Wuthering Heights

Name: Wuthering Heights
Author: Emily Brontë

A love on the Yorkshire moors so fierce it outlives everyone who carries it.

Overview

Wuthering Heights is Emily Brontë’s only novel, first printed in 1847 under the name Ellis Bell. It tells of Heathcliff, a strange, dark boy taken in by a Yorkshire family, and Catherine Earnshaw, the daughter of that house. Their love grows so fierce that it ruins nearly everyone near them. The story spans two homes on the wild moors and follows two generations of the same two families.

This is not a gentle book. Brontë writes about pride, class, and revenge with cold, clear force. The moors feel almost alive, and the weather seldom lets up. Most of the tale is told by Nelly Dean, the housekeeper, and passed on by a man named Lockwood. That gives the book a dark, haunted, far-off tone. The people in it are often selfish or cruel, yet the story asks you to follow them to the end.

Two things may slow a new reader. One is the layered telling, where one voice hands the story to another. The other is the thick Yorkshire dialect, above all the servant Joseph, whose speech can be hard to follow. An edition with notes helps a good deal, because the second set of children bears the same names as the first. Read it for the mood and the raw power of feeling, not for heroes you can root for. It is one of the strangest and strongest novels in the language, and it earns that name on almost every page.

Is This Book for You?

Yes, if...

You want a love story about two people who cannot let each other go, even after death, more than about tenderness.
You like dark, weather-soaked atmosphere: isolated farmhouses, wild moors, and a house that almost feels alive.
You can follow difficult, selfish characters and still care what happens to them.

No, if...

You want a warm or uplifting romance with people you can easily root for.
You dislike stories told through several voices, or passages of thick Yorkshire dialect.
You have little patience for cruelty, revenge, and characters who hurt everyone near them.

Summary

A man named Lockwood rents Thrushcross Grange and calls on his landlord, Heathcliff, at the nearby farm, Wuthering Heights. The household is cold and odd. After a nightmare of a child ghost called Catherine clawing at his window, Lockwood asks his housekeeper, Nelly Dean, to tell him the whole history. Nelly's tale, the heart of the book, starts years before. Mr. Earnshaw of Wuthering Heights brings home a dark, ragged boy from the streets of Liverpool and names him Heathcliff.

Heathcliff and Earnshaw's daughter Catherine grow up wild on the moors. They grow close in a bond that runs deeper than marriage. When old Earnshaw dies, Catherine's brother Hindley beats Heathcliff down to a hired hand. Catherine wants comfort and rank, so she agrees to wed Edgar Linton of Thrushcross Grange. She tells Nelly it would lower her to marry Heathcliff. Heathcliff hears those words and runs off into the night.

Heathcliff comes back years later, rich and hard, and sets out to wreck both clans. He drives Hindley deeper into debt, then takes Wuthering Heights from him. He weds Edgar's sister Isabella out of pure spite. Catherine, torn between two men, falls into a fever. She dies soon after giving birth to a daughter, also named Catherine. Heathcliff is left crying out for her ghost to haunt him.

The second half turns to the next generation: young Catherine, Hindley's son Hareton, and Heathcliff's sickly son Linton. Heathcliff forces young Catherine to marry Linton so he can seize Thrushcross Grange. He almost wins it all, but young Linton soon dies. Catherine and the rough, untaught Hareton slowly become friends, then fall in love. Seeing them, Heathcliff loses his hunger for revenge. He stops eating, fades away, and dies with a strange smile. He is laid to rest beside Catherine. The local folk say the two still walk the moors together, while Catherine and Hareton plan to wed and make a calmer life.

Notable Quotables

“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton’s is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.”

“If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it.”

“Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”

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