Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Boy, this was not what I expected. I had thought that the story of Heathcliff and Catherine was a passionate, stirring, romance novel. That’s how I’ve always heard it referred to: as a model of deep, but moody love. Well it is a romance novel, but not of the type with a shirtless hunk clutching a near-fainting beauty on the cover of a paperback. It’s “romantic” because it’s a product of the romantic era, but it’s gothic romance, not a rom-com (by any means), not even, really, a love story, as the central love is pathological and obsessive, not inspiring or liberating.
Heathcliff, no handsome hero with a troubling but sympathetic secret, rather, is variously described as a monster and a demon. He’s constantly mean, cruel, and conniving. His love for Catherine is only barely requited and never consummated, and when she marries another man he sets himself on revenge. He’s motivated more by hate and greed than winning Catherine’s love. In any case, she dies halfway through the novel. And Catherine is no pure-hearted innocent, either. She’s petulant, manipulating, and selfish. The novel is full of unlikable characters. Nearly everyone is ornery, ill-tempered, stupid… Well that’s enough said.
The novel, published in 1847 (I read a version edited by Emily’s sister Charlotte that was published in 1850) begins with the date “1801.” The first narrator is neither Heathcliff nor Catherine, surprisingly. Instead, the first-person narrator is a man named Lockwood who has rented a house called Thrushcross Grange on the same property as the house Wuthering Heights, both owned by Heathcliff. Thrushcross Grange is the grander of the two; Wuthering Heights being a more modest farmhouse. Lockwood has recently taken tenancy at Thrushcross Grange and has come to Wuthering Heights to introduce himself to his landlord. At Wuthering Heights he meets Heathcliff, and also an old moralizing servant named Joseph who speaks in dialect, a young man named Hareton, and a young woman named Cathy. Lockwood is confused about the relationships, and it took me some time also to figure it out.
Lockwood, after enduring a disagreeable night at Wuthering Heights, returns to Thrushcross Grange where he’s taken ill. And here is the second strangeness in how this story is told. Lockwood sits by the fire and asks one of his servants, Nelly Dean, about Wuthering Heights and the strange people there. She, then, over the course of several evenings, tells him the story. Nearly the rest of the novel is her detailed account of the previous 30 years or so, including her minute recollections of conversations and scenes, occasionally aided by a letter she preserved and just happens to have at hand. She finishes her story and the novel reaches the present day, and the date “1802”, only 30 pages before the end.
Thrity years earlier, the Earnshaw family lived at Wuthering Heights: mother, father, and two children, Hindley and Catherine. Nelly, only slightly older than Hindley and Catherine, was the child of a family servant who took over the servant job when her mother died. One summer, Mr. Earnshaw left on a business trip and returned with Heathcliff, an orphan that he found abandoned and decided to rescue and raise as his own. Heathcliff was about the same age as the other two children. Mr. Earnshaw favored Heathcliff and mistreated Hindley and Catherine, consequently Hindley and Catherine bully Heathcliff. Nonetheless, Heathcliff developed a passion for Catherine.
Meanwhile, a family called Linton lived at Thrushcross Grove. The Lintons were wealthy and well-mannered. The Lintons had two children about the same age as Heathcliff and the Earnshaw children: Edgar and Isabella.
When the children are grown (but still 15 years earlier, as told by Nelly to Lockwood), Hindley Earnshaw goes away to school and returns on the occasion of his father’s funeral married to a woman named Frances. Hindley, now the master of Wuthering Heights allows Heathcliff to stay but only as a laborer. Hindley and Frances have a son, named Hareton. Frances dies soon after.
Catherine, who has been living at Thrushcross Grange as she recovers from an injury, confesses, to Nelly, that she loves Heathcliff, but won’t marry him because of his low status. Instead she marries Edgar Linton, which arouses Healthcliff’s hatred and his determination to destroy the Linton and Earnshaw families. Heathcliff suddenly abandons Wuthering Heights for a few years, when he returns he has become richer and more refined in his ways, though no one knows how.
Although Edgar forbids Healthcliff to visit Catherine at Thrushcross Grange, Isabella (Edgar’s younger sister) beguiled by Heathcliff’s wealth and mystery contrives to fall in love with him. They elope. When they return, Isabella has already realized the disaster she made. Healthcliff hates her and has married her only as part of his revenge plot. Isabella, pregnant with Heathcliff’s child, flees to the south of England. Catherine, despondent over Heathcliff, locks herself in her room at Thrushcross Grange and refuses food. She gives brith to a daughter and dies the same day. Edgar names the baby Catherine, but calls her Cathy.
Heathcliff manages to wrest ownership of Wuthering Heights from Hindley by beating him at gambling. Hindley dies and Heathcliff raises Hindley’s son, Hareton, but keeps him uneducated. Cathy Linton grows up spoiled and secluded at Thrushcross Grange. Isabella Heathcliff dies in the south of England and her son, named Linton Heathcliff and now 12 years old, is brought to Thrushcross Grange, but Healthcliff asserts his paternal rights and the child is transferred to his care at Wuthering Heights. Cathy, who had looked forward to having her cousin Linton as a companion secretly exchanges love letters with him. To complete his revenge plot, Heathcliff forces the weak Linton Heathcliff and Cathy Earnshaw to marry, now making his son the heir to both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. Edgar Linton dies. Linton Heathcliff also dies, shortly after marrying Cathy.
This concludes Nelly’s narration and brings the story to the present. Lockwood, who has been listening to this tale, tires of living on the moors and quits for several months, but keeps his lease of Thrushcross Grange for the year. Near the end of the year, business returns Lockwood to the area, and he decides to meet with Heathcliff and settle the lease. He finds that Heathcliff has died in the interim, haunted and driven to madness by his obsession with Catherine. Heathcliff’s revenge plot is thwarted because the children, Cathy Linton and Hareton Earnshaw (who Lockwood met in the opening scene), have fallen in love and plan to marry and move into Thrushcross Grange, leaving the old servant, Joseph, to manage Wuthering Heights.
Very melodramatic. Everyone treats everyone badly. Only Nelly Dean and Lockwood behave at all admirably, and even Nelly, as the narrator, confesses to the occasional duplicity and deception. The main characters are brats, acting either out of selfishness or stupidity. The jumbled characters, multiple generations, repeating names, kept me confused throughout. Cathy Linton first marries her cousin Linton Heathcliff (her father Edgar is the brother of Linton’s mother Isabella) and then she marries her cousin Hareton Earnshaw (her mother Catherine is the sister of Hareton’s father Hindley). I’m never sure why Heathcliff loves Catherine when she treats him so badly, and once she marries Edgar and then dies, halfway through the novel, his continuing revenge story just feels petty not profound. I soon wanted nothing to do with these people nor cared what happened to them and came close to giving up before I finished the book.
I suppose it could all be salvaged if the writing were better, but sadly, it isn’t. I was reminded of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley’s gothic novel, which, like this one, has its interests, but is over-esteemed as literature. The prose of Wuthering Heights reads like a too breathless young adult novel. In fact, the edition I read (Bloomsbury Publishing, Jennifer Donnelly, ed., 2006) presents itself as a young adult novel. There’s an opening essay by the editor titled, “Why You Should Read This” telling of the editor’s experience reading the novel when it was assigned in her junior year of high school and how she was swept away by the moors and the grey skies and Catherine and Heathcliff’s destructive love. Perhaps that’s a more appropriate reader than I, a sixty year old man. Then there’s a preface by Emily Bronte’s sister, Charlotte, for the revised edition she had published in 1850. Charlotte simplified some of the language Emily had used for Joseph’s dialect to make it easier to understand.
Emily had originally published Wuthering Heights in 1847, her only novel. She died in 1848 at the age of 30. A third sister, Anne Bronte, wrote two novels: Agnes Grey, published 1847, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall published in 1848. She died in 1849 at age 29. Charlotte wrote four novels during her, also, short life. Jane Eyre, from 1847 is her second novel, though the first, The Professor was only published posthumously in 1857. After Jane Eyre, which I read many years ago and remember liking, she published Shirley (1849) and Villete (1853). Charlotte died in 1855. At the end of the young adult edition of Wuthering Heights I read, there’s a fake, teen-magazine “Two Minute Interview” with Emily. (Sample question: “Boyfriends?” Answer: “Certainly not!”). Then there’s a fake newspaper with news of the day from 1847. And finally a list of “Facts to Impress Your Teachers.”