Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

I  recently realized that I had never read Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë despite having been a lit major. I’d only seen the 1939 Lawrence Olivier film version. Much embarrassment. To fix that I listened to the Blackstone audio book narrated by Carolyn Seymour and read a Kindle edition.

I haven’t read any critique of the story other than it is considered one of the greatest novels ever written and a love story that transcends the grave. There are probably deeper meanings that I missed. Since it is over 170 years old I’m not going to worry about spoilers or describe the story in detail. 

Basically, Heathcliff is brought into the Earnshaw family at Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff and Catherine(Cathy) Earnshaw love each other dearly but he misunderstands a conversation he overhears  and runs away for three years. During that time, Cathy marries wealthy Edgar Linton thinking she will be able to uplift Heathcliff on his return. He doesn’t take this well. Cathy dies in childbirth. Heathcliff becomes even more deranged. Revenge, retribution, and abuse ensue.

My observations

• It’s raw and probably had ladies clutching their pearls at how awful the people are.

• It depicts extreme mental, emotional, domestic, and physical abuse to adults and children and the lasting effects of that abuse

• Romance? It certainly shows what can happen when a deep love is thwarted and the scarring effects on someone already mentally unstable, i.e.Heathcliff

• Rage, lots of rage

• You should read it if only for the cultural references

• It’s a well constructed story though the highly charged language and drama can be a bit much for modern readers

• I admire Brontë’s writing. Her use of language is both brutal and beautiful. She didn’t compromise at all in realizing her characters, the good and bad.

• People can fall deathly ill at the drop of a hat

• Seymour is an excellent narrator, almost too good. The near constant shrieking, bellowing, growling, and raging are jarring to the ear. I needed to switch to reading for relief

• I really liked the contrast between Edgar Linton’s Thrushcross Grange and The Heights. Wuthering Heights is wonderfully described in its soulless bleakness

Amusing (to me):

• When the reader narrated Joseph’s (servant at WH) dialog I thought of Gabby Johnson in Blazing Saddles who spoke authentic frontier gibberish (available on youtube). Joseph spoke in authentic Yorkshire gibberish.

• In Jasper Fforde’s The Well of Lost Plots, Thursday Next, a literary detective, visits Wuthering Heights where the characters are in a mandatory rage management session to keep the rage in the story from getting out of control as happened with Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. You also get a pretty good overview of the story.