11 of 16

Write now Article Tools

Emily Bronte rocked the Victorians' world with her cast of characters on the wuthering Yorkshire moors. The reticent, strong-willed preacher's daughter created a masterwork that has no equal in literature. Published in 1847, Wuthering Heights stands alone in the pantheon of immortal novels with its unflinching view of human nature at its most extreme. To view this unique book as simply a love story is to overlook the remarkable accomplishment that a supposedly unworldly author achieved. Yes, it's a love story, but one at its most primordial and complex. This is no pretty, romantic view of everlasting love. This is savage, unrelenting passion meshed with pain. Raw, violent and beautiful as the moors themselves...that untamed tract of wilderness, home to sheep, lapwings, grouse, rock, bog and heather. Cathy and Heathcliff, the incendiary core around which the entire novel revolves, are the human (and possibly, inhuman) manifestations of the elements. "My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneatha source of little visible delight, but necessary."

Two families figure prominently in the book. The Earnshaws of the Heights and the representatives of "civilized" behavior, the Lintons of Thrushcross Grange. In contrast to the wild, exposed location of Wuthering Heights, the Grange is set in a cultivated park sheltered from the storms that the Heights is constantly prey to. This pronounced difference between locations mirrors the glaring personality differences between the residents of the Heights (Cathy, Heathcliff, Hindley Earnshaw) and the gentry of the Grange (Edgar and his sister, Isabella). Edgar's proposal of marriage to Catherine Earnshaw is the catalyst for a juggernaut of disasters that consume all of the principal characters. The second generation, Cathy Linton (daughter of Catherine and Edgar), Linton Heathcliff (son of Heathcliff and Isabella) and Hareton Earnshaw (son of Hindley, Cathy's brother) are swept into the ensuing maelstrm with only Cathy and Hareton surviving and thriving. The story is recounted by multiple narrators (primarily Nelly Dean, the housekeeper and Mr. Lockwood, the new tenant at the Grange) in a series of flashbacks that deftly peel back the outer layers of the story to expose its wild heart. Wuthering Heights is a genius work of craft and passion, blending the supernatural with the down-to-earth, the base with the sublime. Heathcliff, the orphan whom Cathy's father took a strange liking, became the whipping boy

• 1
• 2
• next page >>

Add your voice

Know something about Book reviews: Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte?
We want to hear your view. Write now!