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Book Reviewed by:One of English literature's classic masterpieces—a gripping novel of love, propriety, and tragedy. Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read.
Emily Brontë's only novel endures as a work of tremendous and far-reaching influence. The Penguin Classics edition is the definitive version of the text, edited with an introduction by Pauline Nestor.
Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange, situated on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter one night at Wuthering Heights, the home of his landlord. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years before. What unfolds is the tale of the intense love between the gypsy foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw. Catherine, forced to choose between passionate, tortured Heathcliff and gentle, well-bred Edgar Linton, surrendered to the expectations of her class. As Heathcliff's bitterness and vengeance at his betrayal is visited upon the next generation, their innocent heirs must struggle to escape the legacy of the past.
Chapter 1
1801—I have just returned from a visit to my landlord—the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country! In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society. A perfect misanthropist's Heaven: and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us. A capital fellow! He little imagined how my heart warmed towards him when I beheld his black eyes withdraw so suspiciously under their brows, as I rode up, and when his fingers sheltered themselves, with a jealous resolution, still further in his waistcoat, as I announced my name.
'Mr. Heathcliff?' I said.
A nod was the answer.
'Mr. Lockwood your new tenant, sir. I do myself the honour of calling as soon as possible after my arrival, to express the hope that I have not inconvenienced you by my perseverance in soliciting the occupation of Thrushcross Grange: I heard yesterday you had had ...
BookBrowsers ask Graham Watson
Absolutely, Holly! My biography starts after Jane Eyre has been published. You know, Jane Eyre is a novel that's never the same twice. Do you ever get that? I read it as a teenager and most of it went over my head. But when I went back to it a few years it all felt very different. It was dynamite...
-Graham_W
Despite her marriage, Catherine has reciprocal feelings for Heathcliff, and one might think the story will consist largely of the two finding their way back to each other. Instead, Catherine dies at the end of the first act, while giving birth to her daughter, who is christened Catherine (called Cathy by her father). This story of the Earnshaws and Lintons is being narrated by Nelly Dean, who was a servant in both households at various times, to Mr. Lockwood, who is renting Thrushcross Grange after the death of Edgar Linton. Her narration catches up to the present day, and Brontë subverts the reader's expectations, first suggesting that Lockwood might be developing romantic feelings for Cathy Linton, now living at Wuthering Heights under the iron first of Heathcliff, after marrying his son who has since died. Instead, in a redemptive turn of events, Heathcliff dies and Cathy and Hindley Earnshaw's son Hareton fall in love at the end of the novel. If you're thinking, "Hey, aren't a lot of these people first cousins?" the answer is yes...continued
Full Review
(738 words)
(Reviewed by Lisa Butts).
Though I'm not really the kind of person who has a "favorite book," when people ask if I do, I have, since the first time I read it, told them Wuthering Heights. This first reading would have been when I was a deeply romantic and dramatic young teenager, and I was turned inside out by the unrequited passion between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw. I'm not the only one—pop songs have been written about their love, it has been cited as an influence by writers as wildly divergent as Sylvia Plath and Stephanie Meyer of Twilight fame. There have been at least fifteen television and film adaptations.
I read Wuthering Heights again in my twenties and was still struck by Catherine and Heathcliff's obsessive, undying devotion. But now...
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The low brow and the high brow
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