I read this over 20 years ago and since I can’t remember what people were telling my yesterday it was like I was reading this for the first time!

I couldn’t put the book down yesterday and read over 250 pages. I couldn’t believe how terrible and scheming Heathcliff was. Talking about taking revenge and having a bug up your ass. Whoo! But I guess Catherine, the person who he grew up with and then forsook him because another man had more status and money, was not blameless by a long shot.

The book I read from was an Everyman’s Library edition with an introduction by Katherine Frank. She had written a book about Emily Bronte (A Chainless Soul: A Life of Emily Bronte), putting forth the interesting notion that Emily Bronte had an eating disorder, anorexia. Certainly some of the protagonists in the novel refused to eat at times (Catherine, Heathcliff near the end).

I had a hard time keeping names straight at times during the novel. Doesn’t help when a daughter is married after the mother (two Catherines although they do not cross paths in the novel since Catherine #1 dies in childbirth giving birth to Catherine #2.

The story mostly was told by the maid/servant, Nelly, recollecting what happened in the past. There was another narrator. Mr. Lockwood, but he didn’t figure prominently in the novel.

One confession: when Joseph the old servant of Heathcliff spoke in the novel, I ignored what he said. I did that because I didn’t know what the hell he was saying. Here is an example. I didn’t have the time or patience to decipher/translate what he was saying.
•t“Thear!” he ejaculated, “Hareton, thah willn’t sup they porridge tuh neeght; they’ll be nowt bud lumps as big as maw nave. Thear, agean! Aw;d fling in bowl un all, if aw wer yah! Thear, pale t’ guilp off, un’ then yah’ll hae done wi’t. Bang, bang. It’s a marcy t’bothom isn’t deaved aht!”

Note: While I was reading the novel, I could not get Kate Bush’s song, Wuthering Heights, out of my head....

I first read this in AP English Literature - senior year of high school. This book is dense and thick and confusing, and with a class full of haters, it was hard to wrap my head around it. I subsequently read it three or four more times for classes in college and every time I read it, I loved it more. I always found some new, fascinating piece of the story I had never picked up on.

The last time I read it, I suddenly realized that there were many hints and clues that Heathcliff could, in fact, be black. A quick shot at research into Liverpool, where Mr. Earnshaw found the urchin, shows that it was the home to a thriving slave trade. This theory completely changes the story, in my opinion.

Or the thought someone brought up in our seminar on the Brontes - what if Nellie is in love with Heathcliff and subsequently altered how she told the story? You do find Nellie to be coincidently involved in many key scenes throughout the text. What if she isn't the good guy most readers assume she is?

Wuthering Heights is one of the quintessential novels in history. There's nothing else you can really say about it, except that it's one of the best pieces of writing to ever be created. It's just that incredible.

Finished for the 5th time - 11/25/2014

I approached this book expecting to read about a beautiful and tragic love story: instead, I came across an intensive hate story, a revenge tale - but love was nowhere to be found. Actually, let me state this better: there was love at first... but it was the mere beginning, the catalyst. Love was there only to encompass all the hatred, to imprison it. It was not love itself, but solely a small and transparent bottle with a beautiful "love" inscription engraved on it - in a lovely calligraphy with hearts and flowers decorating it -, and once love was thrown away and fell to the floor, it broke, and its content - hate itself - was set free like a dark red smoke spreading slowly but surely, like a poison or a curse, intoxicating those around who dared to breathe.

Emily Brontë was very masterful in her writing by using shifts in time - through flashbacks - and different and unreliable narrators to tell the story of the Earnshaws and Lintons. The book begins in 1801, when a man called Lockwood rents a house known as Thrushcross Grange from a weatlhy man named Heathcliff, who in turn lives in the Wuthering Heights. While paying his landlord a visit, Lockwood is forced to spend his first night there due to a snow storm and, while in his designated bedroom, his attention is grabbed by the name "Catherine" that's written in many books that are just sitting around. Too affected by her diary entries on those books and the whole dark atmosphere of the Wuthering Heights, he ends up having a nightmare with a girl named Catherine; waking up scared, he screams until Heathcliffe barges into the bedroom to see what the fuss is all about - and what follows is a very impressive scene. In the morning, Lockwood finally left to the Thrushcross Grange where he met Nelly Dean, the housekeeper who's been in the family for decades. Still not sure that what he saw was just a dream, he asks her about Catherine and Nelly starts to tell him her account of the events.

Back in 1771, Mr. Earnshaw (father of Hindley and Catherine) comes back from a trip bringing home Heathcliff - a "dark-skinned gypsy in aspect" - whom he decides to adopt. He then becomes Catherine's best friend over the years. Almost ten years later, Heathcliff overhears Catherine saying that it would be degrading to marry him and that she was going to marry neighbor Edgar Linton instead. Deciding to escape and run away, Heathcliff is absent for three years and comes back rich and powerful with a plan of a vengeance: to be the sole tormentor of both Earnshaw and Linton families not only for one, but for two generations.

It's known that Emily Brontë and her sisters started exercising their imagination as children by playing with some wooden soldiers for which they created stories. Wuthering Heights was written in her late twenties, but the novel still carried an atmosphere of little soldiers being toyed with inside of a small box. Like them, Emily's characters seemed to live isolated in a gloomy and dark box - almost like an experiment - where it was unlikely that they wouldn't become a product of that unsettling environment and impossible that their emotions and feelings wouldn't be taken to extremes making everything turn into matters of life and death.

Like Emma and Madame Bovary - novels from the same period - I had a hard time feeling sympathy for the story's protagonists, especially the main couple as Heathcliff was too bitter and hateful towards everyone, and Catherine as she chose another man to marry, not the one that she really loved - not that there's anything wrong with considering status and reputation while deciding on whom to marry but, as far as love stories go, it was difficult to care for both of them - well, not only for them: it seems not even one character was truly likeable. However, the young Catherine - Cathy Linton - is an amazing, vivid character. I kept expecting her to jump out of the pages - in this case, out of my Kindle - and start running around in my living room and flipping through the pages of my books.

It was precisely through the spirited Cathy - and Hareton, her cousin - that the author inserted some hope into her story. Destined to repeat the fate of the previous generation, they ended up breaking Heathcliff's revenge ties and found some comfort and love in each other when it seemed all matters were lost. Had the Brontë sister not died so soon after publishing her biggest accomplishment in writing, maybe then she would have written a true love story: that of Cathy and Hareton.

Rating: I was torn between 3 and 4 stars while deciding on my rating for this book. I ended up going with 4 as I enjoyed Emily's prose very much and I think she excelled in writing characters with such conflicting and interesting human's emotions, even though I wouldn't take them with me to my toys box.

Doceniam, ale nie dla mnie. Egzaltowana niemiłosiernie, a problemy bohaterów można by załatwić dwiema poważnymi i spokojnymi rozmowami. Ale generalnie tę książkę się albo kocha, albo nie cierpi, więc moją opinią się nie przejmujcie!

Well, well, well…

Hell should not be a surprise. We live surrounded by the notion that it threatens us all at the end of our days. What I did not expect was to find it in this book. My delusion had made me avoid reading Wuthering Heights for years. I had thought it was a passionate, histrionic and corny love story draped in gothic garb.

But this was evil on earth, with Bosch’s horrid Tree-Man reappearing under the name of Heathcliff, swallowing into its vile frame anything that dared approach it, while watching the process with an expression of sarcasm, delight and spite. And even if there is a sort of Redemption, with visions and all, that seems to solve away the hideous, this novel, and its language that revels in hatred, does not provide its own atonement. Just like Bosch. It is its viciousness that is attractive.

How could a young woman write this wicked, and brilliant, invention at the time and place that she did? It has shattered several of my misconceptions about the (early) Victorian age.

I am left with the enigma.


-------
The missing star is because at times the characters develop in not altogether convincing ways.

Ah the classics. Everybody can read their own agenda in them. So, first a short plot guide for dinner conversations when one needs to fake acculturation, and then on to the critics’ view.
A woman [1:] is in love with her non-blood brother [2:] but marries her neighbor [3:] whose sister [4:] marries the non-blood brother [2:]; their [1,3:] daughter [5:] marries their [2,4:] son [6:]; meanwhile, their [1,2:] elder brother marries and has a son [7:]. Then everybody dies, 1 of bad temper, 4 of stupidity, 3 of a cold, 6 because he’s irritating, 2 because he’s mean and tried to rise above his station. 5 and 7 are the only ones left, so they marry. The women are all called Catherine, the men are mostly called Earnshaw, and through intermarriage everybody is a bit of a Heathcliff.

The Marxist critic: the oppressed and underprivileged [2:] revolts to improve his lot in life, but fails to make allies and loses everything, as always.
The Post-colonialist critic: once again the rich [1,3,4:] meddle with the lives of the poor [2:] under the pretense of improving them, in fact wrecking havoc.
The Feminist critic: if only the Catherines had read The Feminine Mystique…
The Freudian critic: repeated intermarriage and border-line incest make for such good stories!
The Shakespearean critic: Much Ado About Nothing
The Entertainment Weekly executive: stories told by sources close to the protagonists always sell well, because most people live vicariously. And dinnertime has always been the perfect slot for gossip.

It is a testament to the overabundance of cliches clogging the realms of literature featuring romance, that readers widely associate the middle Brontë sister's tour de force with vindictive fury, abuse and emotional excesses rather than love. Because bestowing approval on an unnatural, obsessive love that devoured everything in its vicinity out of pure malice somehow throws our moral compass into a tizzy.

Last time I read this, Emily Brontë had cruelly crushed a child's enjoyment of a book much like Heathcliff remorselessly causes the universe stretching between the extremities of Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights to implode violently. She had sucked me into a vortex of dark, inchoate feelings for a week or so from which I found difficult to extricate myself.
But this time? The pages flew by. My spirit soared every time Brontë breached a boundary of what the voices in favor of the status quo label propriety, demolished a stereotype, let her heroine roam the outdoors as freely as she could with the one person who never sought to reduce her individuality to a compilation of 'feminine' attributes. And the romance? It made me swoon. So pardon me if I shun those patriarchy-approved alpha males who infantilize their lovers, their false sheen of dignity and restraint, the promise of domesticated happily-ever-afters, and righteous, unidimensional do-gooders. I crave for Emily's brutal candour instead, her courageous glorification of this earth-shattering, all-consuming desire to melt, to unite with the one you covet, with nary a care for what it may entail. The love that heats up your blood and is food for your soul and percolates every fibre of your being.
n  

But, Heathcliff, if I dare you now, will you venture? If you do, I'll keep you. I'll not lie there by myself: they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me, but I won't rest till you are with me. I never will!

n
Heathcliff and Catherine's relationship was beyond their own control and comprehension, a storm which wreaked havoc in the lives of those who sought to throttle it, a force of nature which subsided only when both its initiators were reconciled in death free to resume their wild, unchecked peregrinations across the stretch of earth which they claimed as their very own - the moors, which divorced from worldly considerations of wars, Empire and inequality, became the only utopia which could accommodate their calamitous passion for each other.

n  I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped in the flags! In every cloud, in every tree-filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object by day-I am surrounded with her image!n

Sartre in his preface (passionate endorsement) to Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth says -

n  "...he shows perfectly clearly that this irrepressible violence is neither a storm in a teacup nor the reemergence of savage instincts nor even a consequence of resentment: it is man restructuring himself."n

And that's as concise and succinct a defense I can provide for Heathcliff, his rage that won't be quelled and its devastating manifestations. The Heathcliff without a second name, the perpetual outsider in a white-washed society breeding manifold evils, the other, the 'thing' which Nelly Dean, Mrs Earnshaw, Hindley and even the infant Catherine see as nothing other than a dirty, smelly, baseborn creature deserving of contempt. A person of color stranded in a world increasingly being cleaved into virulent polarities of light and dark, Occident and Orient, powerful and powerless, colonizer and colonized, white master and black slave, abuser and abused. Violence is the language of the oppressed after all, especially because the oppressor teaches him no better.
n  

I wish I had light hair and a fair skin, and was dressed and behaved as well, and had a chance of being as rich as he will be!

n
And Catherine? I disagree with Simone de Beauvoir when she asserts -
n  

"She uses his words, she repeats his gestures, adopts his manias and tics. "I am Heathcliff," says Catherine in Wuthering Heights; this is the cry of all women in love; she is another incarnation of the beloved, his reflection, his double: she is he. She lets her own world flounder in contingence: she lives in his universe."

n
This certainly typifies heroines populating the wide spectrum of conventional romance novels in general. But I consider Catherine exempt from this pigeonholing. A few moments from her death she contemplates reverting to her sexless girlhood to be reunited with a childhood companion only with whom she had savoured true liberty, to travel back to a time when societal mores hadn't impressed upon her a catastrophic urge for conformity. And if Catherine finds herself to be interchangeable from her other half, then Heathcliff, too, wills himself to dissolve with her into the embrace of the earth which does not discriminate between the baptized and the heathen.
n  

'...I dreamt I was sleeping the last sleep by that sleeper, with my heart stopped and my cheek frozen against hers.
'And if she had been dissolved into earth, or worse, what would you have dreamt of then?' I said.
'Of dissolving with her, and being more happy still!' he answered.

n
There. If Catherine is Heathcliff, then Heathcliff, too, is Catherine. Beings seeking to overturn the societal injunction against their individuation and find their salvation in each other. A salvation they could attain only when Emily ushers in the element of the paranormal, the much vilified, belittled 'gothic'.

So take away your insidious Rochesters and sanctimonious Jane Eyres and gentrified romances put on a pedestal. Give me Heathcliff and Catherine instead. Give me their petulant anger, their restlessness and their feral love.

¡Nunca antes me había sentido tan enojado en todas las páginas de un libro!
¡Es imposible tenerle aprecio a ningún personaje! Unos porque son odiosos, otros porque son egoístas, los hay malcriados y están también los que son muy estúpidos. No existe ese por el que sientes simpatía y pena, que también te hace llegar el dolor por sus infortunios, y la rabia por las injusticias que recibe. ¡No lo hay!
Entonces, ¿por qué me gustó tanto este libro si siempre prefiero buenos personajes a una buena historia? Muy fácil, la respuesta reside en la pregunta: porque sí son buenos personajes.
Siempre me he sentido atraído por los villanos, los protagonistas insoportables y/o los personajes tóxicos, únicamente cuando están bien construidos. Siento que es mucho más difícil plantar con éxito estas cualidades en un títere y que este se vea real, así como Gollum en El Señor de los Anillos, Cercei y Joffrey en la saga Canción de Hielo y Fuego, o, poniendo un ejemplo actual, todos los personajes de la excelente serie Euphoria. Pido que no me malentiendan, sé que estos personajes tiene algunas cosas en común, son peligrosos, por ejemplo, y eso no es nada bueno. Quería comentar esto ya que siempre me inclino por libros que tienen o están protagonizados por este tipo de personajes, simplemente porque son más complejos que los que todo el mundo ama, porque toman más trabajo realizar.

Regresando al libro, Heathcliff es el personaje mejor logrado, en mi opinión. Hubo ocasiones donde me sorprendía su hostilidad, pues, ¿quién le dice a su invitado que descanse si lo necesita o se largue si no? Desde la primera página empezamos a odiarlo por la forma en que recibe a su egocéntrico inquilino. Una nota de Charlotte sobre el libro de su hermana dice que, si no fuera porque Heathcliff trata de hijo a Harenton, podría considerarsele como un demonio. Créanme que Heathcliff es de los mejores personajes que he podido conocer, contaría un sinfín de cosas sobre él pero no quiero arruinarle la historia a quien no la haya leído. Sólo diré que puede ocupar el primer lugar en una lista de los personajes más despreciables de toda la literatura, y agregaré algo que él dijo:

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

Estaría muy mal creer que este libro trata de un amor imposible, porque muchos de los personajes se pueden encasillar entre controlador o controlado. Sin embargo, tampoco podemos ignorar la gran cantidad de frases bonitas que, tristemente, e insisto, se usaron para controlar:

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

La escritura de Emily me pareció poderosa, esos saltos que hizo en la narración, no de tiempo, sino de narradores me parecieron increíbles. En un momento estaba narrado por Ellen, en primera persona, después pasaba a Lockwood, también en primera persona, y en ningún momento me dejó con la incógnita de ¿quién está narrando? Creo que es mejor que lo lean ustedes mismo, pues no me creo capaz de explicarlo como se debe.

Ahora bien, voy a contar el único aspecto que no me agradó del todo en este libro: la estructura. Me incómodo un poco que toda la historia fuera entre dos personas, una de ellas contándolo todo. El 90% del libro nos cuenta todo lo que pasó en Cumbres Borrascosas y alrededores, lo cual me molestó, puesto que siempre quise encontrarme con el Heathcliff del presente al del pasado, pero fue fácil acostumbrarme; el otro 10% se nos cuenta qué pasa en Cumbre Borrascosas, en el presente del libro.
No es hasta el final que me reencontré con el Heathcliff que quería, aunque, llegado a ese punto, extrañé al Heathcliff del pasado. Irónico.

Para terminar, no creo que sea necesario aclarar que no es un libro para todo el mundo, pues no todos tienden a preferir personajes odiosos como protagonistas. Empero, si eres de esos lectores que sienten una curiosa atracción por este tipo de personajes, el libro te encantará.

Actualización 2023: llevaba meses pensando en ponerle la quinta estrella, pues no fue justo haberle puesto cuatro a uno de mis libros favoritos de la vida.

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 enjoy character-driven narratives and, so, adored this novel from the first time I read it, nine years ago. The reason this has remained such a firm favourite, and why I try to ensure I reread this at least biennially, however, is that in this intense and focused character study I found myself unaccountably and entirely drawn to every unlikable individual in it. I forgave every flaw and overlooked any ordinarily dislikeable quality in my blind adoration for these passionate creatures.

I was captivated by the raging emotions that dominated, throughout. The wildness of the characters and their uncontrollable fits of frenzy and passion - their deepest of despairs and their most ardent of desires - is also mirrored by the wildness of the landscape surrounding them, creating an eternal and external, extra character in this most infamous of love triangles.

I have reread this so often that I could probably quote every single page, but yet I never fail to find something new to discover on the moors. There is a feeling of never quite being on equal footing that dominates and permeates the entire text. This is a novel that distances the reader: it denies any simple pleasure such as happy-ever-afters or a brief respite from the altering high passions and utter, all-consuming bleakness. I will never feel at home here but I will always long to.

This has remained my favourite book from first reading until now, ten years later, and I think there's no better endorsement for a book than that!

3.5⭐️ it's the Brontë sisters' world and I'm just living in it

As brilliant on the eleventh reading as on the first . . . A brilliant, dark, complicated and wonderful story, and one of my favourites of all time. I just completely adore it.

(Book 902 from 1001 books) - Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë

In 1801, Lockwood, a wealthy young man from the south of England, who is seeking peace and recuperation, rents Thrushcross Grange in Yorkshire.

He visits his landlord, Heathcliff, who lives in a remote moorland farmhouse, Wuthering Heights.

There Lockwood finds an odd assemblage: Heathcliff, who seems to be a gentleman, but whose manners are uncouth; the reserved mistress of the house, who is in her mid-teens; and a young man, who seems to be a member of the family, yet dresses and speaks as if he is a servant. ...

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «تندباد حوادث یا ووترینگ هایتز»؛ «بلندیهای بادگیر»؛ «بلندیهای بادخیز»؛ «عشق هرگز نمیمیرد»؛ نویسنده: امیلی برونته؛ انتشارتیها (نگاه ، جامی) ادبیات؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: ماه جولای سال 1977 میلادی؛ بار دوم: سال 1998 میلادی؛ سومین بار در ماه می سال 2007 میلادی

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «تندباد حوادث یا ووترینگ هایتز»؛ «بلندیهای بادخیز»؛ «بلندیهای بادخیز (وودرینگ هایتز)»؛ «بلندیهای بادگیر»؛ «بلندیهای بادگیر (وادرینگ هایتز)»؛ «بلندیهای بادگیر (عشق هرگز نمیمیرد)»؛ «بلندیهای بادگیر (وادرینگ هایتس)»؛ «بلندیهای بادگیر یا عشق هرگز نمیمیرد»؛ «به رزاییه کانی به‌ربا، کردی، سنندج»؛ «عشق هرگز نمیمیرد»؛ «عشق هرگز نمیمیرد (بلندیهای بادگیر)»؛ «واترینگ هایتز»؛ «بلندیهای بادگیر (تا انتهای پر رنج عشق)»؛ «عشق هرگز نمیمیرد (بلندیهای بادخیز)»؛

هر یک از عنوانهای بالا، بارها به زیور طبع آراسته شده اند، البته که با کوشش مترجمین، و دیگران از ارجمندان؛ اثری از «امیلی برونته»، شاعر و نویسنده ی «بریتانیایی» است، که بارها توسط مترجمهای نام آشنا، خانمها و آقایان: «عبدالعظیم صبوری - در 299ص، در سال 1334هجری خورشیدی»، «ولی الله ابراهیمی در سال 1348هجری خورشیدی»، «داریوش شاهین»؛ «علی اصغر بهرام بیگی»، «پرویز پژواک»؛ «رباب امام»، «تهمینه مهربانی»، «حمید اکبری و زهرا احمدیان»، «فرزانه قلیزاده»، «نعیمه ظاهری»، «مریم صادقی»؛ «اکرم مظفری»، «فاطمه امینی»، «شادی ابطحی»، «فریده قراچه داغی (صمیمی)»؛ «مهدی سجودی مقدم»، «رضا رضایی»، و «نوشین ابراهیمی»، «مهدی غبرائی»، «هادی ریاضی»، «سمیه امانی» و «شهرام
قوامی»؛ و ...؛ ترجمه و منتشر شده است

وادِرینگ هایتس در این داستان که عنوان آن، نام عمارت خانوادگی «ارنشاو»؛ و به معنی خانه ای است، که روی تپه و در معرض باد ساخته شده است؛ داستان عشق آتشین و مشکل‌دار، میان «هیث کلیف» و «کترین (کاترین) ارنشاو»، و این‌که همین عشق نافرجام، چگونه سرانجام این دو عاشق، و بسیاری از اطرافیانشان را، به نابودی می‌کشاند؛ «هیث کلیف»، کولی‌زاده‌ ای است، که موفق به ازدواج با «کاترین» نمی‌شود، و پس از مرگ «کاترین» به انتقام‌ روی می‌آورد.؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 30/05/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 14/05/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی