The story
Wuthering Heights was published in London in December 1847 under the name Ellis Bell, in a set of three volumes with Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey. It is set on the Yorkshire moors and told largely by a housekeeper, Nelly Dean, to a tenant named Lockwood. It tells of the foundling Heathcliff, brought to the Earnshaw family at Wuthering Heights, and his wild bond with Catherine Earnshaw. When Catherine marries the gentle Edgar Linton, Heathcliff sets out on a long revenge that reaches into the next generation.
Emily Bronte (1818 to 1848) was a clergyman's daughter who lived most of her life at the Haworth parsonage and wrote little else beyond poems. The novel draws on Romantic poetry and Gothic fiction, such as Frankenstein, yet it is hard to place in any tradition. Its unusual structure, with nested narrators and a time scheme spanning two generations, was a daring move. Reviewers were shocked at its brutality and few understood it, and Emily died of tuberculosis in December 1848, aged 30, before she could see its reputation rise.
Charlotte Bronte edited a second edition in 1850 and defended her sister. By the twentieth century the book was recognized as a masterpiece, studied for its treatment of class, nature and passion, and adapted in films, a 1939 Hollywood version with Laurence Olivier and Kate Bush's 1978 song among them.
Why it mattered
- The novel opened new ground for the English novel in its structure, its violence and its refusal of moral comfort.
- It became a central text for readings of class, gender and the Gothic in Victorian literature.
- Its adaptations, from the 1939 film to Kate Bush's 1978 song, made the moors and the lovers a lasting cultural image.
Sources
- Wuthering Heights Britannica
Community notes
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