Review: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Set among the bleak, windy moors of Yorkshire, the novel follows the luckless Earnshaw family across two generations through the eyes of their longtime servant, Nelly Dean. When a tenant at Thrushcross Grange, a property near Wuthering Heights (the Earnshaw house), falls ill, Nelly entertains him with the Earnshaws’ story, starting from when they adopted a child named Heathcliff. Heathcliff and his foster sister, Catherine, forged a powerful bond in the face of their older brother Hindley’s tyranny, but their love—unsurprisingly—was doomed from the start.

Published: December 14 1847 by Thomas Newby

Genre: Classic, Gothic

Rating: 4 stars

Spoilers ahead. Read at your own risk!

“You say I killed you—haunt me, then!”

Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë’s only novel, was published in 1847 to mixed reception. Critics praised Emily’s “rough dashes at characters” and compared the author to a sculptor destined for greatness but not yet graduated from the crude marble likenesses of her artistic infancy. So, then, why has Wuthering Heights stood the test of time when other, perhaps more skillfully written stories have not? Why has it become a fixture of high school English curriculums (and the common enemy of the teenage students trying to analyze it)? Why is this particular novel, with its raw prose and thoroughly unlikeable characters, considered one of the greatest works of English literature?

Well, I’ll put my two cents in. 

First, originality.

Wuthering Heights strikes a stark and memorable contrast with the English literature of the time. It lacks the refined, learned quality that comes from an upper-class education because Wuthering Heights is not an upper-class book. Like Emily herself, the book is a child of the wild, muddy, isolated moors the characters call home. It is written in unrefined but powerful language that cuts out the flowery filler words so common to writing of the time. Emily, having lived isolated in the country her whole life, had little experience with and no respect for such niceties. Wuthering Heights includes thick, nearly unintelligible Yorkshire accents like Joseph’s, furthering the idea that this book is not meant to be comfortable to read to those used to the educated, layered prose, tasteful settings, and easily palatable characters of other Victorian novels. It defies convention, and honestly, it defies classification. Most would call it a romance, but “romance” does not begin to cover the connection between Heathcliff and Catherine. “Obsession” might be a better word, or perhaps there is no word at all to describe how Catherine and Heathcliff were so intimately linked that Catherine felt Heathcliff to be “more myself than I am.” Maybe it could be classified as a tragedy, but the gleam of hope the last few pages impart assures us that a happy ending isn’t completely out of the question. So Wuthering Heights cannot easily be classified, and that is a testament to its strength.

Second, realism.

Wuthering Heights takes a realistic, albeit pessimistic, view of life. In this story, the apple rarely falls far from the tree. Heathcliff suffered abuse from Hindley throughout his childhood, and we don’t know what he might have gone through before John Earnshaw found him starving on the streets of Liverpool. Heathcliff’s pain didn’t make him stronger; it twisted his mind and froze his heart. What he suffered in childhood he repaid tenfold to those around him, except for Catherine, the only person who had ever been kind to him and the object of his manic, nearly savage obsession. Catherine, though she loved Heathcliff just as deeply as he loved her, could be selfish, cruel, and childish. Both doomed lovers passed some of their worst qualities, as well as the brunt of their trauma, on to their children. The Earnshaws were badly damaged, and where a lesser writer would avoid the consequences of that damage by applying a tired literary trope (love heals all, etc.) like a bandaid over a dam, Emily wrote characters who respond realistically to the trauma they faced. Yes, they are all pretty much worst-case scenarios, and yes, I hate Heathcliff just as much as you do, but it’s difficult not to admire the sophisticated understanding of childhood and generational trauma that Wuthering Heights displays.

Finally, pathos.

Although Heathcliff is far from a sympathetic character, his adoration for Catherine and his agony after her death are written so rawly that the reader can’t help but feel just a hint of pity. To write such a detestable, malicious devil of a man in a way that garners sympathy is no easy task, but what reviewers saw as Emily’s weakness—her unpolished writing style—was actually a gift. Her raw, expressive language exposes what hides behind Heathcliff’s stern demeanor: an anguish so great and so horrible that it can hardly be contained by one man. It spills out through the cracks in his soul, contaminating everything around him, and somehow the reader understands. They don’t approve, but they understand, and perhaps a part of them even believes that Heathcliff deserved better. Catherine, too, invokes pity despite the fact that she really brought all of this on herself. Wuthering Heights’ emotional dialogue and evocative descriptions turn monsters into men, and its treatment of love and loss gives it an authentic, exposed quality that not many books can match.

Wuthering Heights is a chilling study of the darkest side of human nature. The characters aren’t easy to love; they’re not even easy to like. But there’s something about the inhabitants of that dark, overgrown house nestled in the craggy moors that has kept generations of readers coming back for more. Wuthering Heights is certainly a novel like no other, and I believe that its originality, its grittily realistic treatment of suffering, and its pure poignancy are what make it so difficult to forget.

Why do you believe Wuthering Heights is considered a classic? What did you think of it? Let me know down below!