“Heathcliff, it’s me, Cathy, I’ve come home!”

I recently read Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights for the first time. Now that I know all about Heathcliff’s violent temper, his obsessive hatreds, and ultimately tragic life-story, I can’t believe that Gordon Brown ever thought it was a good idea to say it was “absolutely correct” to compare him to Heathcliff as he did in this interview last year with the New Statesman.

Gordo is said to be a great lover of books but maybe on that occasion he got his classic works of fiction mixed up. Did he perhaps instead think that people were comparing him to Mr. Darcy, who first appears to be an arse but then turns out to be a good bloke (and of course in the 1995 BBC adaptation makes all the ladies swoon with his pond-diving antics)? Mr. Darcy is surely a better role model than Heathcliff, who is so psychologically-tortured that he ends up as a  child and wife abuser and generally nasty person.

Here’s Kate Bush’s take on the whole thing:

   

Tags: Gordon Brown, literature