I felt certain that this would be my final time reading Wuthering Heights; a book that is not among my favourites but one that I keep feeling I should give another try. Instead, I feel more certain that I will come back to it again.

Mr Lockwood feeling an urge to escape society has taken up a tenancy at Thrushcross Grange, an isolated but comfortable serviced cottage on the Yorkshire Moors. His landlord is a Mr Heathcliff who resides at Wuthering Heights, a farmhouse seated high above Thrushcross Grange. The journey from the Grange to the Heights is not a short one and is rough and exposed for the inexperienced.

Despite his reasons for coming to the Moors, Lockwood almost immediately feels the need for some company and fancies his landlord to be a gentlemen and an equal who would be grateful for some company as well. When he makes two unannounced visits to Wuthering Heights his expectations are met with forceful correction. Heathcliff, Mr Lockwood finds, may be a gentleman in dress and most manners but is dark-skinned and ‘gypsy’ in aspect otherwise. He is also morose, gruff and unfriendly.

The others Heathcliff lives with at Wuthering Heights are possibly even more inhospitable. Mrs Heathcliff is an argumentative young woman that Lockwood first presumes is Heathcliff’s wife but is corrected that she is his daughter in law. There is a rather rude young man who is not Heathcliff’s son though he looks somewhat like him. Lockwood is informed Heathcliff’s son is dead. And an elderly servant Joseph who, despite being a servant, has no inhibition to being rude to Mr Lockwood and calling Mrs Heathcliff a witch.

Returned to the Grange, Lockwood compels his housekeeper Mrs Dean, who used to work at Wuthering Heights, to explain the relationships between those he met there and their history. Nelly Dean is happy to oblige with little coaxing.

Her tale begins a generation earlier when Wuthering Heights was occupied by the Earnshaw family – Mr and Mrs Earnshaw and their two children Hindley and Catherine. One day, when Hindley was about fourteen years old and Catherine about six, their father returned from a trip to Liverpool. He brought back with him not presents for the children but a bundle within which was a little boy.

‘And at the end of it, to be flighted to death!’ he said, opening his great-coat, which he held bundled up in his arms, ‘See here, wife; I was never so beaten with anything in my life; but you must e’en take it as a gift of God; though it’s as dark almost as if it came from the devil.’

We crowded round, and, over Miss Cathy’s head, I had a peep at a dirty, ragged, black-haired child; big enough to walk and talk – indeed, its face looked older than Catherine’s – yet, when it was set on its feet, it only stared round, and repeated over and over again some gibberish that nobody could understand. I was frightened, and Mrs Earnshaw was ready to fling it out of doors: she did fly up – asking how he could fashion to bring that gipsy brat into the house, when they had their own bairns to feed, and fend for? What he meant to do with it, and whether he were mad?

This shocking moment set the house into turmoil and according to Nelly’s tale was the beginning of a series of shocking and tragic events that have brought destruction to the two houses on these moors.

This is the third time I have read Wuthering Heights. The first time was in high school English and frankly I was too immature to handle it without considerable effort on my part.

Like Mr Lockwood, the reader is thrown into the deep end from the early chapters. We are introduced to several characters, alive and dead, whose relations to each other are obscure, who share similar names and our introduction seems designed to throw off our intuition as to how they might be related. Added to this is that the setting for which the novel is named is a rustic farmhouse occupied by the enigmatic landlord and his entourage. While the upper-class cottage below at Thrushcross Grange is let to Mr Lockwood. And to resolve the misunderstanding, the narration is handed over from Mr Lockwood to Nelly to tell the bulk of this story within his story.

It is certainly a challenging opening for the inexperienced reader.

‘Enigmatic’ is a good term to describe Wuthering Heights. As well as the structure, the plot is of a type that is difficult to categorise. Its characters, their motives and actions are difficult to respect let alone champion or love. The novel is full of hate, violence and self-destruction. Not to mention semi-incestuous relationships and necrophiliac feelings. And the themes all these elements might point to are likewise difficult to accept.

The difficulty in thinking of novels to compare to Wuthering Heights can be considered evidence of its uniqueness. The Great Gatsby also features a young man who cannot win the woman he loves due to lack of wealth and social class, who leaves to make something of himself, and returns resplendent. But it is otherwise a completely different story with very different characters and themes.

There are also other stories of thwarted love, women torn between very different men, women confined by the expectations of their gender, women used as property and marriage used for nefarious motives. The novels of Thomas Hardy (Far From the Madding Crowd, Tess of the D’Urbervilles) and other Brontë sisters (Jane Eyre, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall) are among those who have similar aspects. But none seem to evoke the passionate extremes which Wuthering Heights does while making them authentic and believable for the reader.

Wuthering Heights is not even of its time. Unlike the novels of her sisters, Charlotte and Anne Brontë, or of contemporaries such as Charles Dickens or Elizabeth Gaskell, Wuthering Heights does not address the growing feminist awareness or the social change from industrialisation. If anything, it belongs more to the gothic romanticism of the earlier generation and might be better understood alongside Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

Like the Gothic novel, it creates a dark and passionate world of imprisonment and torture, ghosts and changelings. And it shares with the Romantics a preoccupation with the authority of the imagination and emotion, a concern for the formative influence of childhood and for man’s relation to the natural world. Its focus is ‘antisocial’, rather than communal or ethical, and its central character, Heathcliff, stands as a version of the Byronic hero.

Pauline Nestor, from the Introduction

Its impenetrability has also contributed to Wuthering Heights being misunderstood. The most common misunderstanding is to confuse romance with Romanticism. Wuthering Heights is certainly not lower-case-‘r’ romantic. Having grown up together as step-siblings, Catherine and Heathcliff’s love is semi-incestuous, non-sexual and even extends to something like necrophilia. Since their relationship ends part way through the novel, it also cannot be said to be the main focus of the novel. Instead, the fallout of their relationship and its impact on everyone else has at least equal share. While it is not the great love story it sometimes is thought to be, Wuthering Heights is upper-case-‘R’ Romantic; it is a story of powerfully expressed emotions. In this case hate, violence, revenge against interests and masochism.

I’m trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don’t care how long I wait, if I can only do it, at last. I hope he will not die before I do!’

‘For shame, Heathcliff!’ said I. ‘It is for God to punish wicked people; we should learn to forgive.’

‘No, God won’t have the satisfaction that I shall,’ he returned. ‘I only wish I knew the best way! Let me alone, and I’ll plan it out: while I’m thinking of that, I don’t feel pain.’

Also enigmatic is the main character; the mononymous Heathcliff. Without parentage and no other name, Heathcliff is protected from being entirely shunned by the favour of his adopted father Mr Earnshaw and the affection of his adopted sister Catherine. When he can no longer count on either he knows what lies in store for him and would rather leave than endure it.

As Pauline Nestor writes in the Introduction to this Penguin Classics edition, the other characters project onto Heathcliff. For Catherine, Heathcliff embodies her fears and desires. Lockwood sees Heathcliff as an equal and companion. Mr Earnshaw sees him as an ideal son and Nelly sees him as the devil.

Having been raised in poverty and experienced abuse, Heathcliff leaves to seek social power through class elevation, money and the ownership of property. In this he succeeds, yet his character is not improved. If anything he returns darker. In no way does he check his increased power with improved moral awareness. Any assumed correlation between material success and ethical superiority is undermined by the example of Heathcliff.

Although Heathcliff leaves Wuthering Heights a penniless, poorly educated outcast and returns moneyed, motivated and with a certain knowledge of self, it is Catherine who undergoes the most radical transformation in the novel. From the tomboy who runs around the moors with Heathcliff to the lady who emerges under the influence of the Lintons.

As one of the main characters, Catherine has a key role in the tragedy of the story. Much seems to stem from her naivete. She seems to believe she should not have to choose between Heathcliff and Edgar Linton; that she can have them both in her own way. Confronting her on this impossibility seems to have no impact.

As our main narrator to this multi-generational tragedy, Nelly is present for almost all that takes place and can report what happened and what was said as a direct witness. But she is not an inert narrator. On more than one occasion, Nelly is in possession of information that, if shared, might have affected the outcome of the story. Of course, Emily Brontë does not allow her to act or we would have a very different story. But it also means that we cannot consider Nelly a merely passive narrator. She has her own opinions of the personalities and motives of the characters in her story but she was not without her own motivations and ability to influence through action or inaction.  

Well, Mr Lockwood, I argued, and complained, and flatly refused him fifty times; but in the long run he forced me to an agreement – I engaged to carry a letter from him to my mistress; and should she consent, I promised to let him have intelligence of Linton’s next absence from home, when he might come, and get in as he was able – I wouldn’t be there, and my fellow servants should be equally out of the way.

Was it right, or wrong? I fear it was wrong, though expedient. I thought I prevented another explosion by my compliance; and I thought, too, it might create a favourable crisis in Catherine’s mental illness: and then I remembered Mr Edgar’s stern rebuke of my carrying tales; and I tried to smooth away all disquietude on the subject, by affirming, with frequent iteration, that betrayal of trust, if it merited so harsh and appellation, should be the last.

Notwithstanding, my journey home word was sadder than my journey thither; and many misgivings I had, ere I could prevail on myself to put the missive into Mrs Linton’s hand.

Nestor’s Introduction lists a number of themes for the reader to consider. Identity is one. Catherine talks of Heathcliff and herself as if she considers them to be one person. As the story moves from one generation to the next, we see children that resemble other characters in personality and even in looks more than they resemble their parents. I might add that in some cases in sounds like an argument for nurture and experience over nature and inheritance.

‘Now, my bonny lad, you are mine! And we’ll see if one tree won’t grow as crooked as another, with the same wind to twist it!’

The transgression of boundaries and breaking of taboos is another frequent feature of the novel. The tendency of critics, adaptors and filmmakers, and even her own sister, to try and excuse and modify Wuthering Heights speaks to the efficacy and inescapability of this element.

The isolated setting entraps the characters and deprives them of encountering a larger society. Within such confines pragmaticism can overtake traditional gender roles and show their malleability. As well as Catherine transforming from tomboy to lady, other characters ditch traditional roles to accommodate the situation or other characters. Some cannot occupy a traditional role or are incapable of fulfilling the demands for it leading to feelings of inadequacy. And while all characters are tempted by violence, some of the female characters are more likely to direct it towards themselves.

‘And, Nelly, say to Edgar, if you see him again tonight, that I’m in danger of being seriously ill – I wish it may prove true. He has startled and distressed me shockingly! I want to frighten him. […] Well, if I cannot keep Heathcliff for my friend – if Edgar will be mean and jealous, I’ll try to break their hearts by breaking my own. That will be a prompt way of finishing all, when I am pushed to extremity!’

But another theme, not listed by Nestor, is the idea of the home. Wuthering Heights rejects the idea of the home as a place of refuge and comfort. Mr Earnshaw believes that by taking Heathcliff in he has saved him. But for Heathcliff, the Earnshaw’s home is no escape. He is still enslaved, still unsafe, still homeless within the home.

Catherine likewise sees the home as a prison. She is confined by the expectations of her gender, sentenced to a life of domesticity she finds intolerable. Like Heathcliff she finds the home cannot accommodate her and she seeks escape. There is not space where the two of them may belong. The fate of Catherine in Wuthering Heights suggests that the only escape for women like her is violent self-destruction. What Catherine may see in Heathcliff is less a life partner than a weapon to break her out of this prison. In this sense it is unfair to categorise Wuthering Heights, as Nestor has, as insensitive to feminist thought of the period.   

Not much is known about Emily Brontë. From the Biographical Note written by her sister Charlotte, she sounds a bit like Catherine: ‘stronger than a man, simpler than a child, her will was inflexible and against her interests’. The rest we mostly have to deduce from her works – her only novel and her poetry.

Wuthering Heights was not a big success when first published and was overshadowed by Charlotte’s far more popular Jane Eyre. In fact, much of the misunderstanding of Wuthering Heights stems from Charlotte’s editing of the original after Emily’s death. To a large extent, Charlotte moderated Wuthering Heights in her editing and excused and infantalised her sister in her prefaces.

It would not be until the twentieth century that Emily and her novel would emerge from her sister’s shadow and be recognised on its own terms for its originality and sophistication. Most editions, such the one I read, reject Charlotte’s amendments and return to the original edition.

Wuthering Heights has been adapted many times. Most adaptations focus on the relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine, diminishing most of the story that comes after and attempting to make a great romance of the relationship.

The fact that Wuthering Heights has attracted so many layers of cultural accretion can be seen as a response to its unsettling nature. It is a book that generates tensions – between dream and reality, self and other, natural and supernatural, realism and melodrama, structural formality and emotional chaos – but leaves them unresolved. This lack of resolution is, perhaps, what makes it so haunting. But it has also provoked an unacknowledged drive among critics, biographers and adaptors to pin it down, control it, or explain it away.

Lucasta Miller, from the Preface.

One of the first reviews I wrote, on an earlier blog, was on the 2011 adaptation by Andrea Arnold. I quite liked the film though it was a bit slow and felt longer than its 129 minutes. One of the things I thought it did well was bring to life the silent character of the novel – the wild and rugged landscape.

But I felt the film reduced a complex story and turned it into one mostly about racism towards Heathcliff. Without doubt, Wuthering Heights makes Heathcliff’s different physical appearance clear and implies this is one of the reasons for the hatred and abuse he endures. But there is more to his abuse than that and I felt the focus on race was a simplification.

I’ve since taken the review down. Because, film and TV adaptations that oversimplify their source material is par for the course. Blatant attempts at making the story more relatable for contemporary audiences is also typical. Conveniently excluding aspects that are no longer acceptable is also common. So, I took down my review because why pick on this one example?

The fact that so much contemporary writing on Wuthering Heights focuses on this one issue of Heathcliff’s race, whether his treatment can be entirely ascribed to his race and what this means Emily Brontë was saying about racism, just shows how much this one issue is in play in the contemporary mindset for better or worse and at the exclusion of almost all other factors. I do not want to get embroiled. Suffice to say, I think the hatred directed at Heathcliff is complex and comes from a variety of factors, the word ‘gypsy’ had several connotations for Victorians and the current takes on the issue seem like obvious contemporising of material that is best understood in the context of the period it was written in.  

Having read Wuthering Heights again I did want to watch another adaptation but which one? As I say, most only cover the first half of the novel and focus on the thwarted love aspect rather than the enduring hate and revenge. I settled on the 2009 two-part miniseries directed by Coky Giedroyc and starring Tom Hardy as Heathcliff and Charlotte Riley as Catherine. It is one that tells the whole story of the novel.

The adaptation makes some changes from the novel. Some of these are minor; Wuthering Heights is not the large wooden farmhouse I imagined from the novel, but an imposing stone mansion. Some are major; such as excluding Mr Lockwood entirely, implying that Heathcliff might be the bastard son of Mr Earnshaw and changing Heathcliff’s ending. But none of these have the effect of significantly altering the story or its impact. Overall, I quite enjoyed it and found Hardy to be excellent in the role.

The choice of Hardy for the role of Heathcliff does mean it goes to the other extreme of the Arnold adaptation in that the bigotry faced by Heathcliff is again oversimplified. This time by having no racial content at all.

As I said, this is the third time I have read Wuthering Heights. After my first taste in high-school, I could not say I liked it but thought I had come some way to understanding it. The second reading as an adult was due to my eagerness to work my way through the classics and not be put off by my first read. It confirmed my feeling that Wuthering Heights was not a novel I have affection for.

I still marked it as something worth revisiting. I was sure this third reading would be the final time. And yet I still feel certain that I will read it again. The academic James R Kincaid said that Wuthering Heights insists on a multiplicity of readings. The pull of its enigma, the unknowable, unresolvable, irrational dark heart will draw me in once more.

We can never, in a sense, finish reading Wuthering Heights.

Lucasta Miller, from the Preface.