The story of Cathy Earnshaw and the wild Heathcliff as they fall in love on the Yorkshire moors spans three generations and is seen through the eyes of the narrators Lockwood and Nelly Dean. Emily Bronte tells of the passion between Cathy and Heathcliff with such vivid intensity that her tale of tragic love has gripped readers for over 100 years.
Book Description: Cambridge Literature is a series of literary texts edited for study by students aged 14-18 in English-speaking classrooms. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte is edited by Richard Hoyes, Head of English and Media Studies, Farnham College, Surrey.
Wuthering Heights ^ If there is one thing I learned from reading Wuthering Heights it is that you can like a book without really liking any of the main characters. Wuthering is a tragic love story of sorts. It centers on Catherine, daughter of Mr. Earnshaw who owns the manor Wuthering Heights, and Heathcliff the orphan he brings home who never quite fits in. Heathcliff and Cathy are the greatest of friends in childhood and remain so throughout most of their lives. The friendship blossoms into love but they are fated not to be together as Heathcliff comes from nothing and instead of following her heart, Cathy marries Edgar Linton whose acquaintance she made while on an adventure with Heathcliff. When Heathcliff realizes he will never have Cathy he does everything he can to push a wedge between her and Edgar including running off with Edgar's sister Isabella which causes Cathy such emotional distress that she never recovers.
What follows is Cathy's tragic death which turns Heathcliff's soul black and he devotes the rest of his days trying to seek revenge on Edgar for taking her affections away. He uses all those around him to achieve his means including his own son by Isabella and Cathy and Edgar's daughter Cathy.
Ultimately the story does have somewhat of a happy ending as Heathcliff's plans to take over the lives of everyone around him and gain their money for himself is thwarted by his death and an unexpected love blossoms.
The entire story of Heathcliff and Cathy is related by Mrs. Dean, the housekeeper who has been at Wuthering Heights for the entire time. The tone of the entire book is so melancholy that you begin to wonder if anything good will ever happen to anyone. Heathcliff is such a vile character. It seems he cares for no one but himself but his actions stem from losing the one love of his life.
The book held my interest because I kept wondering to what lengths Heathcliff would go to achieve his ambitions and also wondering if any of the other characters would grow a backbone and oppose him. I think it was definitely worth a read because it was a different kind of love story. In most of the other books I have read with love as a theme, I rooted for both of the main characters to overcome the obstacles that prevented their being together. Here I didn't have that same feeling. You know its a doomed love and are certain it will never be but you feel compelled to see where it ends up anyway.
Interestingly, this is the only book ever published by Emily Bronte before her death. It was published under the name Ellis Bell, a generic name so people might think she was a main and give credence to the work. The novel was originally a complete failure and didn't gain attention until it was re-released after Emily's death.
Totally undeserving of the acclaim it always gets ^ I'm just gonna come out and admit it: I HATE Wuthering Heights. I hated the story and mostly I really hated the characters. I wanted every one of them to die and wished they had done so sooner. And, honestly, I don't think it's very good writing.
I expected to love this book, and really wanted to, because Emily Bronte's fantasy world from her youthful writing really appeals to me and I wanted her to become a favorite author of mine. But this is just awful.
A "love" story? But where is the love? ^ This is supposed to be "one of the most famous love stories in the English language" (this is what the back flip of the Oxford University Press edition says), but where is the love? The characters are all selfish and self-obsessed, especially that monster Heathcliff, who even tortured his own son to death for he is hellbent on his imaginary revenge. The other characters are not much better, they are all psychologically immature and unstable, relishing on mentally and sometimes physically abusing others. As a book it also has little about the social institutions of the period, the story takes place within two households, which eventually merged into one with a couple of (I would say incestuous) marriages. The characters are also not very believable (for example, how do they earn their living? How did Heathcliff make his fortune in a short three years? The author does not say). They die far too easily from grief and anger. They have just one thing in mind: to hate and torture others around them. They have little interactions with other people except within their shrinking inbred gene pool. They seem more like the manufacture of a mentally ill social recluse, which I think more or less fits the description of the author herself. It is altogether a very dark and sordid story.
I think Emily Bronte could actually write, but what a waste of her gift!
Who doesn't love Heathcliff! ^ There is little I can add to the body of work devoted to this excellent novel. But who doesn't love Healthcliff - the prototype for all tortured, romantic souls after him. A wonderful read that should be required for all. Bronte, like all great authors, is as much psychologist is she is an artist, and her writing could even be placed quite neatly, if one so wished, under the mantle of the attachment theories that came after her time.
About THIS EDITION (Collector's Library) ^ First of all, this is one of my all-time favorite books. Wuthering Heights in general gets 5 stars from me, and there are plenty of other opinions about the story for you to read. I just want to add something about this particular edition, because it made me laugh in surprise when I opened up my package. This edition is very elegant, but it's very different from your average hard-backed novel. It's very compact and the pages are very thin, like a pocket Bible. The only reason I don't like it so much is that since the pages are so thin you can see the ghost of the words of the preceding page through the page you're reading. You get used to it as you read, but I prefer a print of more substance. Other than that, the cover is pretty, it's hard-backed, the pages are edged in gold coloring and it comes with an attached ribbon bookmark. The print is also average sized, so it's definitely readable, and the small size is advantageous if you want to carry it with you in a purse or on a trip.
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