Are you a reader of classics? I have embarked on a journey to read books by 17th/18th/19th century authors. Joining me is the amazing Elizabeth Gilliland, author of Austen University Mysteries series well as Come One, Come All, an adaption of Wuthering Heights. Hence, our first book is Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë.
In this post, you will find an in-depth discussion about the book and we will strive to answer why it is a classic that we love retuning to. Let’s begin with a refresher of what Wuthering Heights is about.
Wuthering Heights
By Emily Brontë | Goodreads | Published 1847
In a house haunted by memories, the past is everywhere …
As darkness falls, a man caught in a snowstorm is forced to shelter at the strange, grim house Wuthering Heights. It is a place he will never forget. There he will come to learn the story of Cathy: how she was forced to choose between her well-meaning husband and the dangerous man she had loved since she was young. How her choice led to betrayal and terrible revenge – and continues to torment those in the present. How love can transgress authority, convention, even death.
Content notes include domestic abuse, emotional abuse, toxic relationship, child abuse, death, physical abuse.
Wuthering Heights – The discussion with Elizabeth
Kriti: The fascinating thing about a reread is that it exposes all the things we remember and misremember about a book. I have always thought of Wuthering Heights as a tragic love story of Heathcliff and Catherine. Coming back to it over a decade later showed me how it is so much more. Elizabeth, what were your first impressions of this book when you read it the very first time?
Elizabeth: I feel like I maybe read this book a bit too young the first time. I can’t remember exactly when that was, but I had difficulty understanding the language and didn’t understand the frame narrative (the story within a story, Nelly Dean telling Lockwood about Catherine and Heathcliff), so I had a hard time keeping the characters straight. When I came back to it as an older reader (inspired by the Tom Hardy TV adaptation), I found it romantic but sad.
When I came back to the book AGAIN as a graduate student and then a teacher, I still find it sad, but no longer so romantic. This book is the poster child for toxic relationships, but in my opinion, Bronte doesn’t try to paint it as anything different. The novel is a Gothic tragedy about the cyclical nature of generational abuse and how it destroys families. But it does have some killer romantic lines – “I cannot live without my life, I cannot live without my soul,” etc. 🙂
Wuthering Heights opens from the perspective of Lockwood, the new tenant at Thrushcross Grange. He makes his way to Wuthering Heights, his landlord, Mr Heathcliff’s residence. He is astonished to realize he is not welcome in the house. The people who live there have complex, mostly negative, relationships and the general spirit of hospitality is lacking. Lockwood spends a night at Wuthering Heights and encounters Catherine’s ghost. On returning back to Thrushcross Grange, Lockwood asks the housekeeper, Mrs Dean, for details about his landlord and she starts from the beginning when Heathcliff first arrived at Wuthering Heights.
Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange originally belonged to well off families and there were always servants and caretakers for the home. The cast of characters is a big one. The particular way of talking of some servants, Joseph, in particular, alludes to the many layers of socio economic status that exist in the book and the dialects that were spoken amongst these classes. How did the cast of characters represent the society of the time?
Oh, Joseph. I barely understand anything he says in the book without footnotes. I personally read this as Emily Bronte sort of thumbing her nose at proper London society. The Brontes loved their Northern home, and Emily in particular was very wary of London society. The Earnshaws would have been wealthy but would have been laughed out of London drawing rooms with their rough Northern ways, and I feel like Emily was trying to showcase a way of life that wouldn’t have been highlighted in other novels published in the time period.
When Heathcliff and Catherine are kids, they develop an affection like no other. Heathcliff has never been treated as an equal in Wuthering Heights and though she loves him, she doesn’t relate to his pains. She thinks the world revolves around her and that by marrying another man, Edgar Linton, she can still continue to be with Heathcliff. Of all the characters, she is definitely the most dramatic. She is moody and manipulative. She has her fits of anger and passion and she is spiteful in many of her actions, not always thinking about the consequences. What did you think of Catherine? How did her upbringing make her who she was?
I personally find Catherine to be a refreshing character in comparison to many other women characters written in the time. To be sure, she is not a good or kind person, but I love that Bronte doesn’t make her be. Women in Victorian society were supposed to be the moral centers of their homes, the “angels of the hearth”, but Catherine doesn’t have to be morally upright to be the central character in the story. My number one pet peeve with most Wuthering Heights adaptations is that they soften her character and take away some of her rage and wildness, but those are the things that make her so truly unique.
Catherine doesn’t always do things from a good place. She enumerates all of Heathcliff’s faults to Isabella, but her timing, approach and tone does not have the desired effect. Isabella has to find out in her own terrible way who Heathcliff is. I did not like Heathcliff for his conduct either. He is a cunning man who exploits people’s goodness. He lets Isabella believe who she wanted him to be and only after their wedding does he reveal his true colors. Isabella is left without any attachments as her match with Heathcliff distanced her brother greatly. I liked Isabella and the person she grew into. There was a bit of madness there but her step to finally leave Wuthering Heights took a lot of courage. What did you think of Isabella?
Isabella is one of the truly tragic characters of the novel and one of the few who, in my opinion, deserves only sympathy without bearing any responsibility for contributing to the ongoing abuse. Her one mistake is falling in love with Heathcliff and projecting romantic traits onto him, and she suffers for it terribly. She is let down by everyone she loves–Linton, Heathcliff, and Cathy–and dies knowing she is leaving her child to a monster. It is also SO telling that Bronte includes her as a character and doesn’t flinch away from how horribly Heathcliff and the others treat her. We can forgive and excuse away much of Heathcliff’s bad behavior, but his treatment of Isabella is by far the blackest mark on his character.
Staying at the Heights, she was also privy to the condition of the place and its inhabitants. Heathcliff had rented the place from Hindley Earnshaw and the two continued to hate each other with a vengeance. Isabella’s narrative gives a glimpse into the madness that has descended into Earnshaw: how much he wants to kill Heathcliff.
On a side note, what did Catherine suffer from in her last days? Why did Heathcliff think she had murdered him?
I’m sure you could find academic articles where people speculate about this or that disease, but I’ve always read Cathy’s sickness as being brought upon by her pregnancy. I wrote a long description above about the symbolic use of the Gothic in expressing women’s fears, and I think Bronte is writing obliquely about how horrifying pregnancy and birth can be. There might also be some symbolic expression of how Cathy isn’t morally fit to be a mother and so her physical body degenerates, but I think that’s left intentionally oblique.
I think Heathcliff is likely saying that in dying herself, Cathy is killing any possibility for redemption in Heathcliff. His life will solely be devoted to revenge.
As I read the book, I wondered about Mrs Dean as a narrator. She makes sure to emphasise the faults and goodness in each person. Throughout the book, she takes care of many children in the Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange households. She often knows the histories of their parents and tries to caution them from danger but very rarely does she have an influence on what happens. She watches helplessly as Hindley follows into Heathcliff’s footsteps under Joseph’s tutelage. She is aware of the despair Catherine experiences when she marries her cousin and moves into Wuthering Heights. What did you think of Mrs Dean?
Mrs. Dean is an interesting character. She functions as the frame narrator, and she is luckily, conveniently present to be the confidant of most of the major characters throughout the book. In reading and re-reading, I’ve started to wonder just how much of a reliable character Mrs. Dean actually is. Although she does comfort Cathy and go to her in her time of need, there are many times throughout the book that she expresses how much she dislikes Cathy, so I always wonder if we’re meant to totally trust the way she tells her story. It’s also interesting that she makes a side remark about being Hindley’s playmate as a child before she had to become the servant and he went on to be the master, so there are definitely some weird dynamics at play in that household, especially considering the confusion that later happens with Heathcliff and Cathy and blurring those class lines.
All the female characters in this book: Cathy, Isabella, Catherine, I felt each of them was trapped in their own way. They end up isolated from other women, unable to reach out for comfort from the people they love. Mrs Dean offers unwavering support to each of the women. She visits them when she is called. She cries with them. She soothes them. What does Wuthering Height say about the expectations from women?
With all the women characters, I really feel like Bronte is pushing back against the moral Victorian woman/angel on the hearth, as I wrote about a bit above with the Cathy question. With the exception of Isabella, none of the women characters are wholly virtuous or good; they are really dependent on their surroundings for their behavior, and all can become quite mean and volatile when cornered. Isabella is the most like the traditional angel of the hearth, and she is ruthlessly abused and dies, so even though we sympathize with her, I don’t feel like Bronte was encouraging us to emulate ourselves after her.
The second generation of characters are the kids from Edgar, Hindley, Catherine, Heathcliff, Isabella. Linton. In that time, kids used to be named after their family and that does get a bit confusing to follow but not too bad. Mrs Dean offers a great comparison between Heathcliff and Hindley. Heathcliff, after Catherine declares her intent to marry Edgar Linton, disappears and returns some years later a refined man. But Mrs Dean correctly sees that getting an education has only made him more dangerous. He has returned for revenge. And does his revenge take years! What did you think of Heathcliff and the ways in which he extracted his revenge on the families?
Heathcliff is such a complicated character, because he is on the one hand the most unambiguously terrible person in the book, and on the other one of the characters whose background makes it difficult not to sympathize with him…to a point. I think Heathcliff moves beyond the sphere of our empathy in his treatment of Isabella and young Catherine, but I also think that’s the point. If Heathcliff’s revenge had stopped at returning, taking over Wuthering Heights, and ridiculing the people who had once ridiculed him, we could forgive him for some of his wrongdoings. However Bronte ensures that we understand Heathcliff’s suffering has done nothing but continue to perpetuate a cycle of suffering. We hope that Hareton and Catherine can rise above this cycle, but it must be an active choice–otherwise the abuse will only continue on into the next generation.
Did you have any thoughts on the younger Hindley, Linton and Catherine?
I think I cover some of this with the last question, but I think these characters are so necessary to show the generational trauma that has occurred because of selfish choices, cruelty, and revenge. Linton is unfortunately beyond change, but Hareton and Catherine give us hope that the cycle can be broken. Bronte does leave this open-ended, though, which I think is a brilliant move–we have to imagine if it’s really possible for them, and what it might necessitate to truly break free.
So much of Wuthering Heights is anguish and pain and that can be hard to be in all the time. The advantage that Wuthering Heights has is the writing. I was surprised by how much I loved the pace. There was never a dull chapter in my opinion! The storytelling is to the point. Wuthering Heights does not read like a haunted house story though the house itself is at the centre of its plot. Everything happens in the space between Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. As time passes, the condition of Wuthering Heights is a focal of decay. It is almost sad that I only remembered Heathcliff and Catherine from my first reading – there is so much more to this story.
Great points – yes, it says so much about this story that the most terrifying thing in this book is not the ghost that appears in the early chapters! The ongoing suffering of those who are still living is so much more frightening.
An unforgettable scene to me is when Heathcliff is describing to Mrs Dean how he will take Edgar Linton’s place next to Catherine when he dies. Was there a scene that stuck with you?
There are so many great scenes in the book, and I think you’re correct in saying that there isn’t much wasted in terms of plot and structure (except for Joseph’s many frequent long speeches in Northern dialect, haha). I’m really interested in adaptation, so when I teach this book, I often ask my students to look for the scenes that help to make the book what it is, that have become closely associated and even expected in adaptations of the book, so that if a film version were to leave them out, the story would almost feel incomplete. I think for me, that scene would have to be when Cathy is talking to Nelly about her feelings for Heathcliff and eventually realizes, “I am Heathcliff.” On first reading, it seems like a romantic statement, but it becomes such a chilling foreshadowing to just how codependent the two are on each other and how much pain they are capable of causing one another.
Since Elizabeth has written a book based on Wuthering Heights (see Come One, Come All) and is also well versed in literature of that time through her studies, I had a few other questions for her.
Kriti: Why is this book a classic?
Elizabeth: Wuthering Heights stands the test of time as an almost textbook example of the Victorian Gothic – you have the decaying, haunted house, the sublime weather and landscape of the moors, the uncanny figures of Cathy’s ghost and Heathcliff’s deterioration at the end of the novel, and the weak patriarchs who allow their families to devolve into chaos. You also have Heathcliff, who is maybe the ultimate example of the Byronic hero. This book was a cultural shock in its time, both because of the mystery around the author (Emily and her sisters Anne and Charlotte famously initially published under male pen names – Ellis/Emily, Acton/Anne, and Currer/Charlotte Bell – before being revealed as women. Emily was a recluse who shied away from fame and remained a mystery to her readers) and because of the content of the book. The characters are so unrepentant in their bad behavior; even for a Byronic hero, Heathcliff pushes the rules of moral decency, and Cathy’s boldness and rage are still unsettling to read by modern standards. Beyond this, I think what remains so compelling about this book over time is how Emily Bronte shies away from giving us a pat moral story. The “bad” people aren’t punished any more than the “good,” and reading the book carefully makes you question where the line is between these categories. Heathcliff mistreats everyone, but he was so badly mistreated as a child that we understand him even if we don’t condone him. Some of the scenes between Heathcliff and Cathy are so thrillingly romantic, but their relationship is terribly abusive. Linton is meant to be the “good” counterpart but he is so weak and ineffectual as a husband, father, and brother that all the women in his life suffer as a result. It’s hard to know who to root for in this book, and I find myself landing on different sides every time I re-read.
Kriti: What attracts writers to retell them?
Elizabeth: Wuthering Heights is such a cultural touchstone that people are familiar with it, even if they’ve never read it or watched an adaptation, and even if they would claim to know nothing about the book. It was so influential for its time for future Gothic writers in particular, and many of the characters and dynamics have influenced other novels and stories, even if they aren’t direct adaptations. I would bet you would be hard pressed to find a dark romance writer who isn’t borrowing at least a little bit from Heathcliff with her hero– there is no Fifty Shades of Grey or Christian Grey without Heathcliff. Cathy’s volatility and charisma is familiar in femme fatale characters from film noir, or even as recently as Gone Girl‘s Amy. Further, Bronte’s choice to leave some loose ends and not to categorize her characters as strictly good or bad, moral or immoral, lends itself to so many different readings of the text, which gives authors a lot to play with in retelling the story.
Kriti: How are these tales still applicable in today’s day and age?
Elizabeth: There is a great book of academic criticism about the Gothic by Kate Ferguson Ellis called The Contested Castle, where she writes about why so many women writers of the 18th and 19th century wrote Gothic novels. She posits that women authors used the gothic to write metaphorically about the real-world dangers that women faced but were unable to discuss freely in polite society. For example, the critic Ellen Moers writes about how Frankenstein was Mary Shelley’s attempt to write about the horrors of birth, inspired by her own difficulty with having children and by her mother’s death while giving birth to her. Ellis takes this further by noting that in Gothic novels, and especially those written by women, the common trope of home being the safe place and the outside world being dangerous becomes inverted; the home is the frightening place in the Gothic, and the outside world is where people can go to escape the horrors of abuse, incest, and more.
Wuthering Heights fits that mould perfectly–there is no more dangerous place than the home itself, especially after Heathcliff becomes its master. Almost everything terrible that happens in the book happens within the walls of a home–abuse, Heathcliff’s tyranny, Cathy’s cruelty, Cathy’s death by childbirth. The characters escape their homes to the moors to escape these evils; the ending of the book offers some hope because Hareton and Catherine are leaving Wuthering Heights behind them and going into the outside world.
That is all a very long-winded way to say that I think one of the main things that resonates from this book is that for many, home still isn’t a safe place. The generational abuse that the characters in this novel experience can only be overcome by leaving. It isn’t a very hopeful book overall, but I think there’s something really hopeful and beautiful about Hareton and Catherine getting a second chance. Both have made mistakes, both have been made cruel by the cycle of cruelty they were born into, but both choose to overcome this and try to end this ongoing suffering.
I am so honored to have found another buddy who reads and discusses books to so much depth! If you have made it this far, this must have been a good discussion for you too! We love your thoughts so please share in the comments below.
Our next read is Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Should you want to join us, send me a note on any of my socials or in the comments below.
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