Wuthering Heights transports us to a realm that lies beyond the boundaries of all social and moral norms. It is closer to the realm of dreams or Greek myth than the rational and ordinary life of civilized habit. The characters seem to be dramatizing the psyche or the unconscious within the context of everyday life. Bronte challenges us to extend our sympathies beyond the brightly-lit and habitual moral parameters, much like Nabokov does in Lolita. However, while Nabokov does it directly through his narrator, Bronte is arguably more clever. She provides us with a rather commonplace and reasonable narrator, Nelly, who more closely mirrors our own sensibility. Nelly is like a comfortable armchair. One might say that the norm in this novel is sociopathic behavior, yet Nelly, with her ordinary emotional economies, creates the illusion that everything she recounts is firmly rooted in a normal social reality. It is a masterful sleight of hand on Bronte's part.

Structurally, this book is a brilliant enigma. It feels like a series of unconscious decisions on Emily's part, which, for a novel that spends a significant amount of time dramatizing the darker realms of the human psyche, is yet another stroke of genius. Our narrator is almost immediately pushed aside by a first-hand witness of all events, Nelly, the housekeeper. Bronte employs this technique of doubling throughout the novel - eventually, Catherine and Heathcliff's children will replace Catherine and Heathcliff. Virtually every character in this novel has a twin. At times, it can be confusing trying to remember who is whose offspring or relative, but this only adds to the novel's atmosphere of an elemental drama unfolding, in which individuals are just as cyclical and driven by primitive energies as the surrounding moors. Wuthering Heights is an adventure into the heart of darkness, anticipating Conrad by more than fifty years. It is also a novel that feels eerily intimate with death.

To those who think this is a dated novel that belongs firmly to its time, I would say that there are countless modern-day Heathcliffs serving time in our prisons and causing chaos on our streets. These are deprived, racially abused, and unloved kids who have made it their mission to exact revenge on a cruel and pitiless world. This is a far more subtle and far-reaching portrayal of the plight of the abused child than anything her sister created. Jane Eyre is like corporate American cinema compared to Heathcliff. Bronte does more than give a voice to the emotionally crippled, the inarticulate, and the vindictive outcasts of society; she creates the world they would like to live in, the destruction of almost everything we associate with civilized society. And she also shows us that by eventually civilizing Catherine and Heathcliff's respective children, we all have elements of Heathcliff and Catherine buried within our psyches that occasionally make an unsettling appearance in our daily lives.

I'm just on fire with so much admiration for Emily Brontë right now. Having read this book, I now understand why it’s generated such fierce controversy since its first publication in 1847. Why early reviews dismissed it as an aberration (with one pearl-clutching reviewer wondering “how a human being could have attempted such a book as the present without committing suicide before he had finished a dozen chapters”) and why writers like Sylvia Plath and E.M. Forster, drawn to the complex and often contradictory open vein of the novel, went out of their way to reject such easy classifications.

This review is, in many ways, my attempt to understand how Wuthering Heights continues to enable many difficult and contradictory stances even today, entrenching its legacy as one of the most dynamic and generative novels of the 19th century.

The first element that makes Wuthering Heights so interesting is form. The novel is presented as a series of second—even third—hand accounts, a story rehearsed and sanitized by multiple re-enactors with the reader being the last in a succession of interpreters. In other words, the story changes hands multiple times, often between hostile and uncomprehending narrators, before it makes its way to the reader. This structure is nuanced in multiple ways; it is also very tricky, for it depends entirely on the reader’s willingness to turn to Nelly—the central narrator—for an authoritative interpretation of the story. Nelly, however, is not a very sympathetic narrator, and her thinly veiled bias against (or for) the characters brings into question the validity of her account. We are forced into awareness, again and again, of the flawed nature of Nelly's interpretations and of the uncrossable distances that lie between what we are reading and what the story is. It is precisely this awareness which challenges us to take nothing at face value and demands our active participation in the process of meaning-making.

To put it differently: faced with the possibility of the novel as the culmination of a flawed—even failed—interpretation, one can only read Wuthering Heights with a kind of longing, with the desire to get close to something inconsolable, just beyond reach. Therein lies, the novel says, the potential for true understanding: in the underground currents of emotion, the not-easily-reached places far beneath the surface of what the reader can see and understand. It is this frame of reference—however flawed, failed, or imperfect—that gives the characters a context in which we can begin to accept, understand, and grapple for their ultimate depths.

This brings us to the second element which makes Wuthering Heights such productive fodder for interpretation: the characters. In a story that is told at one, two, sometimes three removes, Brontë’s characters are not at all remote. Brontë brings a depth of anguish to the characters and engages our compassion no matter how unflattering and biased the gaze through which we see them. This is nowhere as gorgeously epitomized as in the characters of Heathcliff and Catherine, with whom lays the broken heart of Wuthering Heights.

Heathcliff’s vehemence, his grief and naked want, Catherine’s selfishness, her strain and struggle against the confines of her life—these things are rendered so honestly and so rawly in a way that appealed to me despite, sometimes because of, their deep abiding wrongness. Wuthering Heights is not just a story about a “toxic” romantic attachment between two deeply broken and detestable characters. In fact, to argue the degree to which Heathcliff and Catherine’s relationship was “toxic” or “problematic” seems less relevant to me than the incontrovertible fact that in a world that would not let them be whole, Catherine and Heathcliff lent meaning to each other. To me, this is where the simple truth of Wuthering Heights lies: in Catherine and Heathcliff's longing to be recognized by each other in a way that defies and transcends “separation,” and in the subsequent void and loss they suffer when one is intolerably deprived of the other.

Wuthering Heights returns over and over to this theme of identity through the other, the desire to be defined in terms of an “existence… beyond” our “contained” selves. For Catherine and Heathcliff, their very sense of “self” was sustained through the bond of devotion they forged between them in childhood, back when they were flashing with youth and magic and hunger, and their passion for each other has always illuminated the gap between who they longed to be, and who they actually were. Invoking Heathcliff, Catherine confesses to Nelly at one point that “He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” In this way, Wuthering Heights is so truthful about what it means to be human: to desire to be known by another as intimately, as completely, as one knows their own image in a mirror, to love and despise and long for and tire of each other because it is a much merciful fate than a lifetime of emptiness, silence, and absence.

Under this light, it is easy to understand Heathcliff’s and Catherine’s unraveling, and in understanding, to love and pity them. We understand that in losing Heathcliff, Catherine lost her life, and in losing her, Heathcliff lost himself. All the proofs of passion, all the crawling devotions that sustained him in youth have yielded to nothingness, and somewhere inside Heathcliff a dam has broken, with nothing in its stead to stave off the madness of being alone, or to ward off the unpurged ghosts of a brutal past.

Through Heathcliff’s unraveling, Brontë lays a carefully layered, generational look at the reverberating effects of trauma and what it costs to give others so much power over us. Raised with the stigma of illegitimacy and of deviancy (and potentially of race, but that’s an essay for another day), and subjected to a childhood of casual abuse, name-calling and cruelty, Heathcliff spends the years following Catherine’s death trying to methodically reproduce his traumatic past, his experiences of degradation and loss, in others. Heathcliff, ultimately, does not just preserve the memory of Catherine, which he feels bound to, but rather transform it into something else, into a display of his wound in full.

It is impossible not to feel at once entranced and horrified and rocked by the horror of what Heathcliff becomes, not to ache with sympathy for a younger version of Heathcliff. But I found myself hurting more for Cathy, Hareton, and Linton, and the complex, many-generationed hatreds that twisted between them. Wuthering Heights paints one of the clearest portraits of generational trauma that I’ve ever read. Brontë's use of intimate domestic spaces as prison, her disfiguring of family into a site for violence, evil, and struggle, and her deliberate re-creation of past trauma in the second generation—is masterful. The result is a novel that understands so thoroughly, so completely, and with bone-deep care that the scars inflicted by childhood abuse, by trauma, by the generational inheritance of atrocious memory, do not just fade away; they stay and linger and fester until we all become a casualty of each other.

That Wuthering Heights was conceived and published before the advent of psychology is absolutely wild to me. The novel is a profoundly haunting experience of a book, one that I am sure will dog my thoughts for a very, very long time.

I first read this book back in school for the English class and remember disliking it very much. The characters seemed too black and the story was too dark for my taste.

However, with my recent return to reading classics, I thought I should give this book another chance and see if my teenage prejudice was unfounded. After this second reading, I can draw two conclusions.

Yes, my prejudice was unfounded as I had not fully understood the characters in their context. But, the characters are still quite dark and the story remains too gloomy for my liking.

The story mainly centers around Heathcliff, a young orphan adopted by the wealthy Earnshaw family. Mr. Earnshaw's act causes rivalry and resentment between his biological son Hindley and the adopted son Heathcliff.

After the father's death and Hindley becoming the master, Heathcliff endures ill-treatment. Meanwhile, Catherine Earnshaw forms a close bond with Heathcliff, and they eventually become lovers of sorts.

Heathcliff endures all abuse and contempt for Catherine's sake, to whom he is deeply devoted. But Catherine's fancy for Edgar Linton and a misinterpreted conversation make Heathcliff believe she is indifferent to him.

So he leaves and returns three years later as a rich man to avenge his grievances. This new Heathcliff is violent, wicked, and almost inhuman, creating one of the darkest characters in classic literature.

Emily Bronte bases the book on three themes: love and despair, the complexities of human nature, and class difference. The relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine is one of love and despair, with tragic consequences.

Bronte uses dark and imperfect characters to brilliantly portray human prejudices, violent inclinations, and the extremity of vengeance. The story also shows how class and status differences mattered in the author's time.

However, I had an issue with the narrator. The whole story is told by Mrs. Ellen Dean, the housekeeper, who disliked Heathcliff and Catherine from their youth.

This dislike is felt throughout her narration, affecting the accuracy and sincerity of her account. I'm surprised Bronte used such a prejudiced narrator, as it impacts the readers' view of the main characters.

I wish Bronte had chosen an unbiased narrator to tell this tragic tale. Despite this, the passionate writing style, easy flow, and beautiful language make Wuthering Heights a classic tragedy of the Victorian era.

This second reading changed my prejudices about the book, and while I still don't fully like the characters, I can appreciate them better.

Another re-read (readalong organized by Kim)

This time around, as I embarked on yet another re-read of this particular novel, I was once again reminded of why it holds such a special place in my heart. It remains, without a doubt, my favorite of all the Brontë-novels. The story is a captivating one, filled with complex characters and a richly detailed world. The emotions it evokes are deep and profound, making it a truly immersive experience. With each page turn, I find myself drawn further into the narrative, unable to put the book down. The writing is masterful, with beautiful prose that flows effortlessly. It is a testament to the genius of the Brontë sisters. This re-read has been a wonderful journey, and I look forward to many more in the future.

First read: 2009, Rating: 5 stars
Second read: 2012, Rating: 5 stars
Third read: 2014, Rating: 5 stars
Fourth read: May 2015, Rating: 5 stars
Fifth read: August 2017, Rating: 5 stars
Sixth read: July 2018, Rating: 5 stars
Seventh read: October 2020, Rating: 5 stars

I have a profound penchant for character-driven narratives, and thus, I was completely enamored with this novel from the very first time I delved into its pages nine years ago. The reason it has endured as such a steadfast favorite, and why I make a conscious effort to reread it at least every two years, is that within this intense and focused character study, I found myself inexplicably and utterly drawn to each and every unlikable individual within it. I forgave every single flaw and overlooked any ordinarily unappealing quality in my blind adoration for these passionate beings.

The raging emotions that prevailed throughout the story held me captive. The wildness of the characters, their uncontrollable bouts of frenzy and passion, their deepest despairs and their most fervent desires, were mirrored by the wildness of the surrounding landscape. This created an eternal and external, almost additional character within this most infamous of love triangles.

I have reread this novel so frequently that I could likely recite every single page by heart. Yet, I never cease to uncover something new when exploring the moors. There is a prevailing sense of never quite being on an equal footing that dominates and permeates the entire text. This novel distances the reader, denying any simple pleasures such as happily-ever-afters or a brief respite from the ever-changing high passions and the utter, all-consuming bleakness. I will never truly feel at home here, but I will always yearn to be.

This book has remained my favorite from the first reading until now, a decade later. And I firmly believe that there is no more powerful endorsement for a book than that.

Have you ever revisited a book after several years and found yourself having a completely different opinion? This was precisely my experience when I picked up "Wuthering Heights" once again. As a younger reader, I had crafted an ideal of the passionate, brooding man, but oh my!

How utterly insufferable Heathcliff and Catherine are. They are ruthless, locked in a poisonous, passionate love that wreaks havoc on the lives of everyone around them. But perhaps the most poignant aspect of "Wuthering Heights" is the unrequited love. If only Heathcliff had stood there for a minute longer, he might have known Catherine's true feelings.

"He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same." These words, once so romantic to me, now seem almost tragic.

The last time I read this book was as a teenager, sharing the experience with my mom. We were both immersed in the story of the man who defied everything for his one true love. But as an adult, I can't help but think that poor Heathcliff could really use some grief therapy. There are just so many unhealthy behaviors on display. Let me destroy everyone who has ever crossed my path because the love of my life is gone? But do they really deserve it? Everyone did make Heathcliff's life a living hell, treating him no better than an animal in a cage. It was only Catherine who saw his true self, his worth.

And yet, I'm still strangely obsessed with their passionate, death-defying words. Is that weird? "If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger."

I was also intrigued by the side characters and how trauma, rage, jealousy, and loss can completely shatter and ruin souls. Before and after Catherine's death, nothing is okay. Each character, with their plethora of flaws, is constantly trapped in a cycle of chaos.

"Treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends; they wound those who resort to them worse than their enemies." Emily Brontë truly writes like a poet. An author who can evoke such a wide range of emotions has surely done her job well. The narrator, Nelly, a servant, retells the story in a way that feels familiar, like how we all recount tales of troubled people. It's not as if Nelly has any particular fondness for these characters; she's simply highlighting their flaws and expressing shock at their imperfection.

Heathcliff's words to Nelly, "My old enemies have not beaten me; now would be the precise time to revenge myself on their representatives: I could do it; and none could hinder me," are both chilling and revealing.

The world we live in today is filled with terms like toxic, codependent, obsessive, and bipolar. These words kept echoing in my mind as I read. It was quite a shock to see Heathcliff, like a criminal, raging against so many. The first time I read "Wuthering Heights," I saw Heathcliff as a true victim. Now, I see him more as an angry man, willing to stop at nothing to get his revenge. And yet, there's always a "but" in my thoughts. This book is so masterfully done because the victim is also a criminal. It's this dichotomy that persists throughout and keeps drawing me back.

The strange juxtaposition of my youthful and adult perspectives still brings me back to "Wuthering Heights." It's a classic novel that defies logic and is a truly well-executed exploration of psychologically complex characters, brought to life by one of the greatest authors. Without a doubt, it earns a 5/5 stars rating.

Many people consider this book a masterpiece, a monument of English literature.

This novel exudes an incredible force due to Heathcliff's destructive passion for Catherine. However, for my part, I did not find any character endearing or with which to identify me even slightly.

Let's start with the narrator, Mrs. Dean. At no time did I feel that she loved Catherine or anyone else. On the contrary, her coldness and moral lessons made her unpleasant.

As for Catherine, she is even more unbearable. At first, she was careless and a little proud, but she didn't change much as she grew up. She became weak. I waited for that moment when my heart would melt and feel some semblance of emotion, but nothing.

Heathcliff is the only character who has inspired me in any way. It's a small pity. As an adult, it's a pity, too!

Usually, I am fascinated by evil characters, but the plot here is too simple to make Heathcliff a complex man.

I won't write about my feelings about the other family members because you will understand that this book did not touch me.

This novel is dark, yes, but it remains a love story. There is nothing sensational about it. It's just a story of love and hate, passion and destruction, set in a wild and desolate landscape. The characters are all flawed and complex, but for some reason, I just couldn't connect with them. Maybe it's because the story is too tragic, or maybe it's because I'm not in the right mood. Whatever the reason, I can't say that I enjoyed reading this book.

3.5⭐️ It's truly the Brontë sisters' world, and I find myself completely immersed in it, simply living and breathing their captivating stories.

Misery, duplicity, revenge, and unhealthy family relationships - Wuthering Heights has it all!

Whenever I hear the name Brontë, my mind immediately drifts towards thoughts of classic books, envisioning ladies and gentlemen engaged in courtship. However, I guess I need to stop confusing the Brontë sisters with Jane Austen.

This book is truly brutal. Every single page is filled with intense arguments, a complex and dark plot, characters who are deathly ill, or actual deaths. There is an almost palpable absence of joy within the walls of Wuthering Heights.

In terms of writing, it was of a high quality. Although it's not my typical preferred style, I do enjoy delving into a classic from time to time. It offers a different perspective and allows me to explore the depths of human nature and the complexity of relationships in a way that modern books sometimes fail to do. Wuthering Heights is a powerful and unforgettable novel that leaves a lasting impression on the reader.

¡Nunca antes me había sentido tan enojado en todas las páginas de un libro! It's truly astonishing how every character in this book seems to be designed to irritate. Some are despicable, others are self-centered, there are those who are spoiled, and then there are the downright stupid ones. There isn't a single character for whom you can feel both sympathy and pity, the kind that makes you experience their pain and anger at the injustices they endure. ¡No lo hay!

So, why did I like this book so much if I usually prefer good characters to a good story? The answer is simple and lies within the question itself: because they are good characters. I have always been drawn to villains, unbearable protagonists, and/or toxic characters, but only when they are well-developed. I feel that it is much more difficult to successfully implant these qualities in a character and make them seem real, like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, Cercei and Joffrey in the A Song of Ice and Fire saga, or, to give a more recent example, all the characters in the excellent series Euphoria.

Let me be clear, I know that these characters have some things in common, such as being dangerous, and that's not a good thing at all. I wanted to mention this because I always lean towards books that have or are protagonist by this type of character, simply because they are more complex than the ones that everyone loves, because they take more effort to create.

Returning to the book, in my opinion, Heathcliff is the best-realized character. There were times when his hostility surprised me. Who tells their guest to rest if they need to or leave if they don't? From the first page, we start to hate him for the way he treats his self-centered tenant. A note by Charlotte on her sister's book says that if it weren't for the fact that Heathcliff treats Harenton as a son, he could be considered a demon. Believe me, Heathcliff is one of the best characters I have ever known. I could tell countless things about him, but I don't want to spoil the story for those who haven't read it. I will only say that he could top a list of the most despised characters in all of literature, and I'll add something he said:

"No he sido yo quien te ha roto el corazón, te lo has roto tú misma, y de paso me has roto el mío."

It would be wrong to think that this book is about an impossible love, because many of the characters can be classified as either controller or controlled. However, we can't ignore the large number of beautiful phrases that, unfortunately, were used to control:

"Sea cual sea la sustancia de la que están hechas nuestras almas, la suya y la mía son idénticas..."

Emily's writing seemed powerful to me. The jumps she made in the narration, not in time but in narrators, were incredible. At one moment, it was being narrated by Ellen in the first person, then it switched to Lockwood, also in the first person, and at no point did I wonder who is narrating? I think it's better if you read it for yourself, as I don't think I'm capable of explaining it properly.

Now, I'm going to talk about the only aspect that I didn't entirely like about this book: the structure. It bothered me a bit that the entire story was between two people, with one of them telling everything. 90% of the book tells us everything that happened at Wuthering Heights and its surroundings, which bothered me because I always wanted to encounter the present Heathcliff with the past one, but it was easy to get used to. The other 10% tells us what is happening at Wuthering Heights in the present of the book.

It wasn't until the end that I reunited with the Heathcliff I wanted, although, by that point, I missed the past Heathcliff. Ironic.

To conclude, I don't think it's necessary to clarify that this isn't a book for everyone, as not everyone tends to prefer hateful characters as protagonists. However, if you're one of those readers who feel a curious attraction to this type of character, the book will charm you.

Update 2023: I had been thinking for months about giving it a fifth star, as it wasn't fair to give four stars to one of my favorite books of all time.

A classic revenge story with two characters with bad temperaments

truly makes for an intense and gripping read. The story unfolds in a way that keeps you on the edge of your seat, wondering what will happen next. The darkness that pervades the narrative is palpable, and it delves into some pretty messed up themes. It's not your typical romantic tale by any means. In fact, it makes you question the mindset of those who might find such a story appealing. But that's the beauty of it. It challenges your perceptions and forces you to confront the less savory aspects of human nature. Whether you love it or hate it, there's no denying that this book has an impact. It leaves you with a sense of unease and a lot to think about long after you've turned the final page.

Gente cabrona haciéndose cabronadas todo el rato. This kind of behavior is really unacceptable. People who constantly engage in such actions are not only disrespectful to others but also show a lack of self-awareness and moral character. It is important for everyone to treat others with kindness, respect, and dignity. We should strive to build a harmonious and friendly society where people can live in peace and happiness. Instead of being the kind of "gente cabrona" who causes trouble and annoyance, we should choose to be positive and helpful individuals. By doing so, we can make a positive impact on the world around us and create a better future for ourselves and for others.