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Wuthering Heights
Hardcover
About the author
Emily Brontë
1,786 books14.4k followersEmily Brontë was an English novelist and poet whose singular contribution to literature, Wuthering Heights, is now celebrated as one of the most powerful and original novels in the English language. Born into the remarkable Brontë family on 30 July 1818 in Thornton, Yorkshire, she was the fifth of six children of Maria Branwell and Patrick Brontë, an Irish clergyman. Her early life was marked by both intellectual curiosity and profound loss. After the death of her mother in 1821 and the subsequent deaths of her two eldest sisters in 1825, Emily and her surviving siblings— Charlotte, Anne, and Branwell—were raised in relative seclusion in the moorland village of Haworth, where their imaginations flourished in a household shaped by books, storytelling, and emotional intensity.
The Brontë children created elaborate fictional worlds, notably Angria and later Gondal, which served as an outlet for their creative energies. Emily, in particular, gravitated toward Gondal, a mysterious, windswept imaginary land she developed with her sister Anne. Her early poetry, much of it steeped in the mythology and characters of Gondal, demonstrated a remarkable lyrical force and emotional depth. These poems remained private until discovered by Charlotte in 1845, after which Emily reluctantly agreed to publish them in the 1846 collection Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, using the pseudonym Ellis Bell to conceal her gender. Though the volume sold few copies, critics identified Emily’s poems as the strongest in the collection, lauding her for their music, power, and visionary quality.
Emily was intensely private and reclusive by nature. She briefly attended schools in Cowan Bridge and Roe Head but was plagued by homesickness and preferred the solitude of the Yorkshire moors, which inspired much of her work. She worked briefly as a teacher but found the demands of the profession exhausting. She also studied in Brussels with Charlotte in 1842, but again found herself alienated and yearning for home. Throughout her life, Emily remained closely bonded with her siblings, particularly Anne, and with the landscape of Haworth, where she drew on the raw, untamed beauty of the moors for both her poetry and her fiction.
Her only novel, Wuthering Heights, was published in 1847, a year after the poetry collection, under her pseudonym Ellis Bell. Initially met with a mixture of admiration and shock, the novel’s structure, emotional intensity, and portrayal of violent passion and moral ambiguity stood in stark contrast to the conventions of Victorian fiction. Many readers, unable to reconcile its power with the expected gentility of a woman writer, assumed it had been written by a man. The novel tells the story of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw—two characters driven by obsessive love, cruelty, and vengeance—and explores themes of nature, the supernatural, and the destructive power of unresolved emotion. Though controversial at the time, Wuthering Heights is now considered a landmark in English literature, acclaimed for its originality, psychological insight, and poetic vision.
Emily's personality has been the subject of much speculation, shaped in part by her sister Charlotte’s later writings and by Victorian biographies that often sought to romanticize or domesticate her character. While some accounts depict her as intensely shy and austere, others highlight her fierce independence, deep empathy with animals, and profound inner life. She is remembered as a solitary figure, closely attuned to the rhythms of the natural world, with a quiet but formidable intellect and a passion for truth and freedom. Her dog, Keeper, was a constant companion and, according to many, a window into her capacity for fierce, loyal love.
Emily Brontë died of tuberculosis on 19 December 1848 at the age of thirty, just a year after the publication of her novel. Her early death, following those of her brother Branwell and soon to
The Brontë children created elaborate fictional worlds, notably Angria and later Gondal, which served as an outlet for their creative energies. Emily, in particular, gravitated toward Gondal, a mysterious, windswept imaginary land she developed with her sister Anne. Her early poetry, much of it steeped in the mythology and characters of Gondal, demonstrated a remarkable lyrical force and emotional depth. These poems remained private until discovered by Charlotte in 1845, after which Emily reluctantly agreed to publish them in the 1846 collection Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, using the pseudonym Ellis Bell to conceal her gender. Though the volume sold few copies, critics identified Emily’s poems as the strongest in the collection, lauding her for their music, power, and visionary quality.
Emily was intensely private and reclusive by nature. She briefly attended schools in Cowan Bridge and Roe Head but was plagued by homesickness and preferred the solitude of the Yorkshire moors, which inspired much of her work. She worked briefly as a teacher but found the demands of the profession exhausting. She also studied in Brussels with Charlotte in 1842, but again found herself alienated and yearning for home. Throughout her life, Emily remained closely bonded with her siblings, particularly Anne, and with the landscape of Haworth, where she drew on the raw, untamed beauty of the moors for both her poetry and her fiction.
Her only novel, Wuthering Heights, was published in 1847, a year after the poetry collection, under her pseudonym Ellis Bell. Initially met with a mixture of admiration and shock, the novel’s structure, emotional intensity, and portrayal of violent passion and moral ambiguity stood in stark contrast to the conventions of Victorian fiction. Many readers, unable to reconcile its power with the expected gentility of a woman writer, assumed it had been written by a man. The novel tells the story of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw—two characters driven by obsessive love, cruelty, and vengeance—and explores themes of nature, the supernatural, and the destructive power of unresolved emotion. Though controversial at the time, Wuthering Heights is now considered a landmark in English literature, acclaimed for its originality, psychological insight, and poetic vision.
Emily's personality has been the subject of much speculation, shaped in part by her sister Charlotte’s later writings and by Victorian biographies that often sought to romanticize or domesticate her character. While some accounts depict her as intensely shy and austere, others highlight her fierce independence, deep empathy with animals, and profound inner life. She is remembered as a solitary figure, closely attuned to the rhythms of the natural world, with a quiet but formidable intellect and a passion for truth and freedom. Her dog, Keeper, was a constant companion and, according to many, a window into her capacity for fierce, loyal love.
Emily Brontë died of tuberculosis on 19 December 1848 at the age of thirty, just a year after the publication of her novel. Her early death, following those of her brother Branwell and soon to
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 68 reviews
May 9, 2026
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte is one of The Best Books of All Time as complied by the most significant writers for The Bokklubben, it is also one of The 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read, and it is also ranked 15th on The Greatest Books of All Time site…notwithstanding all that, it is not one of my favorites, and the recent adaptation for the big screen written and directed by Emerald Fennell does not help at all – you find thousands of reviews of magnum opera from the aforementioned lists, plus notes on films from The New York times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and other pages on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... and YouTube page, in case you are interested
7 out of 10
Wuthering Heights https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... is a compelling, classic chef d’oeuvre, a newer site, for The Greatest Books of All Time, which uses smart algorithms, presumably looking over the net at the most important charts, has placed this novel as high as the fifteenth place
The caveat is that one will come with (too) high expectations, besides, there are things in the magnum opus that surely disagree with a number of readers, Cathy comes back as a ghost – though not in the most recent adaptation…by the way, this note refers to the movie more, though I am not sure what the percentage would be
Emerald Fennell has adapted Wuthering Heights, and has eliminated a part of it, which is not the main issue I have here, she is an extremely talented film maker https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... Saltburn proves that
Saltburn may be going a bit far for conservative – maybe reactionary, passe, retrograde – cinephiles like yours truly, Barry Keoghan has the leading role (this thespian is surely going to take a couple of Oscars in the future) and he performs cunnilingus on a menstruating character and then licks the last drops from the bath where another had been…
The trouble with Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is that the acting does not overwhelm – this being a personal view, it is flawed, albeit critics did not like it either, the Metascore is a paltry 55 – it feels false, especially for Margot Robbie, who is on top of her game, what with the success of Barbie, a fantastic achievement
‘Denis Diderot's "Paradox of the Actor" argues that great actors should not experience the emotions they portray, but rather display them through skill and control…Diderot presents a revolutionary theory of acting. He posits that great actors must possess judgment and intellectual control over their emotions, rather than being swayed by them
That is not from https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... Jacques Le Fataliste, but the latter is also included in the above mentioned Best 100 Books of All Time list…there are lavish settings in this film, however, that contributes to the feeling of pomposity, inauthentic narrative
‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments’ this line from a Shakespeare sonnet https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... may be relevant here, for something interferes and then that admirable, amorous feeling brings death and destruction
7 out of 10
Wuthering Heights https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... is a compelling, classic chef d’oeuvre, a newer site, for The Greatest Books of All Time, which uses smart algorithms, presumably looking over the net at the most important charts, has placed this novel as high as the fifteenth place
The caveat is that one will come with (too) high expectations, besides, there are things in the magnum opus that surely disagree with a number of readers, Cathy comes back as a ghost – though not in the most recent adaptation…by the way, this note refers to the movie more, though I am not sure what the percentage would be
Emerald Fennell has adapted Wuthering Heights, and has eliminated a part of it, which is not the main issue I have here, she is an extremely talented film maker https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... Saltburn proves that
Saltburn may be going a bit far for conservative – maybe reactionary, passe, retrograde – cinephiles like yours truly, Barry Keoghan has the leading role (this thespian is surely going to take a couple of Oscars in the future) and he performs cunnilingus on a menstruating character and then licks the last drops from the bath where another had been…
The trouble with Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is that the acting does not overwhelm – this being a personal view, it is flawed, albeit critics did not like it either, the Metascore is a paltry 55 – it feels false, especially for Margot Robbie, who is on top of her game, what with the success of Barbie, a fantastic achievement
‘Denis Diderot's "Paradox of the Actor" argues that great actors should not experience the emotions they portray, but rather display them through skill and control…Diderot presents a revolutionary theory of acting. He posits that great actors must possess judgment and intellectual control over their emotions, rather than being swayed by them
That is not from https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... Jacques Le Fataliste, but the latter is also included in the above mentioned Best 100 Books of All Time list…there are lavish settings in this film, however, that contributes to the feeling of pomposity, inauthentic narrative
‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments’ this line from a Shakespeare sonnet https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... may be relevant here, for something interferes and then that admirable, amorous feeling brings death and destruction
February 10, 2026
lol at the version of this book on Goodreads 😂😂😂
February 21, 2026
I had no idea what to expect listening to this book- it was not what I expected at all! I had troubles for the first while following what was happening with the old English style of speaking- but chat gpt got me through with some chapter summaries. I didn’t feel an attachment to really any of the characters, however it kept me interested enough to finish it to the end.
⭐️Side note: I am glad I read the book before seeing the movie-
⭐️Side note: I am glad I read the book before seeing the movie-
September 6, 2023
Definitely a classic, amazing writing and a great story
April 12, 2026
great classic, a little hard to get into at the beginning
March 16, 2026
great writing style, but the story itself is so wrong and so sick, that I felt sick while reading.
March 25, 2026
Really struggling with this. Now Cathy has died, I don't think there is anyone left to like in the story. Reading this again with adult eyes had really made me feel differently about it. Cathy and Heathcliff are actually quite insufferable. I can't really stand them. But 16 year old me reading it for the first time thought it was an amazing love story! What a difference a couple of decades makes to a reader!
March 26, 2026
I finally read this classic, and I found it disturbing on several levels. I appreciate Bronte's take on society as she knew it, but she does make it all seem so bleak and hopeless and cruel.
April 22, 2026
قريت النسخة المبسطة للأطفال بالانجليزيه مع الصور
ومع ذلك كانت اللغة جدًا صعبة
احس م راح اقرأ كتاب كلاسيك بلغتها الأم واجد صعبه علي
بس النسخة المترجمة للعربيه كانت جدًا ممتازة
ومع ذلك كانت اللغة جدًا صعبة
احس م راح اقرأ كتاب كلاسيك بلغتها الأم واجد صعبه علي
بس النسخة المترجمة للعربيه كانت جدًا ممتازة
May 25, 2026
This is part 2 of my Wuthering Heights review.
Emily Bronte is one of the best writers of all time. I like to annotate my books, and from the first page I found myself bracketing paragraphs and underlining lines excessively, to the point where mid-book I started circling entire page numbers. I had to give up because the entire book is worth highlighting.
This book also has an absolutely insane storyline. There were people fighting with knives, children being dropped from banisters and being accidentally saved, supernatural elements with dreams and ghosts, etc. As long as this review is, nothing could fully encapsulate the wild ride that is Wuthering Heights. Read it for yourself.
I will use this review to share some of my favorite scenes and excerpts from the book. Well, I have 15 pages in my Google Docs full of my favorite excerpts, so these are my favorite favorites.
Lockwood:
Lockwood calls the area where Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights sit “a perfect misanthropist’s Heaven” and declares that “Mr Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us.”
Lockwood’s endless faux pas at the beginning are quite humorous as well. After his unpleasant experiences with Heathcliff he says “I am now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.”
Nelly’s descriptions of Catherine and Heathcliff as children:
“She was much too fond of Heathcliff. The greatest punishment we could invent for her was to keep her separate from him…”
Heathcliff would do anything for her: “how the boy would do her bidding in anything, and his only when it suited his own inclination.”
They are inseparable. They are everything to each other. They are both irreverent and naughty. They throw their Bibles into the dog kennel. They run off to the moors.
“But it was one of their chief amusements to run away to the moors in the morning and remain there all day, and the after punishment grew a mere thing to laugh at. [...] they forgot everything the minute they were together again: at least the minute they had contrived some naughty plan of revenge…”
When Catherine is injured and is taken in by the Lintons as a result, Heathcliff says:
“...kindling a spark of spirit in the vacant blue eyes of the Lintons—a dim reflection from her own enchanting face. I saw they were full of stupid admiration; she is so immeasurably superior to them—to everybody on earth, is she not, Nelly?”
Edgar’s unshakeable love for Catherine:
Edgar Linton’s parents both died of the fever that Catherine gave them and he still loves Catherine the same…
“Edgar Linton, as multitudes have been before and will be after him, was infatuated: and believed himself the happiest man alive on the day he led her to Gimmerton Chapel, three years subsequent to his father’s death.”
Catherine says, “I have such faith in Linton’s love, that I believe I might kill him, and he wouldn’t wish to retaliate.”
Confession scene:
This is one of the best-written scenes in all of literature, and has some of the most beautiful lines ever written in the English language.
Catherine confesses to Nelly that she has accepted a marriage proposal from Edgar. She says that she loves him because he is handsome, cheerful, pleasant to be with, young, he loves her, he will be rich, she would like to be the greatest woman in the neighborhood, and she would be proud of having such a husband.
“Where is the obstacle?” she asks.
“‘Here! and Here!’ replied Catherine, striking one hand on her forehead, and the other on her breast: ‘in whichever place the soul lives. In my soul and in my heart, I’m convinced I’m wrong!’”
“‘If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable.’ ‘Because you are not fit to go there,’ I answered. ‘All sinners would be miserable in heaven.’ ‘But it is not for that. I dreamt once that I was there.’”
“…heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.”
“I’ve no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn’t have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am. 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.”
Heathcliff leaves after hearing the degradation line so never hears that Catherine loves him.
Catherine says nothing can separate her and Heathcliff:
“Who is to separate us, pray? […] Not as long as I live, Ellen: for no mortal creature. Every Linton on the face of the earth might melt into nothing before I could consent to forsake Heathcliff.”
“My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff’s miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. 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. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don’t talk of our separation again.”
Heathcliff on Catherine’s deathbed scene:
“He neither spoke nor loosed his hold for some five minutes, during which period he bestowed more kisses than ever he gave in his life before…”
“‘Oh, Cathy! Oh, my life! how can I bear it?’ was the first sentence he uttered, in a tone that did not seek to disguise his despair. And now he stared at her so earnestly that I thought the very intensity of his gaze would bring tears into his eyes; but they burned with anguish: they did not melt.”
Catherine says that Heathcliff and Edgar have killed her and curses Heathcliff to suffer in her absence. She rips his hair out as he tries to stand.
“Do you reflect that all those words will be branded in my memory, and eating deeper eternally after you have left me? [...] Catherine, you know that I could as soon forget you as my existence! Is it not sufficient for your infernal selfishness, that while you are at peace I shall writhe in the torments of hell?”
“I’m not wishing you greater torment than I have, Heathcliff. I only wish us never to be parted: and should a word of mine distress you hereafter, think I feel the same distress underground…”
“Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you—oh, God! would you like to live with your soul in the grave?’”
Edgar comes home but Heathcliff refuses to leave.
“If he shot me so, I’d expire with a blessing on my lips.”
Catherine delivers her baby and then dies. It’s crazy that she’s been pregnant throughout all of this.
The characters soon learn that death is merciful and the living are the unlucky ones.
After Catherine’s death:
I enjoy Nelly’s descriptions of the peace of death:
“I am seldom otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death […] I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break…”
Heathcliff is not so soothed:
“Her life closed in a gentle dream—may she wake as kindly in the other world!” Nelly says.
“‘May she wake in torment!’ he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. ‘Why, she’s a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered dohaunt their murderers. [...] 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!’”
After Catherine dies, her body lays in an open casket. She has a locket on her neck with a lock of Edgar’s hair inside. Nelly opens the window for Heathcliff to sneak in, and she later discovers that he has come and discarded Edgar’s hair and replaced it with a lock of his own. She twists the locks of Edgar and Heathcliff’s hair together and places them in the locket.
This is one of the most powerful images of the book to me—Catherine being buried with her two lovers’ hair intertwined in her locket.
Burial:
Catherine is buried on a wild plot of land, symbolizing her resistance to being owned by either family which claimed to own her:
“The place of Catherine’s interment, to the surprise of the villagers, was neither in the chapel under the carved monument of the Lintons, nor yet by the tombs of her own relations, outside. It was dug on a green slope in a corner of the kirk-yard, where the wall is so low that heath and bilberry-plants have climbed over it from the moor...”
Once Edgar dies, he is buried by Catherine’s side. Later Heathcliff bribes the sexton to dig up Catherine’s grave, and he looks upon her face. In a fit of passion, he knocks one side of the coffin off (the side not facing Edgar) and requests to be buried next to her, with his coffin open on her side, so they can be together in death. Heathcliff’s wishes are eventually honored. I think this is the perfect representation of the love triangle. Catherine laying in the middle of her two lovers. She has Edgar on one side, buried as man and wife next to each other, and Heathcliff on the other side, with no separation between them, as each other.
Nelly asks: “Were you not ashamed to disturb the dead?”
“I disturbed nobody, Nelly […] and I gave some ease to myself. I shall be a great deal more comfortable now; and you’ll have a better chance of keeping me underground, when I get there. Disturbed her? No! she has disturbed me, night and day, through eighteen years—incessantly—remorselessly— till yesternight— and yesternight I was tranquil. I dreamt I was sleeping the last sleep by that sleeper, with my heart stopped and my cheek frozen against hers.”
“And if she had been dissolved into earth, or worse, what would you have dreamt of then?”
“Of dissolving with her, and being more happy still!”
This is not the first time Heathcliff has done this. On the day Catherine was buried, he dug up her grave.
“I’ll have her in my arms again!” He was prevented from opening the lid by a visit from her ghost, a sigh in his ear. He realizes that she will haunt him, and he is relieved but also driven mad by it.
He says that she has been torturing him from beyond the grave by visiting him but never revealing herself:
“I looked round impatiently—I felt her by me—I could almost see her, and yet I could not! I ought to have sweat blood then, from the anguish of my yearning from the fervour of my supplications to have but one glimpse! I had not one. She showed herself, as she often was in life, a devil to me! And, since then, sometimes more and some times less, I’ve been the sport of that intolerable torture! Infernal!”
“It was a strange way of killing: not by inches, but by fractions of hairbreadths, to beguile me with the spectre of a hope through eighteen years!”
I knew the book was going to contain lots of Heathcliff’s yearning for Catherine, I just didn’t realize it would be mostly after she had died. And then there’s the next generation of yearning…
Catherine’s daughter, Cathy:
Edgar and Cathy have a great relationship. They are the most important people in the world to each other.
“For a few days, I said, he seemed regardless of the puny successor to the departed: that coldness melted as fast as snow in April, and ere the tiny thing could stammer a word or totter a step it wielded a despot’s sceptre in his heart.”
He loves Cathy because she reminds him of Catherine.
Ellen notes that both Hindley and Edgar lost their wives and were left with their child, but Edgar is good-natured and Hindley is bad-natured, and they chose their own fates; Edgar’s was happiness, Hindley’s was despair.
Edgar dies peacefully, his last words being “I am going to her, and you, darling child, shall come to us.”
Cathy and Linton:
Cathy says, “He’s a pretty little darling when he’s good. I’d make such a pet of him, if he were mine.”
They exchange love letters. Nelly is against it because she knows Heathcliff’s evil plan to marry the two to gain the Lintons’ fortune, so she burns the letters in the fire in front of Cathy while she cries.
Sad as this is, Cathy and Linton are not actually meant for each other. This scene perfectly represents how her wild Earnshaw nature and his feeble Linton nature contradict (Hareton’s Earnshaw nature suits her better…):
“One time, however, we were near quarrelling. He said the pleasantest manner of spending a hot July day was lying from morning till evening on a bank of heath in the middle of the moors, with the bees humming dreamily about among the bloom, [...] and the blue sky and bright sun shining steadily and cloudlessly. That was his most perfect idea of heaven’s happiness: mine was rocking in a rustling green tree, with a west wind blowing, and bright white clouds flitting rapidly above; [...] larks [...] pouring out music on every side [...] the whole world awake and wild with joy. He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. I said his heaven would be only half alive; and he said mine would be drunk: I said I should fall asleep in his; and he said he could not breathe in mine...”
They find Catherine and Heathcliff’s old toys, and Cathy chooses C and tries to give Linton the H, after their names, but Linton doesn’t like it, symbolic of how they do not have a connection like the original Catherine and Heathcliff.
Cathy and Hareton:
Hareton is instantly captivated by Cathy: “He could not stand a steady gaze from her eyes, though they were just his own.” They have the same Earnshaw eyes because they are cousins, but it’s also symbolic of how they are the same in their souls. He has presumably never seen a girl of his age before, and she is like an exotic bird to him. There is one scene where he is so mesmerized by her hair that he strokes one lock unconsciously, to her disgust.
She mocks him for his illiteracy, even after he makes an earnest attempt to learn to write to impress her, which forms a hatred between them. Heathcliff has attempted to raise Hareton as a complete brute, and Edgar has raised Cathy to be a perfect gentlewoman, so they despise each other. Cathy eventually realizes how arrogant she was to judge him, and gifts him a book and teaches him to read.
The passage which showcases Hareton’s transformation and their love is one of my favorites, narrated by Lockwood:
“‘Con-trary!’ said a voice as sweet as a silver bell—‘That for the third time, you dunce! I’m not going to tell you again—Recollect, or I’ll pull your hair!’ ‘Contrary, then,’ answered another, in deep but softened tones. ‘And now, kiss me, for minding so well.’ ‘No, read it over first correctly, without a single mistake.’ The male speaker began to read—he was a young man, respectably dressed and seated at a table, having a book before him. His handsome features glowed with pleasure, and his eyes kept impatiently wandering from the page to a small white hand over his shoulder, which recalled him by a smart slap on the cheek, whenever its owner detected such signs of inattention. Its owner stood behind; her light, shining ringlets blending, at intervals, with his brown looks, as she bent to superintend his studies; and her face—it was lucky he could not see her face, or he would never have been so steady…”
“The task was done, not free from further blunders; but the pupil claimed a reward, and received at least five kisses; which, however, he generously returned. Then they came to the door, and from their conversation I judged they were about to issue out and have a walk on the moors.”
“‘They are afraid of nothing,’ I grumbled, watching their approach through the window. ‘Together, they would brave Satan and all his legions.’ As they stepped on to the door-stones, and halted to take a last look at the moon or, more correctly, at each other by her light…”
Heathcliff has tried to hate Hareton, because he is the son of Hindley, his mortal enemy. However, he finds only a reflection of Catherine and himself in Hareton, to his distress. When Heathcliff discovers the couple in love, they look up at him, both with the eyes of Catherine Earnshaw, which disarms him and completely erases his desire to enact revenge on them. He resigns himself to death to be with Catherine.
Heathcliff’s death:
In Heathcliff’s final moments, all he can think about is Catherine.
“and what does not recall her? I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped in the flags! In every cloud, in every tree—filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object by day I am surrounded with her image! The most ordinary faces of men and women—my own features mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!”
Heathcliff is ready to die and be reunited with her: “Last night I was on the threshold of hell. To-day, I am within sight of my heaven.”
He paces around muttering Catherine’s name “coupled with some wild term of endearment or suffering; and spoken as one would speak to a person present; low and earnest, and wrung from the depth of his soul.”
Nelly says they should call for a minister to save his soul lest he go to Hell for the life he’s lived. Heathcliff responds:
“No minister need come; nor need anything be said over me. I tell you I have nearly attained my heaven; and that of others is altogether unvalued and uncoveted by me.”
Emily Bronte is one of the best writers of all time. I like to annotate my books, and from the first page I found myself bracketing paragraphs and underlining lines excessively, to the point where mid-book I started circling entire page numbers. I had to give up because the entire book is worth highlighting.
This book also has an absolutely insane storyline. There were people fighting with knives, children being dropped from banisters and being accidentally saved, supernatural elements with dreams and ghosts, etc. As long as this review is, nothing could fully encapsulate the wild ride that is Wuthering Heights. Read it for yourself.
I will use this review to share some of my favorite scenes and excerpts from the book. Well, I have 15 pages in my Google Docs full of my favorite excerpts, so these are my favorite favorites.
Lockwood:
Lockwood calls the area where Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights sit “a perfect misanthropist’s Heaven” and declares that “Mr Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us.”
Lockwood’s endless faux pas at the beginning are quite humorous as well. After his unpleasant experiences with Heathcliff he says “I am now quite cured of seeking pleasure in society, be it country or town. A sensible man ought to find sufficient company in himself.”
Nelly’s descriptions of Catherine and Heathcliff as children:
“She was much too fond of Heathcliff. The greatest punishment we could invent for her was to keep her separate from him…”
Heathcliff would do anything for her: “how the boy would do her bidding in anything, and his only when it suited his own inclination.”
They are inseparable. They are everything to each other. They are both irreverent and naughty. They throw their Bibles into the dog kennel. They run off to the moors.
“But it was one of their chief amusements to run away to the moors in the morning and remain there all day, and the after punishment grew a mere thing to laugh at. [...] they forgot everything the minute they were together again: at least the minute they had contrived some naughty plan of revenge…”
When Catherine is injured and is taken in by the Lintons as a result, Heathcliff says:
“...kindling a spark of spirit in the vacant blue eyes of the Lintons—a dim reflection from her own enchanting face. I saw they were full of stupid admiration; she is so immeasurably superior to them—to everybody on earth, is she not, Nelly?”
Edgar’s unshakeable love for Catherine:
Edgar Linton’s parents both died of the fever that Catherine gave them and he still loves Catherine the same…
“Edgar Linton, as multitudes have been before and will be after him, was infatuated: and believed himself the happiest man alive on the day he led her to Gimmerton Chapel, three years subsequent to his father’s death.”
Catherine says, “I have such faith in Linton’s love, that I believe I might kill him, and he wouldn’t wish to retaliate.”
Confession scene:
This is one of the best-written scenes in all of literature, and has some of the most beautiful lines ever written in the English language.
Catherine confesses to Nelly that she has accepted a marriage proposal from Edgar. She says that she loves him because he is handsome, cheerful, pleasant to be with, young, he loves her, he will be rich, she would like to be the greatest woman in the neighborhood, and she would be proud of having such a husband.
“Where is the obstacle?” she asks.
“‘Here! and Here!’ replied Catherine, striking one hand on her forehead, and the other on her breast: ‘in whichever place the soul lives. In my soul and in my heart, I’m convinced I’m wrong!’”
“‘If I were in heaven, Nelly, I should be extremely miserable.’ ‘Because you are not fit to go there,’ I answered. ‘All sinners would be miserable in heaven.’ ‘But it is not for that. I dreamt once that I was there.’”
“…heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.”
“I’ve no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn’t have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am. 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.”
Heathcliff leaves after hearing the degradation line so never hears that Catherine loves him.
Catherine says nothing can separate her and Heathcliff:
“Who is to separate us, pray? […] Not as long as I live, Ellen: for no mortal creature. Every Linton on the face of the earth might melt into nothing before I could consent to forsake Heathcliff.”
“My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff’s miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. 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. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don’t talk of our separation again.”
Heathcliff on Catherine’s deathbed scene:
“He neither spoke nor loosed his hold for some five minutes, during which period he bestowed more kisses than ever he gave in his life before…”
“‘Oh, Cathy! Oh, my life! how can I bear it?’ was the first sentence he uttered, in a tone that did not seek to disguise his despair. And now he stared at her so earnestly that I thought the very intensity of his gaze would bring tears into his eyes; but they burned with anguish: they did not melt.”
Catherine says that Heathcliff and Edgar have killed her and curses Heathcliff to suffer in her absence. She rips his hair out as he tries to stand.
“Do you reflect that all those words will be branded in my memory, and eating deeper eternally after you have left me? [...] Catherine, you know that I could as soon forget you as my existence! Is it not sufficient for your infernal selfishness, that while you are at peace I shall writhe in the torments of hell?”
“I’m not wishing you greater torment than I have, Heathcliff. I only wish us never to be parted: and should a word of mine distress you hereafter, think I feel the same distress underground…”
“Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you—oh, God! would you like to live with your soul in the grave?’”
Edgar comes home but Heathcliff refuses to leave.
“If he shot me so, I’d expire with a blessing on my lips.”
Catherine delivers her baby and then dies. It’s crazy that she’s been pregnant throughout all of this.
The characters soon learn that death is merciful and the living are the unlucky ones.
After Catherine’s death:
I enjoy Nelly’s descriptions of the peace of death:
“I am seldom otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death […] I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break…”
Heathcliff is not so soothed:
“Her life closed in a gentle dream—may she wake as kindly in the other world!” Nelly says.
“‘May she wake in torment!’ he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. ‘Why, she’s a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered dohaunt their murderers. [...] 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!’”
After Catherine dies, her body lays in an open casket. She has a locket on her neck with a lock of Edgar’s hair inside. Nelly opens the window for Heathcliff to sneak in, and she later discovers that he has come and discarded Edgar’s hair and replaced it with a lock of his own. She twists the locks of Edgar and Heathcliff’s hair together and places them in the locket.
This is one of the most powerful images of the book to me—Catherine being buried with her two lovers’ hair intertwined in her locket.
Burial:
Catherine is buried on a wild plot of land, symbolizing her resistance to being owned by either family which claimed to own her:
“The place of Catherine’s interment, to the surprise of the villagers, was neither in the chapel under the carved monument of the Lintons, nor yet by the tombs of her own relations, outside. It was dug on a green slope in a corner of the kirk-yard, where the wall is so low that heath and bilberry-plants have climbed over it from the moor...”
Once Edgar dies, he is buried by Catherine’s side. Later Heathcliff bribes the sexton to dig up Catherine’s grave, and he looks upon her face. In a fit of passion, he knocks one side of the coffin off (the side not facing Edgar) and requests to be buried next to her, with his coffin open on her side, so they can be together in death. Heathcliff’s wishes are eventually honored. I think this is the perfect representation of the love triangle. Catherine laying in the middle of her two lovers. She has Edgar on one side, buried as man and wife next to each other, and Heathcliff on the other side, with no separation between them, as each other.
Nelly asks: “Were you not ashamed to disturb the dead?”
“I disturbed nobody, Nelly […] and I gave some ease to myself. I shall be a great deal more comfortable now; and you’ll have a better chance of keeping me underground, when I get there. Disturbed her? No! she has disturbed me, night and day, through eighteen years—incessantly—remorselessly— till yesternight— and yesternight I was tranquil. I dreamt I was sleeping the last sleep by that sleeper, with my heart stopped and my cheek frozen against hers.”
“And if she had been dissolved into earth, or worse, what would you have dreamt of then?”
“Of dissolving with her, and being more happy still!”
This is not the first time Heathcliff has done this. On the day Catherine was buried, he dug up her grave.
“I’ll have her in my arms again!” He was prevented from opening the lid by a visit from her ghost, a sigh in his ear. He realizes that she will haunt him, and he is relieved but also driven mad by it.
He says that she has been torturing him from beyond the grave by visiting him but never revealing herself:
“I looked round impatiently—I felt her by me—I could almost see her, and yet I could not! I ought to have sweat blood then, from the anguish of my yearning from the fervour of my supplications to have but one glimpse! I had not one. She showed herself, as she often was in life, a devil to me! And, since then, sometimes more and some times less, I’ve been the sport of that intolerable torture! Infernal!”
“It was a strange way of killing: not by inches, but by fractions of hairbreadths, to beguile me with the spectre of a hope through eighteen years!”
I knew the book was going to contain lots of Heathcliff’s yearning for Catherine, I just didn’t realize it would be mostly after she had died. And then there’s the next generation of yearning…
Catherine’s daughter, Cathy:
Edgar and Cathy have a great relationship. They are the most important people in the world to each other.
“For a few days, I said, he seemed regardless of the puny successor to the departed: that coldness melted as fast as snow in April, and ere the tiny thing could stammer a word or totter a step it wielded a despot’s sceptre in his heart.”
He loves Cathy because she reminds him of Catherine.
Ellen notes that both Hindley and Edgar lost their wives and were left with their child, but Edgar is good-natured and Hindley is bad-natured, and they chose their own fates; Edgar’s was happiness, Hindley’s was despair.
Edgar dies peacefully, his last words being “I am going to her, and you, darling child, shall come to us.”
Cathy and Linton:
Cathy says, “He’s a pretty little darling when he’s good. I’d make such a pet of him, if he were mine.”
They exchange love letters. Nelly is against it because she knows Heathcliff’s evil plan to marry the two to gain the Lintons’ fortune, so she burns the letters in the fire in front of Cathy while she cries.
Sad as this is, Cathy and Linton are not actually meant for each other. This scene perfectly represents how her wild Earnshaw nature and his feeble Linton nature contradict (Hareton’s Earnshaw nature suits her better…):
“One time, however, we were near quarrelling. He said the pleasantest manner of spending a hot July day was lying from morning till evening on a bank of heath in the middle of the moors, with the bees humming dreamily about among the bloom, [...] and the blue sky and bright sun shining steadily and cloudlessly. That was his most perfect idea of heaven’s happiness: mine was rocking in a rustling green tree, with a west wind blowing, and bright white clouds flitting rapidly above; [...] larks [...] pouring out music on every side [...] the whole world awake and wild with joy. He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. I said his heaven would be only half alive; and he said mine would be drunk: I said I should fall asleep in his; and he said he could not breathe in mine...”
They find Catherine and Heathcliff’s old toys, and Cathy chooses C and tries to give Linton the H, after their names, but Linton doesn’t like it, symbolic of how they do not have a connection like the original Catherine and Heathcliff.
Cathy and Hareton:
Hareton is instantly captivated by Cathy: “He could not stand a steady gaze from her eyes, though they were just his own.” They have the same Earnshaw eyes because they are cousins, but it’s also symbolic of how they are the same in their souls. He has presumably never seen a girl of his age before, and she is like an exotic bird to him. There is one scene where he is so mesmerized by her hair that he strokes one lock unconsciously, to her disgust.
She mocks him for his illiteracy, even after he makes an earnest attempt to learn to write to impress her, which forms a hatred between them. Heathcliff has attempted to raise Hareton as a complete brute, and Edgar has raised Cathy to be a perfect gentlewoman, so they despise each other. Cathy eventually realizes how arrogant she was to judge him, and gifts him a book and teaches him to read.
The passage which showcases Hareton’s transformation and their love is one of my favorites, narrated by Lockwood:
“‘Con-trary!’ said a voice as sweet as a silver bell—‘That for the third time, you dunce! I’m not going to tell you again—Recollect, or I’ll pull your hair!’ ‘Contrary, then,’ answered another, in deep but softened tones. ‘And now, kiss me, for minding so well.’ ‘No, read it over first correctly, without a single mistake.’ The male speaker began to read—he was a young man, respectably dressed and seated at a table, having a book before him. His handsome features glowed with pleasure, and his eyes kept impatiently wandering from the page to a small white hand over his shoulder, which recalled him by a smart slap on the cheek, whenever its owner detected such signs of inattention. Its owner stood behind; her light, shining ringlets blending, at intervals, with his brown looks, as she bent to superintend his studies; and her face—it was lucky he could not see her face, or he would never have been so steady…”
“The task was done, not free from further blunders; but the pupil claimed a reward, and received at least five kisses; which, however, he generously returned. Then they came to the door, and from their conversation I judged they were about to issue out and have a walk on the moors.”
“‘They are afraid of nothing,’ I grumbled, watching their approach through the window. ‘Together, they would brave Satan and all his legions.’ As they stepped on to the door-stones, and halted to take a last look at the moon or, more correctly, at each other by her light…”
Heathcliff has tried to hate Hareton, because he is the son of Hindley, his mortal enemy. However, he finds only a reflection of Catherine and himself in Hareton, to his distress. When Heathcliff discovers the couple in love, they look up at him, both with the eyes of Catherine Earnshaw, which disarms him and completely erases his desire to enact revenge on them. He resigns himself to death to be with Catherine.
Heathcliff’s death:
In Heathcliff’s final moments, all he can think about is Catherine.
“and what does not recall her? I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped in the flags! In every cloud, in every tree—filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object by day I am surrounded with her image! The most ordinary faces of men and women—my own features mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!”
Heathcliff is ready to die and be reunited with her: “Last night I was on the threshold of hell. To-day, I am within sight of my heaven.”
He paces around muttering Catherine’s name “coupled with some wild term of endearment or suffering; and spoken as one would speak to a person present; low and earnest, and wrung from the depth of his soul.”
Nelly says they should call for a minister to save his soul lest he go to Hell for the life he’s lived. Heathcliff responds:
“No minister need come; nor need anything be said over me. I tell you I have nearly attained my heaven; and that of others is altogether unvalued and uncoveted by me.”
March 4, 2026
Somehow had never read this before. A strange book with some repulsive and bizarrely cruel characters. However once one gets into the language it is a propulsive, unique, and absorbing tale.
June 10, 2024
My absolute all time favorite book.. first of all it's Wuthering... that's just me being technical... This book is so beautifully dark. I've read it so many times and I am soon to get a tattoo of a quote from this book. I will never get over this book and I wish every day that I could read it for the first time again.
August 4, 2024
At first, I was confused about who‘s the narrator and alle the different names and time skipes, but in the end it was a nice and well-written book about the people and the events happening in Withering Heights.
September 5, 2024
she’s dramatic like me but girl stand up also the most quoted lines just didn’t feel that impactful
February 23, 2026
If I were to summarize this book badly, I'd say that the world's worst landlord's life is retold by witnesses as a tale of sadistic torture on his tenants, as revenge for being related to the woman who was too well bred to live under his roof.
The more I reflect on this book, the more I get out of it, and that is a testament to Emily Bronte's brilliance. While at first I thought it was a cautionary tale warning of the dangers of marrying for money, I came to believe that it was more a biting indictment of the institution of marriage itself.
Certainly, there is a piece of me as a reader that wonders "What if Catherine had chosen Heathcliff?" Their union is an impossibility with the rules of Victorian England. What's more, Bronte seems to hint that their longing is part of what makes their story legendary and their attraction long-lasting. If they were legally married, would either of them take any pleasure in the union?
No, the main characters seem destined to enjoy their tortured existences, in sadistic journeys through life, where some seem to delight in the torment of others. Not incidentally, there seems to be a commentary on lustfulness itself. Perhaps Catherine and Heathcliff are drawn to one another precisely because they want what they cannot have. And here is where Bronte catches the reader in a trap: it is human nature to covet the forbidden. It is a tale as old as Adam and Eve. But what are we to make of the destruction that ensues in the text?
The title suggests that marriage is at best, a prison, and at worst, slavery. Wuthering Heights is the name of the Earnshaw family home, suggesting that marriage is about the transfer of property, and to a lesser extent wealth and status. Bronte seems to ask whether it is possible to mingle the joys of love with the bonds of marriage.
Indeed, when I try to pick apart the marriage vows, she seems most at odds with the promise "to have and to hold." Even in death, Catherine's ghost haunts Heathcliff (at his request) rather than let him go. In the most twisted perversion of marriage, Heathcliff accuses Isabella of enjoying his torture, saying "I've sometimes relented, from pure lack of invention, in my experiments of what she could endure, and still creep shamefully cringing back!" Talk about victim blaming.
In this novel, there is no torture worse than being alone in a relationship. In a well-meaning attempt to save his daughter from this fate, Edgar Linton says, "should Linton be unworthy--only a feeble tool to his father--I cannot abandon her to him! And, hard though it may be to crush her buoyant spirit, I must persevere in making her sad while I live, and leaving her solitary when I die. Darling! I'd rather resign her to God, and lay her in the earth before me." Thus Linton tries to save Cathy from his own fate, feeling unchosen and alone within the bonds of marriage.
If there is any solace in the text, I find it in metaphor. Should Wuthering Heights be a stand-in for the family legacy that we build over multiple generations, Bronte has a few words to say. One: that we will make mistakes, even grand ones, but the power of love is enough to keep the house standing through disrepair. Two: that treating one another like possessions is a damnable offense, which only puts the abuser in hell. And three: despite the turmoil of books one and two, there is hope to find love even in unlikely places. The relationship between Cathy and Hareton blossoms not because they are equals in social or intellectual terms, but because they are able to build mutual trust despite the fear of being demeaned: "both their minds tending to the same point--one loving and desiring to esteem; and the other loving and desiring to be esteemed--they contrived in the end to reach it." There is something powerful in capturing this universal desire, and perhaps that is why this terrifying book is worth reading.
The more I reflect on this book, the more I get out of it, and that is a testament to Emily Bronte's brilliance. While at first I thought it was a cautionary tale warning of the dangers of marrying for money, I came to believe that it was more a biting indictment of the institution of marriage itself.
Certainly, there is a piece of me as a reader that wonders "What if Catherine had chosen Heathcliff?" Their union is an impossibility with the rules of Victorian England. What's more, Bronte seems to hint that their longing is part of what makes their story legendary and their attraction long-lasting. If they were legally married, would either of them take any pleasure in the union?
No, the main characters seem destined to enjoy their tortured existences, in sadistic journeys through life, where some seem to delight in the torment of others. Not incidentally, there seems to be a commentary on lustfulness itself. Perhaps Catherine and Heathcliff are drawn to one another precisely because they want what they cannot have. And here is where Bronte catches the reader in a trap: it is human nature to covet the forbidden. It is a tale as old as Adam and Eve. But what are we to make of the destruction that ensues in the text?
The title suggests that marriage is at best, a prison, and at worst, slavery. Wuthering Heights is the name of the Earnshaw family home, suggesting that marriage is about the transfer of property, and to a lesser extent wealth and status. Bronte seems to ask whether it is possible to mingle the joys of love with the bonds of marriage.
Indeed, when I try to pick apart the marriage vows, she seems most at odds with the promise "to have and to hold." Even in death, Catherine's ghost haunts Heathcliff (at his request) rather than let him go. In the most twisted perversion of marriage, Heathcliff accuses Isabella of enjoying his torture, saying "I've sometimes relented, from pure lack of invention, in my experiments of what she could endure, and still creep shamefully cringing back!" Talk about victim blaming.
In this novel, there is no torture worse than being alone in a relationship. In a well-meaning attempt to save his daughter from this fate, Edgar Linton says, "should Linton be unworthy--only a feeble tool to his father--I cannot abandon her to him! And, hard though it may be to crush her buoyant spirit, I must persevere in making her sad while I live, and leaving her solitary when I die. Darling! I'd rather resign her to God, and lay her in the earth before me." Thus Linton tries to save Cathy from his own fate, feeling unchosen and alone within the bonds of marriage.
If there is any solace in the text, I find it in metaphor. Should Wuthering Heights be a stand-in for the family legacy that we build over multiple generations, Bronte has a few words to say. One: that we will make mistakes, even grand ones, but the power of love is enough to keep the house standing through disrepair. Two: that treating one another like possessions is a damnable offense, which only puts the abuser in hell. And three: despite the turmoil of books one and two, there is hope to find love even in unlikely places. The relationship between Cathy and Hareton blossoms not because they are equals in social or intellectual terms, but because they are able to build mutual trust despite the fear of being demeaned: "both their minds tending to the same point--one loving and desiring to esteem; and the other loving and desiring to be esteemed--they contrived in the end to reach it." There is something powerful in capturing this universal desire, and perhaps that is why this terrifying book is worth reading.
April 15, 2026
I'm one of those weirdos who periodically re-reads Wuthering Heights "for fun." Maybe it's because I was never forced to read it? I recently saw the Emerald Fennell movie adaptation and though she/they take liberties with the plot, and cut the story down to the tragic obsessive love story (excising the revenge tour that Heathcliff takes in the majority of the novel), I still think this movie version does what no other has done, which is to get at the marrow of the story.
So many people think - probably due to the way it was not correctly framed for them when they were forced to read it, as many a Gen X'er was forced to read it - that Wuthering Heights is all "Masterpiece Theater," all "tea and crumpets", when it is, in fact, more - as I told a Gen X friend recently, as I was urging her to read it - more like "Jerry Springer on the Moors." You just cannot BELIEVE what these people DO!
There's some real messed up shit in this story: an abandoned child living on the streets whom most people just walk on by; that child, now a man, digging up the corpse of his ex to stare at her face still appearing in tact but on the verge of turning to dust should he embrace her like he longs to do; that same man taking out his vengeance meant for the ex on ALL of her relatives and descendants, including his/her children!
And yet, and yet, if you have half a heart, you cannot help but FEEL for the characters, trapped as they are on these damned, isolated moors by the cutting rules of English hierarchical patriarchal culture at this time. Everyone in the story is just trying to survive and to wreak some love and pleasure and meaning out of life. Despite their best efforts to live a life, they're soon ground down by poverty, forced into a loveless marriage of convenience for the sake of inheritance, and/or ripped from the world by illness, age, injury, or the risks of pregnancy in age without real medicine.
No one is wholly good or bad and what a departure that was from the novels that preceded it; that's what gets skipped by a whole mess of well-meaning English teachers when they introduce Wuthering Heights to teens (and I was an English teacher so I can say it). Before this novel, almost all novels were all about the ideal lives of the upperclass. This novel pulled back the curtain, exposing the "real housewives" of the Yorkshire Moors (and of the "semi-adopted-rescued-orphans-who-became-a-house-servant-with-an-understandable-ax-to-grind" - we're lookin' at you, Heathcliff and Nelly! - who loved them).
This novel revealed that even among the wealthy, or especially among the wealthy, the pressure to get/keep houses, lands, and monies, which were tightly regulated by the crown in how they might be passed down via inheritance, forced people to make very hard choices, often drawing upon the darkest aspects of the human psyche to ruthlessly do so; very few works of fiction acknowledged the costs of this competition with the depth and breadth that Emily Bronte was willing to.
So many people think - probably due to the way it was not correctly framed for them when they were forced to read it, as many a Gen X'er was forced to read it - that Wuthering Heights is all "Masterpiece Theater," all "tea and crumpets", when it is, in fact, more - as I told a Gen X friend recently, as I was urging her to read it - more like "Jerry Springer on the Moors." You just cannot BELIEVE what these people DO!
There's some real messed up shit in this story: an abandoned child living on the streets whom most people just walk on by; that child, now a man, digging up the corpse of his ex to stare at her face still appearing in tact but on the verge of turning to dust should he embrace her like he longs to do; that same man taking out his vengeance meant for the ex on ALL of her relatives and descendants, including his/her children!
And yet, and yet, if you have half a heart, you cannot help but FEEL for the characters, trapped as they are on these damned, isolated moors by the cutting rules of English hierarchical patriarchal culture at this time. Everyone in the story is just trying to survive and to wreak some love and pleasure and meaning out of life. Despite their best efforts to live a life, they're soon ground down by poverty, forced into a loveless marriage of convenience for the sake of inheritance, and/or ripped from the world by illness, age, injury, or the risks of pregnancy in age without real medicine.
No one is wholly good or bad and what a departure that was from the novels that preceded it; that's what gets skipped by a whole mess of well-meaning English teachers when they introduce Wuthering Heights to teens (and I was an English teacher so I can say it). Before this novel, almost all novels were all about the ideal lives of the upperclass. This novel pulled back the curtain, exposing the "real housewives" of the Yorkshire Moors (and of the "semi-adopted-rescued-orphans-who-became-a-house-servant-with-an-understandable-ax-to-grind" - we're lookin' at you, Heathcliff and Nelly! - who loved them).
This novel revealed that even among the wealthy, or especially among the wealthy, the pressure to get/keep houses, lands, and monies, which were tightly regulated by the crown in how they might be passed down via inheritance, forced people to make very hard choices, often drawing upon the darkest aspects of the human psyche to ruthlessly do so; very few works of fiction acknowledged the costs of this competition with the depth and breadth that Emily Bronte was willing to.
February 8, 2026
Re-read this exceptional novel to prove that the new film adaptation is a perversion and the antithesis to Brontë's intended themes and message (of course this is solely based on the film's trailer and press relations as the film has not released in theatres yet).
- It's still an exquisitely-crafted piece of writing that has ever graced the formidable power of literature.
- Brontë heavily critiques social issues of race, gender, class, using two families living in a desolate place in Northern England.
- This novel is the epitome of Gothicism. Heathcliff is the monster as per Gothic Conventions.
- Nelly Dean is the most unreliable narrator to ever been written and I love that Brontë may have done this on purpose.
- It is horrifying and deeply disturbing at the amount of child abuse that take place and is mostly perpetrated by Heathcliff (who received abuse by others, hence, the abused becoming the abuser).
- Catherine Earnshaw is just as awful as Heathcliff and their love for each other ruined so many lives.
- The symbolism of hair colour, each family's house, the moors, all proves that Emily Brontë was truly an extraordinary writer.
This novel is still (and will always be) my favourite!
- It's still an exquisitely-crafted piece of writing that has ever graced the formidable power of literature.
- Brontë heavily critiques social issues of race, gender, class, using two families living in a desolate place in Northern England.
- This novel is the epitome of Gothicism. Heathcliff is the monster as per Gothic Conventions.
- Nelly Dean is the most unreliable narrator to ever been written and I love that Brontë may have done this on purpose.
- It is horrifying and deeply disturbing at the amount of child abuse that take place and is mostly perpetrated by Heathcliff (who received abuse by others, hence, the abused becoming the abuser).
- Catherine Earnshaw is just as awful as Heathcliff and their love for each other ruined so many lives.
- The symbolism of hair colour, each family's house, the moors, all proves that Emily Brontë was truly an extraordinary writer.
This novel is still (and will always be) my favourite!
March 8, 2026
This was one of those English lit assignments in high school or college (I forget), and I knew I needed to reread it as an adult, like I have so many other classics. I picked it up now because of the new movie version which I saw and found far removed from my memory of the book. What I liked: the characters are formed by living within a limited range of contacts and contexts and that in itself is an interesting study for any psych major. Dyfunctional family? Sure, but there is not much in the story to shock a reader in 2026. (The hints of animal cruelty are more disturbing than how the characters behave to each other.) I'm sure others are writing up the many deviations between the text and the movie (Tim Burton meets David Lynch). Shocking liberties were taken and not just those of the leads' intimacy. Trust me, the text is a more rewarding mental experience: Among other things, Nelly is not the heartless minor villain character portrayed on the screen, and those characters and key elements of the story missing from the movie round out the story in text very well. The text's ending? Well, I'll not spoil it. The dialect was something of a challenge here and there, but the reader will live in the story - the detail is rich.
September 24, 2025
Kate Bush brought me here with her song, Wuthering Heights. She really encapsulated Kathy, the vibe, and all around feel of this novel.
This was one of my hardest reads in regards to my intellect, but I’m grateful for every second of it. I truly cried when I read this novel. Not just romantically, this story is an all around tragedy. But anyone can find the beauty scattered throughout this entire novel. Emily Brontë is just amazing at portraying raw, unfiltered emotions and making you long for scenery you never thought was deserving of even a second glance.
Emily Brontë made me feel like I’m not alone in my occasional emotional outbursts. It made me really connect with the characters, but especially the author because I feel that she truly understands the most inhumane parts of what we all feel deeply ashamed of about ourselves. She accepts them, understands them, writes them, and you get to read some of the worst parts of what humans are capable of, especially when it comes to love, but it doesn’t deter you from feeling sympathy for the characters in one way or another. Except for Hindley. F*ck Hindley.
This was one of my hardest reads in regards to my intellect, but I’m grateful for every second of it. I truly cried when I read this novel. Not just romantically, this story is an all around tragedy. But anyone can find the beauty scattered throughout this entire novel. Emily Brontë is just amazing at portraying raw, unfiltered emotions and making you long for scenery you never thought was deserving of even a second glance.
Emily Brontë made me feel like I’m not alone in my occasional emotional outbursts. It made me really connect with the characters, but especially the author because I feel that she truly understands the most inhumane parts of what we all feel deeply ashamed of about ourselves. She accepts them, understands them, writes them, and you get to read some of the worst parts of what humans are capable of, especially when it comes to love, but it doesn’t deter you from feeling sympathy for the characters in one way or another. Except for Hindley. F*ck Hindley.
February 9, 2026
Once upon a time, I considered myself a romantic, but after reading this classic, I determined that I am not. What is up with the 1800's and everyone dying at such a young age? There is so much death in this novel. My goodness. Let's count...Mr. Earnshaw, Mrs. Earnshaw, Hindley Earnshaw, Frances Earnshaw, Mr. Linton, Mrs. Linton, Catherine Earnshaw, Edgar Linton, Linton Heathcliff, and Heathcliff. 11 of the main characters. Living in the 1800's was rough; they were a sickly bunch (consumption, fever, tuberculosis, alcoholism, childbirth, starvation)!! The "survivors" of the story were Joseph (curmudgeonly servant), Nelly (housekeeper), Mr. Lockwood (tenant), Hareton (son of Hindley and Frances), and Catherine (daughter of Catherine and Edgar). The only "love" I saw in this story was that between Heathcliff and the first Catherine, though it was an odd, jealous, revengeful sort of love that ended up haunting them both for eternity, which was Heathcliff's wish upon Catherine's death, so I guess that's a happy ending? I'm glad storytelling (and medical science) has progressed. The world is depressing enough without fiction adding to it.
January 28, 2026
Classic love/loss/vengeance tale set in the English moors. Ghosts, unexplained disappearances, death--all the gothic "ejaculations" one could want. I was often confused about which character was which when there were two Catherines, one lady who was called Nellie/Ellen/Mrs Dean, several people called Linton (as both a last and first name), people called Earnshaw (a last name) but also the only name of the father of one of the Catherines. Don't get me started on Heathcliff having only one name but his son taking Heathcliff as his last name? Sheesh. I needed a chart to keep track of the names but it was high time I read the actual book.
March 7, 2026
I'd never read the book as the general description had not interested me. With the new movie version out, and many who reviewed it saying they preferred the book, I figured I would give it a try. Finding the audiobook version narrated by the fabulous Adjoa Andoh was a good thing because I don't think I would have stuck with it otherwise. There are no redeeming characters in this story, and the somewhat incestuous pairings creeps me out, and not in a good way. This is only getting such a high star rating because of Adjoa's narration. But at least now I know for sure that I was right in not reading it for so long.
April 22, 2026
It is no flattering task to recall how many years it has been since I last read this, but it all comes back in an instance. I would hope that my emotional response is far more nuanced this time around. Additionally I am absolutely astounded how perfect a novel this is; many literary types claim Middlemarch as the greatest & most perfect novel, for mine it is WH.
In either case (Middlemarch or WH) this greatness was achieved without participating in university writing courses, witers festivals, social media or the wonderful aid of the modern marketing industry.
Makes one think that great literature can shine through without all the dross of the modern publishing industry.....
In either case (Middlemarch or WH) this greatness was achieved without participating in university writing courses, witers festivals, social media or the wonderful aid of the modern marketing industry.
Makes one think that great literature can shine through without all the dross of the modern publishing industry.....
October 20, 2023
Perhaps if the book had been told from the first person perspective I would have been able to connect more with the characters and their love. I felt that Heathcliff and Catherine's love was more passion than love, but this could also have happened because of what was mentioned above. I really liked the ending because I felt that it was a very good closing where it transformed the two people who were in love and served to transform the original love or passion of the two main protagonists into a true love that will last in a very beautiful way. In which where it will be able to be enjoyed.
February 15, 2026
I first read this many years ago when I was alot younger and I absolutely loved it but now after re reading it and looking at it with older eyes I think this time I felt that Catherine Earnshaw's manner was quite annoying and very selfish. Heathcliff in my eyes became a monster because of all the ill treatment heaped upon him from the first. There were so many decent people in the story destroyed by these two. Is it a love story between Catherine and Heathcliff? I hesitate to call it that. I felt the hero or in this case heroine was Nellie.
March 2, 2026
I found the language too difficult for me to continue reading. I bought it at the Indiana Landmarks Emporium in West Baden, Indiana. I loved the Piper Press edition with gilded gold pages and gold ribbon bookmark - not a good reason to buy a book, but this edition is lovely.
It was released later as a movie in 2026. I bought it before the movie. The book was over my head. It must be great literature, but I could not follow it. I might try again because of the 2026 movie.
I admire those who understood the language and read it. I wish I were among them.
It was released later as a movie in 2026. I bought it before the movie. The book was over my head. It must be great literature, but I could not follow it. I might try again because of the 2026 movie.
I admire those who understood the language and read it. I wish I were among them.
March 24, 2026
I had read this before but had forgotten much about it. What I really noticed this time around is that it's all about Nelly Dean and she seems like a potentially very unreliable narrator. The structure is odd and the 'romance' between Heathcliffe & Cathy is only a small part of the story. We don't reallt get to know many of the characters and their behaviour is inconsistent, but this is also related to us at a distance. I'm not sure what makes this such a classic although I guess it's pretty original and would have been an oddity when first published.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 29, 2026
This is the story of an infatuation taken to extremes and a person to whom good will is extended who then takes advantage of the giver. I found the telling of the tale from Nelly to Mr. Lockwood long as I did not anticipate that the novel would be greater than 50% this retelling. I wondered at Mr. Lockwood's role in the whole drama. I found it interesting to see how characters did change when they went from good living circumstances to spaces that lacked decency and love. I think that Heathcliff does seem to be romanticized in culture, even before the recent movie.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 31, 2026
I listened to the Tantor audiobook edition of this book. The production was okay but it was difficult to track who was saying what because there were so many different characters involved. Also, because of the nature of the story, it was hard to keep track of all of the relationships among the various characters. I also think I would have benefited from a refresher on English common law of property, especially the rules of inheritance, since that seems to driven so much of Heathcliff's behavior.
All in all, very sad and sorted tale.
All in all, very sad and sorted tale.
May 14, 2026
I listened to this as an audiobook (via YouTube) for a fable app book club, and honestly, I’m struggling to see the "romance" in this one. To me, this story felt like a masterclass in "how can I make everything worse?" Every single character seems to choose the most destructive path possible at every turn. While the atmosphere of the moors was vivid, the relentless cycle of revenge and obsession made it a tough listen. It’s definitely a classic for a reason, but it’s a very grim look at how bitterness can ruin multiple generations.
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