Will I love Wuthering Heights?

This was a reread for me, but somehow, I enjoyed it more than the first time through! What an incredible story. I love how Emily Brontë makes use of two characters, both somewhat removed from the central actions of the story, to tell the central story.

Sometimes, when a story changes main characters half-way through, I get lost as a reader, or stop caring so much; but with Wuthering Heights, it's the opposite. Because of the way the first half of the novel plays out, I couldn't help but want to know what happened to the two, new characters—these descendants… show more.

Like many avid readers, I maintain a list of books that I hope to read in my lifetime. My list includes numerous classics of English literature, and I recently had the pleasure of crossing Emily Brontë's sole novel, "Wuthering Heights," off my list.

Brontë's masterful use of language, evident in both her characters' dialogue and her poetic descriptions of the northern English countryside, reminded me of the power of great writing. Reading "Wuthering Heights" while on sabbatical in Sheffield, located in South Yorkshire and near where Brontë grew up in West Yorkshire, allowed me to connect with the novel's moorish… show more.

Emily Bronte wrote one novel in her short life, but what an amazing novel it is. The anti-heroes Heathcliff (rough, bitter, and rude from early mistreatment) and his childhood beloved, Catherine (spoiled and willful), are unique in fiction, and when they go head-to-head, there’s no stopping them. But Bronte doesn’t make it easy to understand them.

Heathcliff obsessively pursues Catherine after she’s married, but what she feels for him has been debated by many scholars, such as myself–some say it’s not sexual, but I disagree. The scene where they finally kiss and cling to each other while she is eight… show more.

Rarely have I opted to read a book twice, but the love story between Catherine and Heathcliff is so well written and so emotionally charged it drew me in and made me forget I was alone and single. Of course, I had to re-read it.

The first time I read this book was in school, but later, when I dreamed of having a true love, or learning about true love, this book seemed to be the case study of the type of love I was searching for. I knew in my heart, that someday, something similar could possibly be mine.

So much gnashing of teeth and flinging of oneself on the moors under lowering skies. A narrative as gnarly as the roots of an ancient tree. Everyone in the book is miserable, and then just about everyone dies. 

So why am I crazy about Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights?

It is a generational tale of revenge, a ghost story, and a mystery (where did Heathcliff go for three years?) rolled into one. But mostly, it is a love-gone-wild romance novel. Catherine and Heathcliff’s connection is beyond reason, beyond the grave, beyond themselves. They are each other. Against my own reason,… show more.

I have about five different editions of this amazing book. Heathcliff, Cathy, Thrushcross Grange…it’s all so bleak, gothic, and full of exclamation marks that you have to love its drama and tragedy set within the Yorkshire Moors.

At the heart of it, I love that Heathcliff (although exhibiting questionable behavior by today’s standards) is a foundling-done-good. I love a story where the discarded underdog ends up in a massive house on the moors with loads of money. Nevertheless, it is a tricky read, switching between narratives, but who hasn’t burst into song ‘a la Kate Bush’ upon hearing that title?

I’ve loved this book since I was thirteen. Even as an adolescent, I was swept up by the romance and the tragedy.

When I read this book, I’m instantly on the Yorkshire moors, sooty clouds hovering above, watching Heathcliff, his dark hair ruffling and his tattered sleeves flapping in the brittle wind. If unrequited love is a romance trope, then this book is the unqualified architect of the genre.

I periodically dust off my copy, yellowed pages and all, for a re-read. I’m such an immersive and visual reader; I can see the torture in Heathcliff’s eyes, the despair in… show more.

I read this book several times as a teenager. I loved it for the wild Cathy and the brooding Heathcliff, and, needless to say, I identified strongly with them. Ever since, it’s been part of my mental landscape.

Imagine my surprise, then, to find when I read it again all these years later that I saw it all in a different light. I saw that the behaviour of Cathy and Heathcliff, while I could still identify with it, had, in fact, been destructive, that they had visited a terrible legacy on the next generation, their children.

And suddenly the book… show more.

I remember first reading this when I was in my teens. The darkness and the cruelty of such a gothic romance was both thrilling to read and utterly devastating.

While this novel seems less popular than Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre - and in many ways Jane Eyre is the more accomplished novel - I have always been more drawn to the tragic wild allure of Emily's much rawer passion. 

Maybe you’ve read this book, maybe you haven’t, but to me it still remains one of the greatest love stories of all time, mostly because it’s a very screwed-up love story! That’s what I love about Cathy and Heathcliff: they’re both pretty awful people!

She’s a spoilt brat and he’s been ruined by his tough upbringing and their relationship is a mess. But the love that they have for one another is elemental – an absolute force of nature – that not only destroys their own lives but those of all around them, like a catastrophic storm.

As messed up… show more.