Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

May you not rest, as long as I am living. You said I killed you – haunt me, then’.


A classic novel that has definitely stood the test of time. Wuthering Heights deals with obsessive love and the ultimate revenge that has far reaching effects.

The story centres on the Linton’s, the Earnshaw’s and Heathcliffe, a foundling brought into the Earnshaw family and raised as a sibling to Catherine and her brother Hindley. Catherine and Heathcliffe are like two peas in a pod, and spend every waking moment together playing wildly out on the Yorkshire moors. However, an accident one day brings Catherine into the fold of the Linton’s who bring out her more feminine side and for a while subdue her wild ways.

When Catherine eventually marries Edgar Linton, Heathcliffe cannot bear the rejection although at first Catherine seems unaware of the anguish she has caused. When he finally confronts her she is distraught and through her desperate efforts to appear the victim she becomes ill eventually dying in childbirth, although the daughter Cathy survives.

Heathcliffe then contrives to wreak his retribution on the Linton’s for taking Catherine, and on the Earnshaws because of his dislike of Hindley, by ensuring he becomes owner and beneficiary of all properties and wills with a view to impoverishing and enslaving their descendants. He almost succeeds.

Published in 1847 under the name of Ellis Bell, the language is dated, and at times annoying. The man servant Joseph’s dialogue is written totally in the Yorkshire accent and is very difficult to read, it would have been better to have just had a few thee’s and thou’s thrown in to normal English to get the idea!

The character names such as Catherine and Cathy, Linton as a surname and then as the forename of Heathcliffe’s natural son, plus other names such as Hindley and Hareton cause some confusion within this intricate web of relationships and a storyline that flips from past to present and back. In addition we are exposed to three forms of narration. The narrator is Lockwood the new tenant of one of Heathcliffe’s properties, but the housekeeper Mrs Dean becomes the main narrator for most of the story within Lockwood’s narration, and mini narrations are introduced within Mrs Dean’s from other minor characters.

However, with this aside the opening chapter where Lockwood is forced to spend the night at Wuthering Heights due to sudden inclement weather and experiences the ghostly return of Catherine is very creepy and quite horrific when you consider when it was written. Spine chilling and haunting.

Tragically Emily Jane Bronte died 19 December 1848 aged 30 from consumption, just one year after Wuthering Heights was published.