Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë (1847)
“The most savage love story in English literature — written by a woman who had never been in love and died having written only this one book.”
Short Summary
In 1801, Mr. Lockwood rents Thrushcross Grange on the Yorkshire moors and becomes morbidly fascinated with his landlord Heathcliff, a dark and violent man who has destroyed two families. His housekeeper Nelly Dean tells the full story: Heathcliff was a foundling brought to Wuthering Heights as a child, fell into an all-consuming love with Catherine Earnshaw, was degraded and humiliated by her brother Hindley, and watched Catherine marry the wealthy Edgar Linton. He disappeared for three years, returned rich and vengeful, systematically destroyed Hindley and the Lintons, and spent the rest of his life in a state of haunted grief — convinced that Catherine's ghost walked the moors. He finally dies, the revenge exhausted out of him, just as the next generation — Hareton and young Cathy — begin to offer the possibility of love without cruelty.
Detailed Summary
The novel unfolds through a double frame narrative: the outsider Lockwood records his experiences in a journal, and his housekeeper Nelly Dean provides most of the actual story through extended oral narration. This device creates constant questions about reliability — both narrators filter, omit, an...