Wuthering Heights

Pages: 363 📖

Year Published: 1847 🗓️

Days to Complete: 30 🕰️

Author:

Emily Bronte is the second youngest of the famed Bronte family. Aside from a brief stint as a student and teacher in Brussels, it's amazing to think that Emily spent most of her thirty years at home in Haworth, England, similar to both Catherine characters in Wuthering Heights. Emily and her sisters often wrote stories as children but each initially published their respective novels under male pen names. Despite the fact that Emily's novel was not well-received initially, it is now considered a classic in English literature. Emily died roughly one year after publishing Wuthering Heights and is buried in Haworth.

Learn More about Emily Bronte

This book at a glance:

Toxic- It's easy to see from our 21st century vantage point that the two main characters, Heathcliff and Catherine, are manipulative and codependent to say the least. In fact, many of the characters were unlikable but I found redeeming qualities in each, enough to continue caring for them.

Favorite Quote:

"I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free; and laughing at injuries, not maddening under them! Why am I so changed?"

It's comforting to know that this feeling is as old as this book, or maybe even as old as time itself. Longing for youth and careless girlhood hits close to home. While I'm grateful for growth and maturity, sometimes I find myself wishing that I wasn't always so careful and worried.

Takeaways:

I found the format of the story a bit confusing. The beginning was overwhelmed by characters and family connections that were difficult to keep straight. Everything was explained in due time and I suppose that the way that it was presented was creative and kept the reader invested, but I'm not sure it's the method I would have used to present the story.

As I neared the end of the book, I started to wonder about the main point. Sure, the story is full of family drama, deep-seeded revenge, and forbidden love, but I feared that I would feel unsatisfied at the end, like maybe all the drama was simply for drama's sake. In the last pages, I realized that the true moral of the story was that love and compassion are the only saving graces that can alter the world around us. Cheesy, I know, but true nonetheless. As soon as two of the main characters came together and cared for each other, their circumstances as well as the circumstances of those around them improved. Maybe current events overly impacted my perspective, but even so, I'm grateful. I hope to bring this lesson to my life and keep faith that caring for each other and uniting brings real and impactful change.