LOVE AMONG THE DAMNED

Wuthering Heights

By : Emily Brontë

Wuthering Heights encapsulates the devastating effects of an obsessive and all-encompassing yet unresolved love between a man and woman. Combined with a thorough social commentary on the instability of society and social class, this classic Gothic-fiction novel is as poignant today as it was when it was first published in 1847.

Set in the Yorkshire moors, Lockwood, the new tenant at the lavish Thrushcross Grange, seeks shelter at his landlord’s residence, Wuthering Heights, one evening when a storm unexpectedly erupts. During his stay he begins to uncover the tumultuous history that took takes place between the tale’s protagonists the petty and childish Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw years before.

The story of Heathcliff and Catherine is recalled by Ellen Dean, the housekeeper, in an extended flashback written in Lockwoods personal journal. Recorded along with his own observations and judgments of the family and environment, the more Lockwood learns about the history of the family and the estate the darker and more shocking the tale becomes deepening into the realms of alcoholism, brutality and unrestricted horror.

At the time of publication Brontë’s novel was poorly received by the public and criticized for being offensive and distasteful; she passed away in 1845 believing her only book had been a failure. Only in the 1850’s did Wuthering Heights begin receiving its much deserved praise. The success of the novel is due to the highly original and complex revenge plot, the unconventional and highly flawed characters as well as the use of complex imagery and language and the differences in their usage in the two narrator’s individual styles.

Readers will be left contemplating Brontë’s outlook on love and how it can free one man and damn another. The utter beauty in Wuthering Heights is that it is not a quite story of a blossoming romance between lovers, it is a head-on collision of rampant souls whose true selves are not seen until the end.

“It is as if Emily Brontë could tear up all that we know human beings by, and fill these unrecognizable transparencies with such a gust of life that they transcend reality.” – Virginia Woolf