Why It Took Years for Me to Finish Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights

Dearest reader,

Earlier this year, for a moment, it seemed like there was nothing anyone would rather talk about than Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights reimagined by now notorious Emerald Fennel in an unfaithful adaption staring Margot Robbie as Cathy and Jacod Elordi as Heathcliff.

And honestly, among those heated conversations between friends and strangers on whether Emerald ruined the original story, whether Emily would have approved it or what Wuthering Heights even stands for as a piece of literature, I could not help but enjoy the moment of seeing the whole world engage in discussing classic literature by not one but all of the Bronte sisters, Emily Bronte, of course, in particular. However, while I won’t be seeing Emerald’s adaption of the novel, I do feel like she deserves some credit for creating a scandal that birth so much interest in Wuthering Heights and quite literally made me pick up the book again as well. And that is about all the credit I can give to dear Emerald, which, in a way, is actually quite an achievement in these days of endless algorithm.

So what she wishes to discuss then, if not the infamous “Wuthering Heights” the movie? Shockingly, my own experience reading the novel because it certainly was not straight foward (am I right, Emerald!) and why it took me years to finish, which is kind of embarrasing and indeed a blemish on my ego as a wannabe intellectual. Notwithstanding, this may or may not be an interesting point of view for those who it may concern, and it does not involve any teenage/30-something kinks on the moor in case you wondered.

The Year 2022

To begin my journey of reading Wuthering Heights, let me take you back to the year 2022 when I was properly young and innocent living in a tiny flat in Tavastehus Finland where I was formally studing design and informally reading classics for historical escapism and writing about them on my blog – well, here to be exact. Indeed, it was a period of great personal discovery and education in form of Austen, Alcott, Fizgerald, Tolstoi and Wilde. Moreover, I had only just finished a story of one Jane Eyre and was eagerly waiting my next Bronte novel to arrive by post which would certainly and without a doutb become another favourite.

But Wuthering Heights was not like the other novels. Emily Bronte had no similarity to Jane Austen or even her sister Charlotte – her world did not dance through candlelit balls or seek independence as a clever governess, but rather, blew like a dark, evil wind putting out every light and fragile lantern placed on a windowsill of your lonely stone cottage.

What is more, I went into reading Wuthering Heights fully expecting the greatest love story in literature because, somehow, that was communicated to me even pre Emerald Fennel era. And as you can imagine, what I found instead was a harrowing, physically and emotionally violent depiction of domestic misery with love so estrange and cruel I had to sit back to question everything I knew about life so far: is this a story I want to engage with? Do I want to finish it? Do I need to know how it ends?

Admittedly, I was puzzeled by Emily Bronte and after finishing the first volume of Wuthering Heights, I could not go on. I could not comprehend why she had written it, why the heroine dies way before the ending and why Heathcliff had to be so monstrous. Desides, reading it in English – my second language – made it extra laborious to digest when every sentence and to be gone over with special care in order for me to understand it properly.

So is it any wonder, that there and then, I simply felt too defeted to continue and, therefore, was forced to yield in the face of the power that is Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights – the novel I was too stupid to finish honorably. And being the drama queen I am, I totally expected it to remain unread for eternity.

The Year 2026

However, time rolled on and while Wuthering Heights sat on my shelves half read, someone else half way across Europe was studing it with attention equally great to my ignorance of it.

Since a girl of fourteen Emerald Fennel had been a devoted fan of Wuthering Heights and was now, perhaps unoriginally, marketing her up and coming adaption of the novel as the greatest love story of all time premieering in theatres everywhere on Valentine’s Day 2026. As usual the proceeding weeks of the said premiere were a time of peculiarly invigorating conversation online which blew up in incrediably polarised reviews either praising or loathing the outcome: literary scholars and amateur readers around the world could not stay silent, social media creators flocked to pursue the topic of the hour and the star powered movie cast appeared on every podcast, magazine and publication imaginable to vaguely discuss Wuthering Heights via Margot Robbie’s wardrobe as Barbie doll Cathy.

And there I still was – a girl who could not handle Emily Bronte at 22 but who also had failed to forget the matter at 26. It seemed as though, the appropriate day to try again had finally arrived, and having no predetermined expectations to experiencec the greatest lovestory of all time four years later, I opened Wuthering Heights for the second time in my life and finished it without significant struggles only to find out that it was the greatest love story of all time – in a way.

Ultimately, what four years of living had done to better my English, had also allowed my mind to grow tolerate darkness so that I could reach the ending of carefully composed promises of hope that makes Wuthering Heights, not just a novel of extraordinary horrors, but also, a story of quiet healing.

Sure, Wuthering Heights cannot be considered a traditionally wonderful love story or be esteemed a desirabe one but only because love can be toxic does not mean it is not great, earth shattering love. And in case of Heathcliff and Cathy, their deeply traumatic love and obsessive bond, which touched even the next generation of Yorkshire inhabitants, cannot be called anything but great. And while we can debate about whether toxic love is love at all, maybe we should instead ask why should feelings be limited to a single idea of existence when they are rarely pure and singularly fixed? Shouldn’t literature especially maintain a quality of truth in all its fickle forms? Are we really so naive as to think that Wuthering Heights cannot be a love story just because it is violent, narcissistic, racist and socially unequal also? Yet, perhaps, a love story is still the laziest way to categorise Wuthering Heights.

Namely, what surprised me the most about Wuthering Heights was its varied exploration of male identity in relation to violence and status. As if Emily Bronte had thought “that is perculiarly painfull, let me take these lost souls, cloth them for the moor and see how they do in barren wilderness”, and so she gave them names: Hindley, Heathcliff, Edgar, Linton-Heathcliff and Hareton – and wished them good luck.

The Antiheroes

Hindley Earnshaw – heir of Wuthering Heights

Trauma: being outstaged by Heathcliff in his own home

Action taken: jealousy rooted in deep insecurity, bullying and heavy drinking

First we have Hindley, a haughty, insecure and jealous heir of the Wuthering Heights estate who, despite of receiving a fine education among all other priveleges of his sex and race, is unable to shake off disgust towards Heathcliff whom he believes to have stolen the love of his father. As a response to a strange, inferior man of depriving him from this birthright, Hindley abuses and bullies Heathcliff till his own violent death as drunkard widower scarred by his narrow notions of parental love and leaving behind a neglected, socially estrange son.

Heathcliff – strange orphan and self proclaimed master of Wuthering Heights

Trauma: betrayal and racisim

Action taken: manipulating, violent tantrums, eternal yearning for Catherine, tormenting people and scheming

Then, there is our beloved antihero Heathcliff whose racial otherness and orphan status automatically make him a weirdo without a name, lineage or position in the western world. With nowhere to belong to and no one to care of him, Mr Earnshaw takes Heathcliff to Wuthering Heights to raise him like his own son, showing the young lad kindness he will never experience again. And after Mr Earnshaw’s death Heathcliff’s position in the household degrades to something between a servant and a brother: "He [Hindley] drove him from their company to the servants, deprived him of the instructions of the curate, and insisted that he should labour out of doors instead, compelling him to do so, as hard as any other lad on the farm. He bore his degration pretty well at first, because Cathy taught him what she learnt, and worked or played with him in the fields. They both promised fair to grow up as rude as savages [...] But it was their chief amusements to run away to the moors in the morning and remain there all day, and the after punishment grew a mere thing to laugh at".

So though he is despised by Hindley, his love (or obsession) for Catherine keeps him at the Heights until Catherine betrays him by marring their rich neighbor Edgar Linton. Heartbroken, miserable and poor Heatcliff leaves Yorkshire and returns years later as a whealty, powerful gentleman only to discover that money can’t buy position nor surname after all. He is still just Heathcliff: dark, orphan and irrelevant in the margins of the Brittish Empire. And since Catherine (selfish as she may be), still would not marry him – even as rich, even as her soulmate – Heathcliff decides to torment the Linton family, Hindley’s son, his own son and everyone partially involved in his sufferings; instead of becoming even half the man Mr Earnshaw saw in him. Finally, he dies mad, hated and as lost as he had always been haunted by the memory of Catherine in her old room at Wuthering Heights.

Edgar Linton – heir and master of Thruscross Grange, Catherine’s husband, neighbor to Wuthering Heights

Trauma: loving and marring the wrong woman

Action taken: sinking into grief and ignoring Heathcliff

Edgar Linton, however, is the opposite of Heathcliff in looks, manner and position. As a weatlhy son and heir to the neighboring estate Edgar can offer Catherine both love and respectability while also providing a name for their offspring. Moreover, he is light where Heathcliff is dark, caring where Heathcliff is malicious and subdued where Heathcliff is tempestuous. He loves Catherine but his home is like a prison to her and becomes increasingly dim and sultry after her death as if trying to sicken its master also. In the end, years of grief, single parenting his only daughter and living under gunmetal clouds of Heathcliff’s murderous vengeance, Linton grows weak and in his sickness fails to protect his daughter and niece from the evils of Wuthering Heights. He dies prematurely still loving Catherine, never fully realising the true feelings of his wife whose affection was borne from the priveleges of his race and social class.

Linton-Heathcliff – Isabella Linton and Heathcliff’s son, Cahty junior’s husband

Trauma: death of his mother and moving to Wuthering Heights with Heathcliff

Action taken: total submission, apathy and whining

The tragedy of Linton-Heathcliff starts with his arrival to Thruscross Grange after her mother’s death where his stay falls short when his father Heathcliff comes to claim the boy and takes the idle, spoiled thing to Wuthering Heights. In the hands of his abusive father, Linton-Heathcliff has no hope of ever building an amiable character of his own or reaching strong, blooming manhood that instead is mangled by his tortureus standing as a disappointing son and useless, arrogant disposition. Ultimately, the poor boy wastes away having done or felt very little kindness before his forced marriage to Cathy junior and final, untimely death.

Hareton Earnshaw – true heir of Wuthering Heights, Hindley’s estrange son

Trauma: growing up in Wuthering Heights

Action taken: role as a simple farm boy, learning to read

Lastly, we have Hareton, the son of Hindley, who, unlike Linton-Heathcliff, has never known life outside Wuthering Heights but whose curious though uncultivated mind manages to dream of bettering himself. Having grown up under the suffocating mastery of Heathcliff and Hindley’s depression, Hareton has turned out a simple farm boy – or so everyone thinks – with limited understanding and rough ways. As the true heir of Wuthering Heights he has been discriminated, intellectually assulted and belittled all his life by Heathcliff whose revenge for everything that he has had to endure by the Earnshaws falls upon Hareton. Nevertheless, Harenton remains a rough diamond: not entirely crushed but intact enough to find goodness in the world again, someday.

Needless to say, life is a battle for the men of Wuthering Heights. Whether as sons, masters, fathers or lovers their search for a place in the world feels somehow more laborious than that of the women. Maybe, it is because the women are already confined to a socially narrow role, or maybe, their struggles with identity are simply less rooted in dominance and subjection – after all, they have always been subjects.

Ellen Dean, for example, fights between being a good and bad servant. She doesn’t like performing as Heathcliff’s confidant but because of their mutal history is unable to quit the situation. Perhaps, she feels more in control as a messanger and, therefore, finds solace in narrating the story of Wuthering Heights to Mr. Lockwood.

Catherine Earnshaw however has all the airs of a domineering mistress, but it is not just Heathcliff whom she ends up hurting, for she herself has to live with the consequenses of marring Edgar: “But, supposing at twelve years old, I had been wrenched from the Heights, and every early association, and my all in all, as Heathcliff was at the time, and been converted at a stroke into Mrs Linton, the lady of Thruscross Grange, and the wife of a stranger, an exile and outcast, thenceforth, from what had been my world […] I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free… and laughing at injuries, not maddening under them!”

Identity in Wuthering Heights

And so, be it male or female, the wrestle of what you are allowed to be or become, what you can grow into, who you have been forced to embody or chosen to turn into, is the overarching theme of Wuthering Height as a whole – or, at least, that is what I observed from it. So while love, race and violence are relevant parts of the stroy their existance is, perhaps, still less personal, dare I say it, less important than the universal idea of identity – the experience that your are not merely yourself but also partly someone else of this world, of this humanity, of this existance; that your suffereing is also my suffering, and my love is also your love.

Therefore, the people of Wuthering Heights are searching for freedom to be, not indipendence from each other, which may sound odd, but is apparent, for example, in the relationships of Heathcliff and Cathrine, or Heathcliff and Hindley. The former pair believed to have been bound to each other by their souls and spent their whole lifes searching for a way to be together – "but he's [Heathcliff] more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire", declares Catherine to Nelly before marring Linton. And the later, who despite of their mutal hatred towards one another, fail to actively seek separation thus ending up living together. What is more, on the last page of the novel Catherine, Edgar and Heathcliff’s graves are described as laying side by side “on the slope next the moor” – the three of them even together in death.

And when it comes to the absurdity of Emily Bronte’s character in general, their terrible vivaciousness and cruelty whichs makes them appear possibly inhumane, is actually the reason why Wuthering Heights is both a masterpiece and misunderstood. Even in 2026 we cannot decide whether it is a love story, racial tragedy or an extreme depiction of generational trauma – most likely it is all of them, and more – but what is rarely expressed however is that Wuthering Heights may be unfathomable on purpose, and should the characters be altered recognizably human it would loose its myth and become just a regular, easily forgettable, slightly mad tale.

That is why, when you do read the book, don’t go into it expecting something human, like I did, but rather, not of this world.

Let them rage, dig and wonder the moor through wind and among the heather. Let them be broken and glorious and insane. Let them mislead you and torment you. Let them lock you out and bully you into doutbs about your own humanity because, in the end, it is not about me or you, or she or he, but all of us, everywhere, all the time.

Conclusions

All in all, it took me 26 years to be mature enough to read Wuthering Heights and two months to understand what I had witnessed on its pages, only to arrive to the same conclusion as Virginia Woolf in her short essay on the novel included at the end of the Peguin English Library 2012 edition of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. And four years of (again!) not apprehending the said Viginia’s essay, one day I found myself writing down a word that made it all reasonable and clear: identity – as discussed above and below.

"But there is no ‘I’ in Wuthering Heights. […] The impulse which urged her [Emily Bronte] to create is not her own suffering or her own injuries. She looked out upon a world cleft into gigantic disorder and felt within her the power to unite it in a book. […] …to say something through the mouths of her characters which is not merely ‘I love’ or ‘I hate’ but ‘we the whole human race’ and ‘you the eternal powers…’ the sentence remains unfinished.” ('Wuthering Heights' by Virginia Woolf, page 361).

If possible, I highly recommend reading the full Virginia’s essay and not the least because it is way shorter than my own, but mainly, since it is much better expressed.

And whether Wuthering Heights became another favourite after everything, I would have to answer with a heartfelt YES! Yes, because Wuthering Heights is a novel unlike anything I have read before and though Emily Bronte is not approachable like Austen nor humanly poetic like Charlotte Bronte, she is special and wildly mythical, and as such her mind continues to vex us from the great beyond as inconceivable as it has always been.

Finally, knowing all this, the fact that anyone would even try to adapt Wuthering Heights to a screen feels astoundingly awkward, especially, when done from the perspective of a fourteen-year-old. Nevertheless, I do feel as though Emerald gave it her best shot, even if Wuthering Heights is not particularly conformable as a story – that is, for a modern viewer it lacks some core selling points such as eroticism and heroism. And because of the characters’ codependence on each other, changing anything in their situation towards one another, alters the delicate balance of the myth of Wuthering Heights to an extend that feels insulting... But that is a conversation for another day.

Until next time!

Yours Truly,

Siiri

Jälkikirjoitus:

Ihmiset, jotka etsivät kuolemattomuutta eivät mahdollisesti ymmärrä mitä kuolemattomuus todella tarkoittaa. Geenin siirtämistä? Suvun jatkumoa? Ruumiin säilömistä? Ylösnousemusta? Frankestainia? Itse olen tullut siihen tulokseen, että kuolemattomuus on perinnön jättämistä. Ennen kaikkea siis sitä, että ajatukset ja taidot siirtyvät eteenpäin kehon tai nimen sijasta. Kuka edes päättää kenet historia muistaa ja miten? Väärinymmärrys on alituinen vaara, ja ehkä tärkeämpää on luulla jättäväsä jälkeensä jotain, vaikka todellisuudessa olisi mitättömyyden perikuva. Täten, tämän kaksi ja puolivuosikummentä kestäneen elämäni aikana minäkin olen alkanut miettimään perintöäni, joka tällä hetkellä on varsin mitätön. Ja vaikka tajuntani on rajoittunut tähän aikakauteen, tässä maailmassa; on minusta alkanut tuntua, että jos kukaan tavoittelisi kuolemattomuutta hänen ehkä parhain toivonsa olisi tehdä taidetta. Mitä vaan taidetta. Mutta etenkin kirjoittaa. En voi nimittäin olla ajattelematta, että vieressäni lojuva Wuthering Heights on tavallaan pala Emily Bronten mieltä; että pieni osa tuosta naisesta elää tässä kirjassa ja keskustelee sen kautta edelleen kanssamme. Mutta ehkä kaikki eivät halua jättää mieltään elämään ja kuitenkin mieli on se kaikista kiinnostavin, kaunein ja rakastettavin osa ihmisessä – se joka oikeasti määrittää mitä kukin on. Kun siis mietin mitätöntä perintöäni toivon sen muotoutuvan sellaiseksi, joka antaa ihmisille sylin johon istua ja kyynelehtiä sitä, mitä kaikkea voi tapahtua.

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Have you read Wuthering Heights?

Do you agree with my analysis?

Have you seen Emerald Fennel's movie and what you thought of it?

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Sources:

Bronte, Emily. (1847). Wuthering Heights. Penguin English Library, 2012.