Wuthering Heights (Penguin Classics)
Wuthering Heights is a wild, passionate story of the intense and almost demonic love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a foundling adopted by Catherine's father. After Mr Earnshaw's death, Heathcliff is bullied and humiliated by Catherine's brother Hindley and wrongly believing that his love for Catherine is not reciprocated, leaves Wuthering Heights, only to return years later as a wealthy and polished man. He proceeds to exact a terrible revenge for his former miseries. The action of the story is chaotic and unremittingly violent, but the accomplished handling of a complex structure, the evocative descriptions of the lonely moorland setting and the poetic grandeur of vision combine to make this unique novel a masterpiece of English literature.
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Community Reviews
Wuthering Heights was different and better than I anticipated. The characters hardly have any redeeming qualities. I don't find this to be a flaw in the book but rather what makes it interesting. Each character lays the blame for their woes on the wrong person enacting petty and cruel revenge whenever possible. It's clear the real villain is the first Master Earnshaw but it wouldn't be a dramatic novel worth reading if it was Catherine and Heathcliff sitting around the hearth chatting about how Master Earnshaw was ridiculous and was he thinking, now would it?
It's fine, I get why it's so important to the literary canon. But I just don't like anyone really and it's overtly controlling and abusive in all the depressing ways.
This book has been my favorite since I read it in high school. It’s the perfect mix of toxic romance, gothic, horror behind a beautiful depiction of the English countryside.
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