Name: Wuthering Heights
Rating: 3.799058084772371 (1911 reviews)
ISBN: 9781435136540

Tess O'Toole

Emily Brontë

Presented in hardcover, this title has been carefully edited and reset in a modern design for greater readability. It includes an introduction, informative notes and a chronology of the writer's life and times to enable the reader to gain a deeper understanding of these enduring works.

Wuthering Heights

fleabag

Stavros Kosmas

clara

Daniela

Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same

avarni

Jacqui Spears

Rafaela Sousa

Malou Vandeput

Jasmine

Moira

Lucía RG

karissa🌙

Emily Netherland

The passionate love of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff mirrors the powerful moods of the Yorkshire moors.

michelle

<blockquote>
 “He is more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same. If all else perished and he remained, I should still continue to be, and if all else remained, and we were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger. He’s always, always in my mind; not as a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.” 
</blockquote>

Cime Tempestose

Sarà per la traduzione eccellente, sarà per la storia intrigante, ma questo libro è diventati uno dei miei preferiti. Nonostante una iniziale e del tutto giustificabile confusione tra Linton Heathcliff, il signor Linton e il signor Heathcliff, e le die Catherine la trama è avvincente e ben costruita. Mi è venuto spontaneo il paragone tra questo romanzo e Orgoglio e Pregiudizio della Austen e devo dire che Cime Tempestose lo batte di molto. Almeno per i miei gusti.

Tim Pendry

Deep and dark, the greatest of the gothic romances - you cannot say that you know Eng Lit unless you have read this. edit | delete review

Mansi Pasari

The dialogues and emotions create a world of their own 

Wuthering Heights is Emily Brontë's only novel. It was first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, and a posthumous second edition was edited by her sister Charlotte. The name of the novel comes from the Yorkshire manor on the moors on which the story centres (as an adjective, wuthering is a Yorkshire word referring to turbulent weather). The narrative tells the tale of the all-encompassing and passionate, yet thwarted, love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys them and many around them.

Everyone be like “this is a stunning gothic novel” and what does that mean? It means, it’s dark, it’s twisted, it’s at times gory. This is a classic tale of misunderstood lovers. Once I completed it, I was happy to know the story but it’s a challenging read. 

Angel Hammon

In Emily Brontë's only novel, the passion of Catherine and Heathcliff is as wild as the moors surrounding their childhood home, Wuthering Heights. This dark tale of love and loss, power and possession, action and terrifying reaction, stands as one of the greatest works of fiction in the English language.

Chiltern Edition

Yulez

Loved this gothic novel and how every character was so unlikeable that I ended up liking that the most about this.

In nineteenth-century Yorkshire, the passionate attachment between a headstrong young girl and a foundling boy brought up by her father causes disaster for them and many others, even in the next generation.

this is such a third world romance type of book except they lived during the 18th century and was set in Yorkshire. 

i hated heathcliff BUT i did somehow get him.. BUT I DEFINITELY HATED HIM(lol).  I find him despicable and sinister but anyone would be as vengeful as him if placed in the same situation lol. 

march🐇

this is such a third world romance type of book except they lived during the 18th century and was set in Yorkshire. 

i hated heathcliff BUT i did somehow get him.. BUT I DEFINITELY HATED HIM(lol).  I find him despicable and sinister but anyone would be as vengeful as him if placed in the same situation lol. 

When I bought my copy of this a couple years ago in a used bookstore, I picked it up because it was cheap and I knew it as a classic. I admit, I was reluctant to start due to a specific kind of sexist thought process of: "I imagine this book that I only know of as a romance, written by a surely-aristocratic woman in the 1800s, has to be a stuffy, old-timey melodramatic bore." I expected lots of run-on poetic "I love you" chants in the rain. I wasn't and am still not lured in by a "romance" book at all. I figured with the movie coming out it would be a somewhat topical reading choice, so I bit the bullet and went for it.

I am pleased to say this book was not at all what I expected. The "romance" is a horribly warped one between two morons, both with a complete neglect for anyone but themselves. They're seemingly only drawn to each other because their opposite reminds them of themselves -- mostly their varied levels of psychoticism.

This book is primarily about Heathcliff ruining everybody around him, and some (most) of these people really do deserve his wrathful plague. Everybody sucks (Linton is a living joke) and you will cherish their absurd miseries. My favorite thing about this book, no question, was Brontë's dark, wicked humor. There are so many hilarious moments throughout, but my favorite laugh-out-loud bit was Hindley's final battle with Heathcliff. Hindley just locking Heathcliff out of the house repeatedly, sometimes while it snows, makes me chuckle now thinking about it. They're both such pricks.

Like "Moby Dick", "Wuthering Heights" is something of a time capsule, yet also like MD it remains exceptionally easy and compelling to read. Brontë's prose is excellent, I suppose it can be called "stained glass" but I think her word choices were very interesting, varied, and always painted a clear picture. Seeing how much happens throughout the book, it's arguably extremely dense, but it never felt curt. She took her time yet never rambled.

I did hate every time Joseph opened his mouth. Was was happening there, he was insufferably Scottish? Brontë had a laugh to herself writing out everything he said phonetically, I'm sure.

I highly recommend "Wuthering Heights". I'm calling it early, but this is sure to be my favorite romance of all time, probably because it's not a romance at all and thank god for that.

Evan

This was an extremely good book.

When I bought my copy of this a couple years ago in a used bookstore, I picked it up because it was cheap and I knew it as a classic. I admit, I was reluctant to start due to a specific kind of sexist thought process of: "I imagine this book that I only know of as a romance, written by a surely-aristocratic woman in the 1800s, has to be a stuffy, old-timey melodramatic bore." I expected lots of run-on poetic "I love you" chants in the rain. I wasn't and am still not lured in by a "romance" book at all. I figured with the movie coming out it would be a somewhat topical reading choice, so I bit the bullet and went for it.

I am pleased to say this book was not at all what I expected. The "romance" is a horribly warped one between two morons, both with a complete neglect for anyone but themselves. They're seemingly only drawn to each other because their opposite reminds them of themselves -- mostly their varied levels of psychoticism.
This book is primarily about Heathcliff ruining everybody around him, and some (most) of these people really do deserve his wrathful plague. Everybody sucks (Linton is a living joke) and you will cherish their absurd miseries. My favorite thing about this book, no question, was Brontë's dark, wicked humor. There are so many hilarious moments throughout, but my favorite laugh-out-loud bit was Hindley's final battle with Heathcliff. Hindley just locking Heathcliff out of the house repeatedly, sometimes while it snows, makes me chuckle now thinking about it. They're both such pricks.

Like "Moby Dick", "Wuthering Heights" is something of a time capsule, yet also like MD it remains exceptionally easy and compelling to read. Brontë's prose is excellent, I suppose it can be called "stained glass" but I think her word choices were very interesting, varied, and always painted a clear picture. Seeing how much happens throughout the book, it's arguably extremely dense, but it never felt curt. She took her time yet never rambled.
I did hate every time Joseph opened his mouth. Was was happening there, he was insufferably Scottish? Brontë had a laugh to herself writing out everything he said phonetically, I'm sure.

I highly recommend "Wuthering Heights". I'm calling it early, but this is sure to be my favorite romance of all time, probably because it's not a romance at all and thank god for that.

Beautiful and devastating. It encapsulates so well the range of human emotion while distinctly feeling like a fictional story. It's exaggerative and dramatic, yet raw and real. I think Jane Eyre still remains my favorite Brontë but both novels are trying to convey different messages and they do, in their own right. 

Paige Leitner

"May you not rest, as long as I am living. You said I killed you - haunt me, then" Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord.
There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before: of the intense passion between the foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and her betrayal of him. As Heathcliff's bitterness and vengeance is visited upon the next generation, their innocent heirs must struggle to escape the legacy of the past.

Joana

I was really looking forward to reading this. So disappointed. 

Georgia Adams

Eva Cace

Insane- hilarious - hard to keep up. This is my second time reading and I took the characters way less seriously this time. They’re horrid! The first time I was in love with Heathcliff and now I find he and Cathy and everyone involved expect Nelly just soOoO self absorbed. It’s a fantastic book. Couldn’t tear through anything from 1847 faster. Love the drama, love the intensity, love the insanity, love the ghosts. Bah so good. So grim. So perfect for January.  

Lily Dendy

Gabe Cortez

Ask me about this book and I WILL mention tuberculosis and I WILL defend Heathcliff’s actions 

Margo Koss

Heathcliff’s affliction from separation from Catherine due to his otherness (different social class & non-white in appearance) leads to vengeance, death, and ultimately shapes the dynamics of two families. 

I had read about quite many morally ambiguous characters, even if they’re the main characters, but the difference in Emily Brontë’s writing is that almost all characters are either morally ambiguous to extremely cruel. She wrote that the abused can be the abuser. That people of “higher” social class may love a person from a “lower” social class than them but still want to maintain their status quo. That unrequited love that is riddled with different social classes may not have a redemption arc but instead will produce a cruelty and horror that will haunt generations after them

Fasiha🌺🐧

Heathcliff’s affliction from separation from Catherine due to his otherness (different social class & non-white in appearance) leads to vengeance, death, and ultimately shapes the dynamics of two families. 

I had read about quite many morally ambiguous characters, even if they’re the main characters, but the difference in Emily Brontë’s writing is that almost all characters are either morally ambiguous to extremely cruel. She wrote that the abused can be the abuser. That people of “higher” social class may love a person from a “lower” social class than them but still want to maintain their status quo. That unrequited love that is riddled with different social classes may not have a redemption arc but instead will produce a cruelty and horror that will haunt generations after them

Rip Cathy and Heathcliff you would've loved Melodrama!!!!!

Regan Martin

while it stands true that a book should not be evaluated on the basis of how likeable the characters are, i couldn’t help but feel that my primary impediment to thoroughly enjoying this came from the insufferableness of nearly the entire cast of characters. i knew this was no jane austen, but i honestly never expected heathcliff to be such an unredeemable monster from all the times i've heard people hail him as their ideal fictional man!

still, it's definitely a book i'll think about for a while, or, to put it even better, will haunt me for a while. i believe a rewatch of the 1939 movie is now in order. 

while it stands true that a book should not be evaluated on the basis of how likeable the characters are, i couldn’t help but feel that my primary impediment to thoroughly enjoying this came from the insufferableness of nearly the entire cast of characters. i knew this was no jane austen, but i honestly never expected heathcliff to be such an unredeemable monster from all the times i've heard people hail him as their ideal fictional man!

still, it's definitely a book i'll think about for a while, or, to put it even better, will haunt me for a while. i believe a rewatch of the 1939 movie is now in order. 

Liking the crazed, unhinged, feral behavior of her characters to that of a dog was most compelling, and an allegory I wish she developed further instead of leaving to moments of particular intensity, e.g. Lockwood attempting to run off and being pounced by Heathcliff’s dogs, Heathcliff in his cruel fits of passion and fury.

Overall, none of the characters were likeable, not even the narrators Nelly and Lockwood, who revealed their biases in their own ways.

And I found the fuel of my interest in this book was craving some sort of resolution, redemption, freedom for any one of these characters, each who suffer miserable endings in their own ways.

But I find that this must just be the quintessential British tone: melodramatic and continuous, restrained suffering. We see it in the kitchen sink dramas of Eastenders and period dramas like Downton Abbey. And now I am fortunate to witness its roots in the 1800 classics of the Romantic, gothic era of literature, and get a glimpse into the life of Northern England at that time.

Perhaps I felt most connected to Heathcliff in his most passionate fits. The feeling is so familiar: the feeling of being clouded with a rage, pain, fury so intense that you yourself, and neither those of onlookers, can see the purity of the love and loss that drives it all at the core. A feeling that I experienced so vividly as a child, uncontrollable fits likened to an exorcism, one that leaves you uncontrollably shaking, banging, and smashing doors. I have since tempered as an adult, but find myself revisiting the feeling, albeit in much more manageable doses, every now and then: in heartbreak, betrayal, and loss of adult life.

I’m particularly moved by his monologue upon learning of Catherine’s death:

“May she wake in torment!” he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. “Why, she’s a liar to the end! Where is she? Not 

—not in heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest, as long as I am living! You said I killed you—haunt me then! The murdered haunt their murderers. I believe—I know that ghosts 

 wandered on earth. Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only 

 not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I 

Had Heathcliff not been so rotten, a disposition for vengeance and abuse at his core, I would have felt much more tethered to him as a character. Instead, I find myself in him in his passionate, rageful fits, and the face of my abusers as he performs unspeakable acts on his victims behind closed doors. An unsettling reflection of myself as both the perpetrators and the victim, but perhaps that is just what he is, or rather, what we are.

Marissa Liu

Liking the crazed, unhinged, feral behavior of her characters to that of a dog was most compelling, and an allegory I wish she developed further instead of leaving to moments of particular intensity, e.g. Lockwood attempting to run off and being pounced by Heathcliff’s dogs, Heathcliff in his cruel fits of passion and fury.

Overall, none of the characters were likeable, not even the narrators Nelly and Lockwood, who revealed their biases in their own ways.

And I found the fuel of my interest in this book was craving some sort of resolution, redemption, freedom for any one of these characters, each who suffer miserable endings in their own ways.

But I find that this must just be the quintessential British tone: melodramatic and continuous, restrained suffering. We see it in the kitchen sink dramas of Eastenders and period dramas like Downton Abbey. And now I am fortunate to witness its roots in the 1800 classics of the Romantic, gothic era of literature, and get a glimpse into the life of Northern England at that time.

Perhaps I felt most connected to Heathcliff in his most passionate fits. The feeling is so familiar: the feeling of being clouded with a rage, pain, fury so intense that you yourself, and neither those of onlookers, can see the purity of the love and loss that drives it all at the core. A feeling that I experienced so vividly as a child, uncontrollable fits likened to an exorcism, one that leaves you uncontrollably shaking, banging, and smashing doors. I have since tempered as an adult, but find myself revisiting the feeling, albeit in much more manageable doses, every now and then: in heartbreak, betrayal, and loss of adult life.

I’m particularly moved by his monologue upon learning of Catherine’s death:

“May she wake in torment!” he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. “Why, she’s a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest, as long as I am living! You said I killed you—haunt me then! The murdered haunt their murderers. I believe—I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”

Had Heathcliff not been so rotten, a disposition for vengeance and abuse at his core, I would have felt much more tethered to him as a character. Instead, I find myself in him in his passionate, rageful fits, and the face of my abusers as he performs unspeakable acts on his victims behind closed doors. An unsettling reflection of myself as both the perpetrators and the victim, but perhaps that is just what he is, or rather, what we are.

Eine leidenschaftliche Liebe, die im Leben keine Erfüllung und im Tod keine Ruhe findet

Der Findling Heathcliff wächst bei Familie Earnshaw auf dem Gutshof Wuthering Heights in Yorkshire auf. Mit deren stürmischer und leidenschaftlicher Tochter Catherine verbindet ihn eine tiefe Freundschaft. Als der Stiefbruder nach dem Tod des Vaters dem Alkohol und der Spielsucht verfällt und beide terrorisiert, entschließt sich Catherine entgegen ihrer Gefühle, den reichen und angesehenen Nachbarn Edgar Linton zu ehelichen. Der schwer gekränkte Heathcliff schwört, sich daraufhin an beiden Familien zu rächen...

Sturmhöhe

Dieser Klassiker wird oft als einfache  Liebgeschichte abgetan, doch er ist weit mehr als das.

Es ist eine Familiengeschichte, durchdrungen von Hass und Missgunst, von Liebe und Rache, von Bedauern und Tod. Die Geschichte ist intensiv erzählt, und ihre Charaktere sind lebendig und leidenschaftlich. Sie handelt von einer Familie – Bruder, Schwester und Eltern –, die auf einem Anwesen namens Wuthering Heights lebt. Eines Tages kehrt der Vater von einer Reise zurück und bringt einen Findeljungen mit: Heathcliff. Die Geschwister nehmen ihn alles andere als freudig auf.

Die Erzählung zeigt, welche Auswirkungen Verachtung und schlechte Behandlung auf einen Menschen haben können, welche zerstörerische Kraft das starke Verlangen nach Rache entfalten kann und wie intensiv solche Gefühle in einem Menschen hausen können. Die Liebe zwischen Catherine und Heathcliff ist außergewöhnlich, tief, leidenschaftlich und schmerzlich traurig.

Ich habe es geliebt, in das düstere Setting der Moorlandschaft einzutauchen. Die perfekte Lektüre für Herbst Abende.

Zainab 

Dieser Klassiker wird oft als einfache  Liebgeschichte abgetan, doch er ist weit mehr als das.

Es ist eine Familiengeschichte, durchdrungen von Hass und Missgunst, von Liebe und Rache, von Bedauern und Tod. Die Geschichte ist intensiv erzählt, und ihre Charaktere sind lebendig und leidenschaftlich. Sie handelt von einer Familie – Bruder, Schwester und Eltern –, die auf einem Anwesen namens Wuthering Heights lebt. Eines Tages kehrt der Vater von einer Reise zurück und bringt einen Findeljungen mit: Heathcliff. Die Geschwister nehmen ihn alles andere als freudig auf.

Die Erzählung zeigt, welche Auswirkungen Verachtung und schlechte Behandlung auf einen Menschen haben können, welche zerstörerische Kraft das starke Verlangen nach Rache entfalten kann und wie intensiv solche Gefühle in einem Menschen hausen können. Die Liebe zwischen Catherine und Heathcliff ist außergewöhnlich, tief, leidenschaftlich und schmerzlich traurig.

Ich habe es geliebt, in das düstere Setting der Moorlandschaft einzutauchen. Die perfekte Lektüre für Herbst Abende.

the historical “Romantic” has disseminated into the populist “romantic”, and so consumption of Romantic literature has correspondingly fixated on a siloed “passion”, a superficial survey of romance as through the haze of a vague Europeanish post-Disney pastiche. i have come to despise average app reviewers, who demonstrate the capability of engaging with a work of fiction solely in terms of the purely solipsistic (“omg this made me sob so hard”) or moralising (“ok sure they were racist to heathcliff but he was totally an abuser and so this isn’t romantic”). Brontë is contending with a multigenerational epic here, with third party narrators that are flesh and blood agents of the story rather than disembodied scribes. i want to treat this work as a lens to discuss incest among proud, ancient families living in squalor, or the offhanded single sentences allotted to major character deaths that treat recollecting the past with the inflection of playing an accordion. i want to say that this is much more than a thing to get off to or wag your finger at. i want to say that its greatest villain isn’t the abused orphan turned vicious landlord, rather the institution of marriage and civil society. but in doing so, i would need to define my position is as a “critic” standing at the brink of this immensely complex tale — would one “review” the Bible or the Ramayana? am i primarily a sociological critic, or a psychoanalytic critic, or a…?

it feels redundant to opine about something that has taken on such mythic proportions. my only “criticisms”, were i to make myself conjure some, were that it felt abridged: its third-person narration, though spirited and delightfully subjective, keeps us removed from details and wraps up years in an instance at the whim of the storyteller (heathcliff’s janky schemes and subsequent demise in particular are jarringly expedited to maintain pacing). this should have been a proper tome! another “criticism”: i think though there is surgical emotional precision to all of the characters, that same lucidity to the observations is unconvincingly uniform. And everyone’s tendency to confide in nelly as they all invariably do, and hers to listen to them, does begin to stretch credulity a bit. That’s the most nit i can pick.

if i were being a solipsist too, i would say that the dread pervading the Heights was almost too reminiscent of my own childhood in a home of suspicion, hostility and bad faith spanning three generations i might talk more about that (“no one wanted anything to do with our home”). i would say cathy’s frenzied monologues about not being able to conceive of an existence without her twin are the most fun i have had with this book, and the emotional peak of the work’s aesthetic aims; the windowsill, the shawl, the glassy faraway look, the logorrhoea about wanting to be truly with and of the world, all arresting unforgettable images solidified within me and i have perhaps been incepted with the evil seed of wanting to stay in the Penistone Crags Airbnb and role playing a death-bound Mrs Linton. i also think the landscape of the sweeping moors is tangibly felt, and leaves one aching for a sight of them with a parasocially embedded nostalgia, perhaps the second biggest factor in driving WH to its cultural status after the “passions”.

but if i had to “review” with some pretense of high-minded objectivity, as i am, i would say something like wuthering heights is a rich, condensed text on the tolls of procuring and wielding power — women are property under couverture, racialised bodies are devilish threats to order, the matrimonial family structure is enforced through godly fear and alienates everyone more than their own pride does holding bodies imprisoned. the union of cathy and heathcliff can only be consummated outside time (the mortal coil), and outside space (on the moors they are relegated to be “half-wild and free” like in their childhood), a sublime contender to these relatively pettier considerations of paper and property (which is why attempting to adapt with a white heathcliff and a white cathy exploring psychosexual terrain is blasphemously misguided and frictionless in its conflict, @ one Ms Fennell). even in life, neither can conjure a self-concept without the other (“I 

 heathcliff”, “how can one live with their soul in the ground?”) and this self-identification in the other causes irreconcilable contradictions in their lifetimes. the conflict is driven by virtues all its characters, Earnshaws, Lintons, Heathcliffs alike, cannot yield: pride, customs, grief, because alienation from those virtues would mean alienation of identity, no matter the cost of ruin holding on to these brings. this compulsion is not a mere parable, it is why we cannot help but make “mistakes” that we recognise as mistakes even in real time, and potentially abandon or ruin relationships: the factors that would compel us to change, to live in someone else’s definition of peace, to match another’s comfort with conflict, would transform us in ways that would destroy who we have decided we are. if you really insist upon having a moral takeaway from WH, let it be that.

pranya


the historical “Romantic” has disseminated into the populist “romantic”, and so consumption of Romantic literature has correspondingly fixated on a siloed “passion”, a superficial survey of romance as through the haze of a vague Europeanish post-Disney pastiche. i have come to despise average app reviewers, who demonstrate the capability of engaging with a work of fiction solely in terms of the purely solipsistic (“omg this made me sob so hard”) or moralising (“ok sure they were racist to heathcliff but he was totally an abuser and so this isn’t romantic”). Brontë is contending with a multigenerational epic here, with third party narrators that are flesh and blood agents of the story rather than disembodied scribes. i want to treat this work as a lens to discuss incest among proud, ancient families living in squalor, or the offhanded single sentences allotted to major character deaths that treat recollecting the past with the inflection of playing an accordion. i want to say that this is much more than a thing to get off to or wag your finger at. i want to say that its greatest villain isn’t the abused orphan turned vicious landlord, rather the institution of marriage and civil society. but in doing so, i would need to define my position is as a “critic” standing at the brink of this immensely complex tale — would one “review” the Bible or the Ramayana? am i primarily a sociological critic, or a psychoanalytic critic, or a…?

it feels redundant to opine about something that has taken on such mythic proportions. my only “criticisms”, were i to make myself conjure some, were that it felt abridged: its third-person narration, though spirited and delightfully subjective, keeps us removed from details and wraps up years in an instance at the whim of the storyteller (heathcliff’s janky schemes and subsequent demise in particular are jarringly expedited to maintain pacing). this should have been a proper tome! another “criticism”: i think though there is surgical emotional precision to all of the characters, that same lucidity to the observations is unconvincingly uniform. And everyone’s tendency to confide in nelly as they all invariably do, and hers to listen to them, does begin to stretch credulity a bit. That’s the most nit i can pick.

if i were being a solipsist too, i would say that the dread pervading the Heights was almost too reminiscent of my own childhood in a home of suspicion, hostility and bad faith spanning three generations i might talk more about that (“no one wanted anything to do with our home”). i would say cathy’s frenzied monologues about not being able to conceive of an existence without her twin are the most fun i have had with this book, and the emotional peak of the work’s aesthetic aims; the windowsill, the shawl, the glassy faraway look, the logorrhoea about wanting to be truly with and of the world, all arresting unforgettable images solidified within me and i have perhaps been incepted with the evil seed of wanting to stay in the Penistone Crags Airbnb and role playing a death-bound Mrs Linton. i also think the landscape of the sweeping moors is tangibly felt, and leaves one aching for a sight of them with a parasocially embedded nostalgia, perhaps the second biggest factor in driving WH to its cultural status after the “passions”.

but if i had to “review” with some pretense of high-minded objectivity, as i am, i would say something like wuthering heights is a rich, condensed text on the tolls of procuring and wielding power — women are property under couverture, racialised bodies are devilish threats to order, the matrimonial family structure is enforced through godly fear and alienates everyone more than their own pride does holding bodies imprisoned. the union of cathy and heathcliff can only be consummated outside time (the mortal coil), and outside space (on the moors they are relegated to be “half-wild and free” like in their childhood), a sublime contender to these relatively pettier considerations of paper and property (which is why attempting to adapt with a white heathcliff and a white cathy exploring psychosexual terrain is blasphemously misguided and frictionless in its conflict, @ one Ms Fennell). even in life, neither can conjure a self-concept without the other (“I am heathcliff”, “how can one live with their soul in the ground?”) and this self-identification in the other causes irreconcilable contradictions in their lifetimes. the conflict is driven by virtues all its characters, Earnshaws, Lintons, Heathcliffs alike, cannot yield: pride, customs, grief, because alienation from those virtues would mean alienation of identity, no matter the cost of ruin holding on to these brings. this compulsion is not a mere parable, it is why we cannot help but make “mistakes” that we recognise as mistakes even in real time, and potentially abandon or ruin relationships: the factors that would compel us to change, to live in someone else’s definition of peace, to match another’s comfort with conflict, would transform us in ways that would destroy who we have decided we are. if you really insist upon having a moral takeaway from WH, let it be that.

This is what I mean when I say I love pop culture. A classic deserving to be called so. Ofc a woman wrote it. Excelent naration by Patricia Routledge.

Why did no one make me read this in highschool? I would have made it my fav, it is SO mimicore. But I was prejudiced because of Bella.

I had nightmares and heartaches and the violence hit close to home but wow. So very passionate it makes me feel validated. It went straight through my heart. Took me long cause I sobbed so much until PEM but it was well worth this permanent degradation.

martian1138

This is what I mean when I say I love pop culture. A classic deserving to be called so. Ofc a woman wrote it. Excelent naration by Patricia Routledge.

Why did no one make me read this in highschool? I would have made it my fav, it is SO mimicore. But I was prejudiced because of Bella.

I had nightmares and heartaches and the violence hit close to home but wow. So very passionate it makes me feel validated. It went straight through my heart. Took me long cause I sobbed so much until PEM but it was well worth this permanent degradation.

Fire found!

Oof - what brats! A very human story about altogether unlikeable characters intertwined in incredibly toxic relationships. I read a review of this book that said “monsters love, too” and I think that sums it up entirely. 

Wuthering Heights

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