Summary | Author | Reviews | Discussion Questions


Wuthering Heights
Emily Bronte, 1847
400 pp.

In Brief
In early nineteenth-century Yorkshire, the passionate attachment between a headstrong young girl and a foundling boy brought up by her father causes disaster for them and many others, even in the next generation. Includes explanatory notes throughout the text, an introduction discussing the author and the background of the story, and a study guide.

More
Considered lurid and shocking by mid-19th-century standards, Wuthering Heights was initially thought to be such a publishing risk that its author, Emily Bronte, was asked to pay some of the publication costs. A somber tale of consuming passions and vengeance played out against the lonely moors of northern England, the book proved to be one of the most enduring classics of English literature.

The turbulent and tempestuous love story of Cathy and Heathcliff spans two generations -- from the time Heathcliff, a strange, course young boy, is brought to live on the Earnshaw's windswept estate, through Cathy's marriage to Edgar Linton and Heathcliff's plans for revenge, to Cathy's death years later and the eventual union of the surviving Earnshaw and Linton heirs.

A masterpiece of imaginative fiction, Wuthering Heightsremains as poignant and compelling today as it was when first published in 1847. (From Barnes and Noble .)

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About the Author

• Birth—July 30, 1818
• Where—Thornton, Yorkshire, UK
• Death—December 19, 1848
• Where—Haworth, Yorkshire
• Education—Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge in
   Lancashire; Miss Wooler's School at Roe Head; Pensionnat
   Heger (Belgium, to study French and German)


Bronte was born on July 30, 1818, in Thornton, Yorkshire, in the north of England, the third child of the Reverend Patrick Bronte and Maria Branwell Bronte. In 1820 the family moved to neighboring Haworth, where Reverend Brontë was offered a lifetime curacy. The following year Mrs. Brontë died of cancer, and her sister, Elizabeth Branwell, moved in to help raise the six children.

The four eldest sisters—Charlotte, Emily, Maria, and Elizabeth—attended Cowan Bridge School, until Maria and Elizabeth contracted what was probably tuberculosis and died within months of each other, at which point Charlotte and Emily returned home. The four remaining siblings—Charlotte, Branwell, Emily, and Anne—entertained themselves by reading Shakespeare, Milton, Virgil and the Bible. They played on the Yorkshire moors and dreamed up fanciful, fabled worlds, creating a constant stream of tales, such as the Young Men plays (1826) and Our Fellows (1827). It was at this time that young Emily began to write stories and poetry. (Adapted from Penguin Classics edition of Jane Eyre.)

Emily spent a few years as governess at Law Hill Hall in West Yorkshire and later, with Charlotte and Anne, attended the Pensionnat Heger in Belgium Brussels to study French and German. Her studies were interrupted by the death of their Aunt Branwell, and Emily alone returned to Haworth, remaining with her father, where she continued writing and editing her poems. When Charlotte and Anne returned home, the three published their poetry in 1846 under the psuedonyms Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. A year later, in 1847, Emily published Wuthering Heights to (at first) mixed reviews. The novel, however, was soon hailed as an inventive and original work. Their brother Branwell died in 1848; at his funeral Emily caught cold and died soon after, on December 18, 1848.

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Commentary
An intriguing tale of revenge in which the main characters are controlled by consuming passions. This novel was once considered such a risk by its publishers that Emily Bronte had to defray the cost of publication until a sufficient number of copies had been sold.
Barnes and Noble Editors



More than 150 years and many cultural upheavals later, Emily Brontë’s novel remains almost blindingly original, undimmed in its power to convey the destructive potential of thwarted passion as expressed through the unappeasable fury of a rejected lover. To paraphrase Shakespeare, age cannot wither it, nor custom stale its infinite variety.

Every aspect of the novel—whether it be the writer’s expert grasp of the laws pertaining to land and personal property, her meticulous rendering of local dialect, or her use of multiple narrators—has been put under microscopic study. And yet, despite the shelf after shelf of books that have been written in the attempt to understand the frail yet flinty-willed young woman—"the sphinx of literature," as Emily was called by Angus M. Mackay in The Brontës: Fact and Fiction (1897)—who wrote it, as well as the tragedy-struck, remarkably talented family from which she came, Wuthering Heights still presents a dark and fierce view of the world that is seemingly without precedent.

The book’s autobiographical components aroused interest from the start, especially given the original mystery surrounding its authorship. Lucasta Miller, in The Brontë Myth, gives an often spellbinding account of the ways in which the Brontës’ "lonely moorland lives" (p. xi) lent themselves to the process of mythification even before the last sister had died. (None of them lived to see forty: Anne died within five months of Emily, at the age of twenty-nine, and Charlotte, the only one of thesisters to marry, was in the early months of pregnancy at the time of her death, at the age of thirty-nine.)

But unlike Charlotte, who lived long enough to help shape the myth that would grow up around the Brontës, .... Emily wasn’t around to answer for herself. "All of Emily’s biographers have had to cope with the absences surrounding her," Miller notes (p. 193).... [Their curiosities] were stirred by the novel’s almost pagan quality, its disregard for bourgeois niceties .... [and] fueled by disbelief that a reserved young daughter of a rural clergyman could have written so volcanic a book.
Daphne Merkin - Introduction to Barnes and Noble edition (Adapted)


Readers Say...
(Occasionally, when few critical reviews are available, we include helpful reviews by Barnes & Noble customers.)

WOW: This is the best book I have ever read! The first time I did so was in eighth grade at the age of 13 and I loved it even then. However, it is definitely one that requires a lot of thought and logic; sometimes it is a very good idea to re-read a paragraph or two. The more times you read it, the more you get from it.... Wuthering Heights is most definitely not for someone who likes to read 'casually' or to 'relax from thinking'
Maddie A reviewer, 12/30/07


A perfect example of love, revenge, and obsession: Wuthering Heights tells the story of love and deep obsession between characters. It is an amazing love story with a gothic theme. It shows readers how one mans love for another woman, whom he could not have affected every character in the novel, as he destorys each of their lives. This book is a must read, you do not want to miss out on this adventure.
Reviewer - Kristin, a classic book lover, 01/03/08


No words to describe: I absolutely loved this book and want to write it over and over again. It was written so eloquently that there are no words to describe some of these complex almost un-human like charachters. Praise to Emily Bronte.
Reviewer - a book freak, 11/09/07

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Book Club Discussion Questions

1. To what extent do you think the setting of the novel contributes to, or informs, what takes place? Do you think the moors are a character in their own right? How do you interpret Bronte's view of nature and the landscape?

2. Discuss Emily Bronte's careful attention to a rigid timeline and the role of the novel as a sober historical document. How is this significant, particularly in light of the turbulent action within? What other contrasts within the novel strike you, and why? How are these contrasts important, and how do they play out in the novel?

3. Do you think the novel is a tale of redemption, despair, or both? Discuss the novel's meaning to you. Do you think the novel's moral content dictates one choice over the other?

4. Do you think Bronte succeeds in creating three-dimensional figures in
Heathcliff and Cathy, particularly given their larger-than-life metaphysical passion? Why or why not?

5. Discuss Bronte's use of twos: Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange; two families, each with two children; two couples (Catherine and Edgar, and Heathcliff and Isabella); two narrators; the doubling-up of names. What is Bronte's intention here? Discuss.

6. How do Mr. Lockwood and Nelly Dean influence the story as narrators? Do you think they are completely reliable observers? What does Bronte want us to believe?

7. Discuss the role of women in Wuthering Heights. Is their depiction typical of Bronte's time, or not? Do you think Bronte's characterizations of women mark her as a pioneer ahead of her time or not?

8. Who or what does Heathcliff represent in the novel? Is he a force of evil or a victim of it?How important is the role of class in the novel, particularly as it relates to Heathcliff and his life?