Wuthering Heights Hardcover – September 20, 2016

This gothic story was a staple for teenaged girls in middle school in my youth. In the interim I’ve seen various fawning movies based on it and on the lives of the Brontë sisters. Keenly curious to return to the source. Every character seems to have lived in her mind so perfectly that they stay with me long afterwards as if they had been a part of my own life. However, as a 15 year old I accepted the historical context uncritically. Heathcliff is rough and romantic, right? A handsome lover....No! He’s horrifying. A textbook case of an abusive patriarch. A violent control freak. He steals property from women, beats them up, hangs a dog on a door handle to strangle it. He psychologically tortures his son Linton and imprisons his wife Isabella in isolation. He’s only one of many abusers. His childhood is a nightmare of abusive adults and peers as well. Just because he’s poor! His step sister Catherine was the only one who loved him. His single minded obsession with her is technically incestuous but luckily he has to leave the scene for several years to make his fortune (probably by abusing workers on a colonial plantation or in a dark, satanic mill somewhere) and then he returns and relentlessly stalks her and her family. Here’s the kinky part...she loves it!Child abuse pervades both Brontës writing. I haven’t seen a satisfying explanation so far. Where did they absorb such authentic understanding of it? From their own experience? Why is it in the foreground of both Jane Eyre and WH? Dickens also spoke for underdog children but created kind hearted adults among them. The only kind hearted adults in WH are in the background; a couple of women servants, including Ellen Dean the narrator, who swoop in during emergencies and keep the lid on. Joseph is a walking mockery of cruelly misogynistic Calvinism, outdated and irrelevant biblical blathering. I’m wondering whether the mild mannered Rev. Brontë was secretly a monster to his daughters and wayward son.Two generations of main characters in WH with the same names drove me to consult online family trees helpfully created by English teachers so this time around I almost kept the identities straight but not quite.

My experience of WUTHERING HEIGHTS was simple: the unrelenting hate of the characters inspired hate for them in me; their contempt for each other inspired contempt for them in me; their cold callousness inspired in me an almost total lack of interest in their fates. Normally I respect and enjoy wicked characters as much as virtuous ones, but these, especially Heathcliff and Hindley, are so unrelentingly and irredeemably wicked, with an almost if not total lack of virtue, that I could not get past my own violent dislike of them. It is said of Hindley that: "He had room in his heart for only two idols - his wife and himself: he doted on both, and adored one ..." And this is one of the milder descriptions of his self-centeredness.My antipathy for this book comes from the fact that of all the components of a story - language, plot, themes, characters, and so on - characters are usually the most important to me, and I found every character in WUTHERING HEIGHTS, without exception, to be either repugnant or ridiculous. Some of my favorite characters in literature are characters that I love to hate, but they are usually balanced by surrounding characters who are more sympathetic. WUTHERING HEIGHTS may be the first book I have ever read in which I could not bring myself to care about a single character, not even a minor one. And of course, the book is famed as the story of Cathy and Heathcliff's tempestuous, heart-rending love for each other. However, I did not see them as lovers at all, because their need for each other was so much greater than their love for each other. If it is love at all, it is an extremely selfish love, which seems to me to be a contradiction in terms. This is not a romance, this is a story of destructive obsession. In my eyes, the book's greatest redeeming features are its inspired use of language and very effective atmospheric details, but for a reader like me, these were never going to be enough to overcome its ghastly characters.True to its era, there are many differences in style between WUTHERING HEIGHTS and modern novels, sometimes enchanting and sometimes disconcerting. Not the least of these is the story's tendency to meander and digress. Sometimes these sidetracks lead to hidden gems and sometimes they lead nowhere at all. WUTHERING HEIGHTS is comprised of stories within stories within stories. This layering has several interesting effects, such as sometimes giving a feeling of distance from the narrative, allowing room for retrospective contemplation, and building suspense.Ellen Dean, who narrates the greater part of the story, seems a particularly unreliable narrator, almost as passionate in her own way as Cathy, although Nelly's is more akin to a passionate scorn for her employers. As a servant, Ellen appears to be sullen, impertinent, and even spiteful, which makes her neither a sympathetic nor a very trustworthy narrator. She is not the only one, though. The book has several narrators, all of whom have quite strong prejudices, which is important to keep in mind while sifting through the second- and third-hand accounts of Cathy and Heathcliff's lives. It is easy to forget that the bias of its narrators is an extra, subtle component of the story's mystery.Mr. Lockwood's first exploration of Wuthering Heights itself reveals more about the book than it does about this house full of secrets - it certainly establishes its Gothic nature and is strongly reminiscent of that other Bronte sister classic, JANE EYRE. Indeed, its Gothic feel and the constant presence of the bleakly beautiful moor was the thing I enjoyed most about WUTHERING HEIGHTS. This sentence is a typically evocative description: "A sorrowful sight I saw: dark night coming down prematurely, and sky and hills mingled in one bitter whirl of wind and suffocating snow." The moor is more even than a character in this story, it is an all-pervading presence, infecting people - especially Heathcliff and Cathy - with its implacable wildness and even, at times, reckless savagery. There is a very real and essential connection between the wild moor and the wildness of the souls of Cathy and Heathcliff. It is some kind of primal connection that seems all but essential to their lives and their sanity and their selfhood.This book is full of violence, not just latent or implied but casually and frequently evident. As we are introduced to Wuthering Heights during Cathy and Heathcliff's youth, we feel that we have entered a madhouse, full of the most vicious hate as well as the most violent love. It can be truly overwhelming at times. I found this passage particularly evocative: "[Heathcliff's] abode at the Heights was an oppression past explaining. I felt that God had forsaken the stray sheep there to its own wicked wanderings, and an evil beast prowled between it and the fold, waiting his time to spring and destroy." Everything about entering the pages of WUTHERING HEIGHTS is dark and forbidding, with an undercurrent of malevolence. This applies even more to the people - who are almost "uncanny" in the Freudian sense - than to the setting. As Nelly says: "We don't in general take to foreigners here ... unless they take to us first."Cathy is quite the wildcat, and her excessive passion and pig-headedness can be wearing to say the least, even when inspired by apparently good intentions. She says of Heathcliff that: "'... he shall never know how I love him: and that ... he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same ...'" And to me, this passage shows her obsessiveness to a chilling degree: "'My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it.'"Cathy is the very picture of a woman who desires to have her cake and eat it, too. Despite her protestations of love for Heathcliff, she attaches herself to the wealthy and genteel Edgar Linton, limply asserting that she is doing so partly to help Heathcliff rise in the world. It is abundantly clear that she wants Heathcliff all to herself as well. This makes her appear selfish, mean-spirited, and grasping, along with her other repugnant qualities. She quietly - or not so quietly - enjoys being the center of a love triangle. Nelly has many instructive things to say about Cathy's pride and selfishness: "... she was full of ambition, and [it] led her to develop a double character without exactly intending to deceive any one"; "... she was so proud, it became really impossible to pity her distresses ..."; "... she felt small trouble regarding any subject, save her own concerns"; "... it was nothing less than murder in her eyes for any one to presume to stand up and contradict her"; "... she seemed to allow herself such wide latitude, that I had little faith in her principles, and still less sympathy for her feelings."Of Heathcliff we only hear at second- or third-hand from the aforementioned unreliable narrators, so that he appears doubly dark and mysterious. Heathcliff epitomizes the sentiment that "vengeance is a dish best served cold," but he also demonstrates how thoroughly it eats away the heart and blackens the soul. Whether he is justified in hating anyone is almost beside the point for me. His premeditated, willful torture of virtually everyone who is unfortunate enough to fall under his power can have no adequate justification. Even Cathy says: "'Pray, don't imagine that he conceals depths of benevolence and affection beneath a stern exterior! He's not a rough diamond - a pearl-containing oyster of a rustic: he's a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man.'" And as Edgar Linton learns through bitter experience: "'Mr. Heathcliff ... is a most diabolical man, delighting to wrong and ruin those he hates, if they give him the slightest opportunity.'"WUTHERING HEIGHTS will always be for me the classic that I so badly wanted to like but simply could not. Perhaps I can say that the moor itself was the only "character" that really gripped me, whereas every human character repulsed me in some way - usually in some violent way. At least this book confirmed for me that characterization is absolutely central to my reading experience. If I cannot feel something for a story's characters, even beautiful writing and an evocative setting will most likely fail to move me.

Must say it's an amazing piece of work. It touched the nodes of emotions. But what disappointes the most is "BOOKMARKS" . Constantly I have ordered 3 novels but I haven't received a single bookmark. Amazon, please take note of this complaint. Once again, the book is really really wonderful...So lemme make it clear, the disappointment due bookmark shouldn't​ be a hindrance to the fame of the book.Thank You.

I bought this book for a really good price.. This edition particularly is very cheap. But the font could be little small. But it is completely a readable font. The book was in good condition with no damages.Moving on to the book... It is the best book written by Emily Bronte... It is even more popular than Jane Eyre which was written by her sister. It is a love story and what I love about this book is this beautiful setting. If you have read the book already you would know what am talking about. It also have some gothic elements . And if you want to read this book then I would ask you to read in the Fall season... Because you will just have the best time of your life reading it.

I do not particularly care for the Brontes. I got this book as it is considered a major achievement and recommended by a psychiatrist I know. She maintained that Heathcleaf is a character that really exists and can be found even today. Anyway, I got through quite easily and I recommend the Oxford World Classics edition, because their notes etc are very helpful. It is a savage book, full of extreme passion, positive, but mostly, negative. I give it 4 stars, because I personally prefer books about more "normal" people, who have their troubles and sorrows all right anyway, and if the whole book is set in a social context, so much the better for me. However, checking up historical and litterary sources, I discovered that the environment, the people and area Emily Bronte lived in, was in fact as savage as described in that book, and possibly worse. So, it does have great merit even as a historical and cultural record and portayal.

This has been the third time that I have read this classic gothic Victoria novel, and with each new read I enjoy one of the most famous novels written a little bit more.The two main characters are Cathy and Heathcliffe. Despite being inseparable as children and young adults, they do not find everlasting live with each other, as Cathy chooses a safer option, a man of means, a gentleman who will provide a good home, a social standing and material wealth. What follows is a series of tragic situations which will accompany the main characters to their graves.The book written by Emily Bronte was shocking at time not only for its content, but by the fact that Miss Bronte was a woman and the daughter of a parson. Miss Bronte died soon after completing this nove l, and my mind wonders about the other gems that may have came if Emily had not died.On this read, I rate this classic novel as a four star read, but in the knowledge that the book gets better with each new read.

It's my first book of Everyman's Library Classics series (HC) and surely not the last.When it comes to the 'copyrightedless ' classics, the book market is flooded with various editions; common to all is the offer to sell you an ounce of gold for a penny. Some cover their treasures with leather, some with modern graphics, illustrations etc. Yet, if you don't wish to look around for the great vintage editions (19th-turn of the 2oth century) then Everyman is the best choice: solid high quality binding and paper, thematic and colorful dust jacket, not saving on ink and font size, introductions, appendices and so forth. Everyman's Library Classics series has it all while keeping it dignified and for a reasonable price.