Wuthering Heights

Written by Emily Bronte and having been adapted for the screen many times, Wuthering Heights is quite probably the most horrific and terrifying gothic ‘romance’ ever conceived and written. For those people who have not read it and picture it as being a wonderful tragic romance, be warned that whilst the romance is tragic, the book itself is downright vicious, far, far, removed from the writings of Emily’s sisters. 

Kate Bush’s hauntingly beautiful song feels a little contradictory when considering the tone and the events chronicled in this novel. 

Upon moving to the wild moors and countryside of England, Londoner Mr. Lockwood, in view of being socially polite, pays a visit to his landlord: a Mr. Heathcliff. Upon crossing the threshold of Heathcliff’s home, Wuthering Heights, Lockwood is startled at the uncouth and brutal hospitality that the tenants show towards him and each other. Deeply disturbed, but strangely curious of the natures of Heathcliff and his ‘family’ at Wuthering Heights, Lockwood questions his housemaid, Nelly, about them and discovers that Nelly knows the tenants of the Heights very well indeed. Nelly proceeds to divulge a horrific tale of a mysterious child, a doomed romance, abandoned love, obsession, madness, and passionate revenge. 

If you look to this book for the beautifully tragic love story of Cathy and Heathcliff, two names that sit themselves within the sphere of literature’s most celebrated lovers, be sure to have some Panadol on standby. Whilst I cannot deny that at the centre of all this there is a love story, it is very unlike the one of Jane and Rochester that I think many Wuthering Heights virgins might think of when hearing the name ‘Bronte’. I certainly pictured a relationship etched in devotion, overcoming the nasty nature of the male; I was quite taken aback let me tell you when I did finally sit down and read the tale. 

A story within a story, in fact many stories within stories really as narrated and re-narrated through different and many characters, Wuthering Heights is a deceptively small book that packs a lot of punch. 

For a start, all the characters are awful. I mean, aside from maybe Nelly (and even she’s a bit of a question mark), there is absolutely no one is this book that you can like, sympathise, or empathise with. On some level it’s actually fantastic in that way. I say ‘awful’ and I mean awful, even the child characters are horrible cretins that you just want to aim a good kick up the backside at! 

But it’s not so much the story as the remarkable themes Bronte explores that makes this book so iconic. The Cathy and Heathcliff romance shifts to the backseat when the themes of the evils of society and isolation take the steering wheel! Having grown up in an isolated household, Bronte writes with a vicious expertise and the book is rich with these ideas of the diseased landscape, the tainted property, and the evils of growing from childhood to adulthood. Even though the larger portion of the tale is physical retelling of past events, the themes are so succinctly conveyed, illustrated into three-dimensional characters that, you can see, each get their spirits broken by the harsh master of their setting. 

Filled with horror, romance, drama, obsession, madness, and revenge, Wuthering Heights is a fantastically frightening but really rich book and, although I know I haven’t made it sound all that appealing, if you can rid that mindset of the Jane/Rochester lovers (I do think it might be better for people to enter the tale prepared), then it’s a book that will really stay with you. It’s really quite fabulous in a vicious and brutal way.