I was asked by a friend recently to summerise Wuthering Heights for her so she could impress with her in-depth knowledge of a book she hadn't read. She tried to read it but hated it.
So I summed it up for her and if you ever at a party and need to impress someone with your detailed knowledge of one of the greatest English novels ever written you will be all good to go.
Wuthering Heights was written by Emily Bronte it was her first, last, and only novel. We know very little about Emily Bronte she was the 5th of 6 siblings including her famous novelist sisters Charlotte and Anne Bronte. She died of TB at the age of 30.
Plot Summary
Often cited as one of the most powerful and violent novels in the English language. It is a complex story of love obsession and revenge set over two generations. It is told by housekeeper Nelly Dean and framed by visiting outsider Lockwood. In true gothic style, neither narrator is entirely reliable.
Lockwood has a nightmare, where the ghost of Cathy appears at the window begging to be let in.
Heath Cliff begs the ghost to return and it would appear that the nightmare has been gifted to the wrong dreamer.
Like the reader all Lockwood knows at this stage is that there is a complicated history linking Catherine with the names Earnshaw Heathcliff and Linton.
Nelly tells Lockwood how her master brought home an orphan from Liverpool, that he raises along with his own children Hindley and Catherine.
Heathcliff is dispised by Hindley who mistreats him. Cathy and Heathcliff are inseparable and they play together on the moors until Cathy spends time with neighbours Edgar and Isabella Linton.
Edgar Linton courts Cathy and in a pivotal moment, Heathcliff overhears Cathy tell Nelly that it would degrade her to marry Heathcliff.
What he doesn't hear is her declaration that she is" betraying her own soul".
"He is more myself than I am," she says, and she compares her love for Linton to foliage in the woods - seasonal and fleeting, while her love for Heathcliff is like the eternal rock beneath - something enduring and necessary.
Heathcliff disappears and Cathy marries Edgar.
Heathcliff reappears 3 years later having mysteriously acquired education and wealth and begins an unrelenting and systematic program of vengeance.
Names start to repeat themselves in a convoluted web of trauma. Heathcliff abuses Isabella his wife who gives birth to a son named Linton.
Heartbroken Cathy dies giving birth to a daughter called Catherine.
His breathtakingly sadistic behaviour fails to satisfy him however and what takes centre stage in this novel is his obsession with Cathy's ghost and his overwhelming desire for spiritual reunuion with her.
Heathcliff finally dies and is buried next to Cathy.
Villagers claim to have seen their ghosts on the moors, but Lockwood would prefer not to belive in the possibility of unquiet slumbers.
So the story ends, but what makes it so great and enduring?
Early critics were shocked by the brutality of Emily's work it was described as "coarse, disgusting and loathsome".
Even though it was savaged by critics they also stated:
"yet I was spellbound".
Heathcliff is full of mystery all the way through the novel he is found starving and that is all we really know.
He and Cathy have an extraordinary passionate relationship - but it is never even hinted at being sexual.
Heathcliff, mishearing the conversation between Nelly and Cathy runs away. He is 16 and Cathy is 15 when he leaves.
He is gone for 3 years and comes back transformed.
He starts to take his revenge, firstly on Hindley, then on the next generation.
He is speculated in the book to be a demon, a vampire or a ghoul.
Told largely by the 2 voices Lockwood a visitor and Nelly the housekeeper. This makes the telling of the story even more complex because as a reader we never find out the internal thinking of the characters and there are many gaps and silences in the story.
There is a lot of violent passion between Heathcliff and Cathy which we never fully understand.
We know that it is expressed when they are out on the moors, but it is never described in the writing because the story is told by Lockwood and Nelly, not Heathcliff and Cathy.
It is clear that Heathcliff is very connected to Cathy and Cathy depth of feeling for Heathcliff is returned.
Nelly disproves of Heathcliff and her sympathy lies with the genteel Cathy and Hindley, not to Heathcliff. She does a terrible thing of not telling Heathcliff what Cathy also said in the conversation he overheard. Nelly is a strange character as she also doesn't tell Edgar when Cathy is starving herself to death at the Grange. It's hard to understand her motivation and it never revealed why she does this.
The Cathy and Heathcliff relationship is one complete self indenitification they feel that they are the other.
"I am Heathcliff " states Cathy.
Heathcliff claims "I cannot live without my soul".
He begs with her ghost to stay with him and drive him mad.
He says "I cannot live in this abyss where I cannot find you".
Emily Bronte's gift is that she can take the violence and passion and make it appear very common and realistic and it becomes credible.
The location setting of Wuthering Heights is nearly as brutal and vital to the story as the characters. The moors are a constant as is the weather in this darkly brooding novel.
Peoples are shut in, shut out and even kept prisoner by Heathcliff. Cathy also feels imprisoned in her own body when she is at the Grange.
This seems to reflect the love the Heathcliff and Cathy can't express.
Heathcliff tortures his wife, Isabella, yet he comes across as a romantic hero. He vents his anger on Edgar for marrying Cathy on Isabella. Yet this could almost be seen a romantic heroism because he is in agony and tormented by his love for Catherine who is now dead.
There is no judgement in the novel about the violence - there are no sexual overtones but there is anguish, violence and revenge which tells the reader how tormented he is by Cathy's death.
The engine of the story is revenge plot where there is reciprocal violence because of love. He is so tormented by the loss of Cathy that he eventually stops eating and starves himself to death just as Cathy had done.
Tragedy and tragic downfall which is all based on revenge.
The meaning of the ghosts is fundamental to the story. Heathcliff is haunted by the idea of Cathy - but you never get inside the character psychology so you never know whether it is delusion or reality.
You never know what the status of the ghosts really is.
The ghost of Cathy is an embodiment of Heathcliff's grief and trauma.
The book is strange, violent, complex and passionate.
It deals with both the fundament and primal nature of humans and it embeds that in a real and touchable narrative.
It does not explain what it means and that is what it makes it so compelling - we know so little yet it feels so powerfully told.
It is not to every modern day's readers taste but if this has given you a flavour of the book it is really well worth reading and this post is certainly well worth an upvote!