and I will insist this right into my grave. There are all sorts of important themes like racism and classism and the warping effects of abuse in that book, there are ghosts everywhere, literally everyone is an unreliable narrator (before it was in vogue) included the generally sensible Nelly Dean – and yet people looked at the damned witchy thing and called it a love story. No one would think that if a man had written it.
Raise your hand if you’ve got Kate Bush stuck in your head.
ooout on the wiiindy, windy moors…..
Honestly I like the song better than the book
I *love* that song, which I only heard within the last year, and am strongly considering the red dress etc. as a Halloween costume.
Also I finally got around to buying the album it’s on. Just now. On my phone.
And while bicycling to work I got to work just after “Wuthering Heights” started playing, which means I’ll have it stuck in my head all day.
It is the best album.
I am finding that I agree.
Also, years ago people started saying that Joanna Newsom’s voice (as of Have One on Me) sounded like Kate Bush’s, and HOLY SHIT they weren’t kidding. The Man with the Child in His Eyes, her voice is exactly the same as Newsom’s to the point of eerie.
I think the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain’s version is far superior, but then again, I think the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain is far superior to most things.
Now I have to look this up on my next break.
Wuthering, Wuthering, Wuthering Heights!
Oh hi, clearly we have picked the same moor to die on.
I am busily drawing hearts around all of this because YES. I adore this book but it is not romantic at all and I don’t understand how it can be interpreted that way. (tbh one the things I find highly amusing about Twilight is how Bella reads it at some point and I’m sure it’s supposed to be saying something about her and Edward’s relationship. And it does. Just not what I think the author intended me to get from that.)
Yeah, Stephenie Meyer apparently loves Wuthering Heights.
Oh! Check this out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBVq8FtsYyI
The only good way to experience it is in semaphore.
I have read somewhere (don’t remember where though, sorry) that the book WAS in fact reviewed as a horror story at first b/c everyone thought the author was male. ( The Ellis Bell trick, probably) When they found out it was a woman, the story swiftly turned into a love story.
High five
Right? “Wuthering Heights is the best,” followed quickly by “Yeah, you’re not supposed to like them. It’s not supposed to be romantic.” Inevitably followed by my rant on how a fundamental misreading of Wuthering Heights is entirely to blame for Twilight.
I think you’re not supposed to like them and it IS supposed to be romantic, sort of.
Basically I don’t think anyone really understands that book, including me.
I kind of wonder if this family didn’t eventually move to the American South and buy a Swan Bed. But VC Andrews always had people get Saved by Art.
The weirdest thing about Twilight is its shining moment of self-awareness, where Bella thinks about Wuthering Heights, and reflects that it’s not romantic, but just the story of “two selfish, terrible people making each other miserable.” And then that shining moment is swallowed up again by the rest of the book.
Hey now. At least the DivaCup has utility, and doesn’t snarl ill-temperedly at you like half the WH characters.
I remember my female students loving it when I taught it years ago but only after this exchange:
Them: I don’t know miss, not very romantic so far
Me: Ms, but yes. Agreed. Kind of like a guide for how not to pick a boyfriend amirite?
Them: OMG I love this book. Am retitling it The Big Book of Red Flags.
Does he torture puppies? That’s a dealbreaker, ladies!
It’s amazing that actually comes up more than once in this book, but it does.
I appreciate your inclusion of your “Ms. vs. Miss” correction. That’s all I came here to say.
Ugh, I on the other hand had a male professor who told us that Heathcliff is the romantic hero because women always love a monster. Never mind that we females in the class disagreed with him vocally.
According to Wikipedia,《In Yorkshire, only one side of oatcakes are cooked, and they are bubbly in appearance.》which maybe justifies the use of “bristling” to refer to the way the oatcakes exist on the table. Maybe.
I can maybe accept that but also why is English food all so terrible.
It’s not all terrible. Oatcakes are terrible, though.
Robert Burns says that “Oatcakes are a delicate relish when eaten warm with ale.” But I wouldn’t trust Robert Burns to know the difference between his love and a red red rose. Or the difference between entrails and dinner, for that matter.
I beg to differ! When oatcakes are homemade, and warmed, with butter on them, they’re pretty nice. And with honey they are quite delicious. I have a good recipe.
But then again, I do concede that cold store-bought ones are kinda crumbly and gross.
May I put in a quick plug for an actually delicious store-bought oat cake? And my apologies for sounding like an ad but… Effie’s Oatcakes are delicious, especially with peanut or apple butter and a cup of English or Scottish breakfast tea. They’re generally a bit overpriced but so so worth it!!
I have a recipe from Bob’s Red Mill for Scottish Oatcakes that I love. They’re less cake and more like cookies that aren’t sweet. Very buttery and yum.
I make an amazing oatcake. Put some cheese on it and have it with a glass of beer? I have eaten this for dinner on multiple occasions…
I loooove oatcakes. Even store bought ones.
English food can be repetitive, but sticky toffee pudding is great. And so is English porridge, which is both rolled oats and steel-cut oats cooked together in milk into a creamy awesomeness (and served with honey).
(Signed, spent 18 days walking across the north of England last fall.)
Yum! I actually really enjoy English food. (I bet I’m one of those obnoxious supertasters.) Also north of England, yay! Isn’t it beautiful?
Hello from Leeds.
I feel like this is the only version of it I ever need to read.
I read it as an adult and hated everyone in it. I finished it only out of sheer spite.
I had friends tell me I should have read it when I was fourteen, then I would have liked it, but I have my doubts.
Finishing out of sheer spite is what the characters of Wuthering Heights would have wanted you to do.
I was about to say “‘Almost Enough Cake’ is clearly the saddest meal here”, but the rest of the post reminded me how sad this book really is, and you’re right, there are worse things than not enough cake in it.
I read this while eating a mediocre breakfast from the university cafeteria, and neither this food nor this essay have convinced me to read this book. I imagine I will finally decide, on my deathbed, nah, I don’t think I’ll read Wuthering Heights after all.
You will be fine with that decision, I promise.
This prompted me to read the Wikipedia synopsis of the book, and it’s super sad and kind of infuriating how much “making herself ill” that Catherine does. There’s a “relationship map” on there too, with green lines indicating “hate.” Tl;dr Heathcliff hates everyone.
I read Wuthering Heights in high school, and vividly remember this Heathcliff line (he was speaking of Little Cathy and Little Linton): “Had I been born where laws are less strict and tastes less dainty, I should treat myself to a slow vivisection of those two, as an evening’s amusement.” /shudder
In my copy, there’s also a map, but a nice one, showing the marriages and such, and this map is my favourite thing about the book, because everything else is terrible.
not just your fast vivisection, the likes of which you’ll see in a permissive-lawed place, but a slow one.
He had to make do with strangling a puppy and starving baby birds!!! Aaaugh. (Though I think the puppy was rescued.)
The thing with Heathcliff is that he doesn’t even manage to have “bad-boy appeal.” He just commits random acts of horrific evil, and the rest of the time sulks and broods and is useless and annoying. Like, he’s not even a fascinating villain. He’s just an asshole.
He tried to hang Isabella’s puppy. Nelly rescued it when it was almost dead. And Isabella still ran off with him because, of course, he wasn’t going to treat her unkindly. Which of course he did.
I don’t remember that line and with my love of the Tzimisce, it makes me want to reread the book. But the narrators were so annoying!
I’m just going to say it: All the people in this book are the WORST and don’t deserve any almost-cake, let alone anything else.
From what I remember, Hareton was basically an OK dude who was dealt a shitty hand in life (and had a terrible name which is also Not His Fault). He can have some of my water-gruel.
Young Cathy was a spoiled but essentially warmhearted girl who suffered disproportionately after a youthful error.
Hareton is my favorite! I hate that most movie versions ignore the second half of the book, where you see, oh Hareton was raised exactly as terribly as Heathcliff was and still turned out decent, Heathcliff is just a dick.
Hareton and young Cathy saved each other with books! True Romance.
Maybe that’s the part about Wuthering Heights that’s supposed to be “romantic”! Teaching your abused-and-neglected-forever SO to read is hella romantic, now that I think about it.
Ooh good point. *scampers off to FFN to search for Hareton/Cathy fic*
He’s in the one with Ralph Fiennes and Juliet Binoche! If it weren’t for that movie (which is so visually beautiful), I would hate the book. The movie made the story tolerable for me.
I so agree! Two terrible people fall in (what they think is) love. You don’t really like either of them. Some people die, but not in the order you want. The end is unfulfilling and awkward.
Hands down, best summary of this book. Now we’re free to move along to other Brontes.
Oatcakes are like a sort of northern English oaty pancake. They’re actually not bad.
“Another bowl of slop, please. Also a spoonful of tea, if you’d be so kind. And perhaps another plate of water-husks.”
Asked about her remarkable appetite, she explained with tears in her eyes: “I’m only a secondary character. If I stop eating, I’ll have nothing to do, and then I’ll die.”
After a while my attention wandered. By the time I looked back, they had finished burying her.
“He told me to let her live on whey and water-gruel.”
Whey is the pale milky liquid left over from making cheese. Water-gruel is very watery, thin porridge.
Yuck
Maybe everyone in this book was just hangry all the time. Eat some protein, bros! Keeps you fuller longer. (I love this book and all its idiots subsisting on rage and tea and views of the desolate moors.)
If Cathy had just had that bite of goose, she’d have had the strength to stay with Heathcliffe, everything would have turned out for the best and WH would be a book about a happy couple who take lots of walks.
Or she would have left him, and the book would be about a woman moving on from her relationship with an abusive asshole.
You mean all their drama and swooning was just low blood sugar and maybe some seasonal affective disorder?
Noooooooooooo. Don’t tell my adolescent self.
Makes sense to me (I live in the next valley over).
#EatASnickers
Yes!
Wuthering Heights is maybe my favorite book of all time. Man may not be able to live on bread alone, but spite is sustaining as hell!
Candy and apathy is a meal I know well. It’s not bad!
aka, Sunday Brunch.
Candy + Apathy = CATHY
Mind fully blown whoa
What does it say about me that all I took away from this exercise is how much I would really like a sufficient amount of cake right now?
I have just taken 12 cupcakes and a Dala-horse-shaped extra cake out of the oven.
This is the funniest thing I have read IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. I can die now. After refusing food, of course.
The only thing I remember from reading this in 10th grade was that at some point, in a fit of madness (one of many), Heathcliff repeatedly bashes his own face into a tree. That and Kate Bush form the entirety of what I care to retain about the story.
(oh, and for comedy podcast wonks like me, the Superego Forgotten Classics version of Wuthering Heights – where they improvise how they think the story goes based on the first line, chapter titles, and character names, and no other information – is predictably hilarious)
Kate Bush’s interpretation is way better–and (because?) she hadn’t read the book when she wrote the song.
To be honest, I read Wandering Heights after having heard the song and was disappointed to learn how little actual screen time Ghost Cathy got. [ETA: “Wandering Heights” was unintentional, but okay, I’ll stand by it.]
Confession, I’ve never been able to finish that book. I just cannot.
I’ve never made it past a plot summary. It infuriates me, irrationally.
I keep rereading it because I keep forgetting how INCREDIBLY ANNOYING literally every character is. Nelly Dean is the absolute worst. There are so many chances she has to make people feel better and she just WILL. NOT. DO. IT.
I’ve only seem the Tom Hardy movie adaptation, and from what I can tell, it’s about two assholes whose obsession with each other ruins their lives and the lives of everyone around them.
That’s just not something that I want to read. Life is to short to spend time with miserable books.
That’s basically what the book is, too, iirc.
“live on nothing but cold water and ill-temper” — it me
also, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW3gKKiTvjs
This is deeply Relevant to my Interests.
I love Wuthering Heights with an excruciating love and I too hope one day to be able to subsist solely on ice water and fury.
If The Secret Garden taught me anything it’s that even quite severe cases of wuthering, Yorkshire, thwarted hopes and the untimely death of young women can be combated with hot, wholesome porridge and freshly baked bread. Maybe if Heathcliff had finished his dinner once in a while he would have realised that there are better things to do with gardens than lurk about in them bashing your head against a tree.
currant buns! cottage bread! buttered crumpets!
I am living in the North of England at the mo and I now completely understand why my grandmother was so fond of cake and hot fruit pies.
Also ‘suffering from a severe case of Yorkshire’ is the best and truest thing I’ve ever heard
Ooh, where are you? Come to Newcastle, you bring the wuthering porridge and I’ll bring the whatever it is people eat in Catherine Cookson novels. Illegitimacy and washing powder, I imagine.
Illegitimacy, washing powder and thrown crockery.
I’m in Manchester, so I havent got any wuthering to hand. I can bring unionism, lung diseases and ‘going t’ mill’ though, ala Elizabeth Gaskell
I’m in Leeds, on a hill. We have a brief respite from wuthering about twice a year for half an hour, but we don’t enjoy it much.
Heidi as well, except that’s cheese and bread and fresh milk. And also a different country, but they are still suffering from a case of Yorkshire.
Yes, fattening up! Heathcliff probably grew up on the streets (before he was adopted) and never knew the satisfying feeling of being full.
In the Baby-sitters Club, Mary Anne’s favorite book was Wuthering Heights, because it was so romantic. So I, as an eleven-year-old, read this book to better understand the wet blanket that was Mary Anne. I soon realized this book was not for children, and I had made a terrible mistake. I also learned that the author of the Baby-sitters Club series, Ann M. Martin, had probably never read Wuthering Heights, because otherwise WHAT THE FUCK, ANN?
This is the best story. I actually also tried to read Wuthering Heights because of BSC. (and then read it again when I was older, and actually do like it, though Jane Eyre and Tenant of Wildfell Hall have my heart more).
There’s also a BSC book where Mary Anne reads the part where Beth dies in Little Women “to cheer herself up.” Um.
OF COURSE SHE DOES.
That happened to me with Matilda and Moby-Dick. Except Moby-Dick is just interminable, not inappropriate.
Ugh I read that as a college student, for class, and I am still disproportionately angry at: the professor who assigned it, Melville, and everyone who praises that interminable thing.
We read it senior year of HS, and my English teacher skipped all the whaling parts – made it MUCH better. All plot.
I am convinced that the only person who ever sincerely enjoyed Moby Dick is Patrick O’Brien
Oh. Heathcliff. Not only a A Tray Someone Looked At But Didn’t Want but apparently he wouldn’t even accept a shovelful of coals.
“No, I’ll just sit here in the dark and the cold. Don’t mind me.”
Heathcliff is totally a Scorpio.
Hanger truly is the best sauce.
A woman of sufficient angst and determination can live for way more than three and a half days on “nothing but cold water and ill-temper”
In Scotland oatcakes are a cracker-type flatbread made from oats. You put cheese, pate and such on them. Dipping them in beer would be… potentially interesting, sort of a savoury beery version of cookies and milk.
One gets the feeling that Emily wasn’t really all that interested in what Nancy sent up to the Parsonage table.
This piece is helping me double down on my reading of this book as the prequel to “The Hills Have Eyes”. (Which I borrowed from another comments section, somewhere, but dammit, they were right.)
Candy and Apathy sounds like a great alternative to my current diet, Carbs and Resentment
<3<3<3 Mmmmmm, Carbs.
Mine’s Cheese and Misery.
“Remember, beneath every cynic there lies a romantic, and probably one who refused to eat his soup before he started yelling about it.”
Floating cakes (oat or otherwise) in ale is the origin of “to toast” in the celebratory, glass-clinking sense. Big part of the old British wassail tradition, inter alia.
Sometimes it was toasted bread, sometimes toasted cakes. But yeah, Joseph’s ale is bristling with floating oatcakes, greedy personal elysium-ite that he is – the moral equivalent of scarfing the fourth piece of leftover cake at midnight.
This information seems key to the-Toast in absolutely every way.
By way of proof: “Floaty oatcake morals” = “O, sea of Mallory, attack!”
Words to live by (proof, more precisely, that I am not doing any actual work this morning, because anagrams are hard).
Jesus, maybe if they’d had something decent to eat, everyone would’ve been less horrible. This made me view the book in a whole new light: Everyone was terribly hangry all the time. I can relate to that somewhat better, anyway.
Quality mousaka and tiramisu equals the death of the romantic novel.
Reading these makes me feel like I’m on a very low calorie diet and that I may be lightheaded if I stand up too fast.
Yeah, but you forgot this one at the end of the novel: “The minute after, she had sidled to him, and was sticking primroses in his plate of porridge.” Catherine Linton pitching woo at Hareton Earnshaw, shortly before Heathcliff’s demise.
Primroses are poisonous! This does not seem like a good idea.
I read this book in AP English and hated it so, so much. I remember my gloss on it at the time as “I wanted everyone in this book to die, and they did a fine job of doing just that.”
I was re reading this on a long train journey once and got to the bit where Edgar punches Heathcliffe in the throat (can’t remember why, probs he is being a mardy twat). Reader, I actually laughed out loud. Other passengers were peering at my book to see what was amusing me so much. And now I am that woman who thinks WH is a comedy novel. Its one of the signs you have grown up as as a woman, btw, to realise that Heathy is not a brooding romantic hero to be saved, but a complete and utter bastard to be avoided at all costs.
I am so with you. I just stayed up all last night re-reading this book for the first time in 18 years. If you approach it as a romantic comedy* where everyone has incredibly tragic backstories, this book is HILARIOUS.
*The romance is between Catherine and Hareton, actually. This is another thing that took me by surprise.
I started reading this book years ago and stopped after I realised that neither Heathcliff or Cathy wanted to be happy together, what they each wanted was to be happy with the other person stuck outside in the sleet watching, cold & miserable & jealous while they were inside, warm & laughing & oblivious.
Bristling is a fish, but given they don’t eat anything nutritional the entire book, it must refer to the ale. Very annoyed ale? Love this. Made my night.
Food is irrelevant to the raging emotions in this book. Wuthering Heights is a tedious read except for the good bits but I am glad I read it while I was young, well before the age of short attention spans and internet distractions. Great template of dysfunctional love.
I think this alphabetic list of French movies is seminal.
I’ve heard rumors that Emily Bronte may have had anorexia and, honestly, the sheer misery of the food choices makes me kind of wonder. It seems these people are subsisting solely on their spite.
There’s a biography of her (I can’t remember the author) which makes a convincing case for this. Charlotte wrote to a doctor something like, “Her diet, which she regulates herself, is very simple and light.” Her coffin was the narrowest one the village coffin-maker had ever made for an adult.
The article was fabulous, but this comment thread is the best thing I’ve read on the internet this year.
Almost tea
‘Were you asked to tea?’ she demanded, tying an apron over her neat black frock, and standing with a spoonful of the leaf poised over the pot.
‘I shall be glad to have a cup,’ I answered.
‘Were you asked?’ she repeated.
‘No,’ I said, half smiling. ‘You are the proper person to ask me.’
She flung the tea back, spoon and all, and resumed her chair in a pet; her forehead corrugated, and her red under-lip pushed out, like a child’s ready to cry.
Okay so.
The last time I read WH I was a freshman in college; and I hated it; this post inspired me to re-read it and I’m four or five chapters in and WHAT HO, THIS BOOK IS ACTUALLY HILARIOUS, HOW DID I NOT SEE IT ALL THOSE YEARS AGO!
So far we’ve had Lockwood think Catherine was married first to Heathcliff, then to Hareton, and you’d be hard-pressed to tell who was the most offended by these assumptions; the aforementioned basket of kittens/dead rabbits (I mean everything Lockwood does makes me LOL haha what a n00b); then Lockwood reading Cathy’s diary where, in teenage-girl fashion, she’s complaining about Hindley and Frances showing pda GROSS OLD MARRIED PEOPLE GROSS; then Lockwood is trying to get the full story out of Nelly Dean (in the hopes that she will BORE HIM TO SLEEP) and he starts out by saying, basically, “So, I have noticed that you are extremely old.”
ALSO it would appear that E. Bronte invented the verb ‘to snoozle,’ to describe the way the dogs keep nudging their wet noses into Zillah’s face while she is starting to light the fire. TELL ME THAT WORD ISN’T DOWNRIGHT ORTBERGIAN. (Also those dogs are clearly sighthounds and you will never convince me otherwise.)
It’s amazing, based on how little everyone ate, only Heathcliff (spoiler!) starved to death – in just 4 days. Monday evening to Friday morning on ice water and fury would’ve done the same, don’t you think?
Then again, Cathy’s vengeful ghost was “distracting him” from being able to grasp a crust of bread, so it was a supernaturally-induced starvation. So much hate it survived death. Of which there was also quite a bit.
More likely they're the scottish version which are a very dry biscuit – would make more sense having one of those in beer as it would be quite nice soaked in beer.