Wuthering Heights: The 1847 Emily Bronte's gothic novel (Original Text Edition) (Bronte sisters gothic novels)

Read the most by: boys and girls

You know the sayings: love conquers all. All you need is love. Love is many splendored thing.
How about this one: love is incestuous, psychologically damaging, manipulative, violent, digs up your corpse when you die, and wants to be haunted by your ghost forever and ever?
It may not be the sentiment on most Valentines Day cards, but it sure is the pervasive opinion on l'amour in Wuthering Heights. Does that sound like kind of a horrific idea of love to you? We have bad news for you—you're almost totally alone in thinking that. Wuthering Heights, and its warped idea of true love, is often voted the #1 Greatest Love Story.
Wuthering Heights, published in 1847, revolves around the passionate and destructive love between its two central characters, Emily Brontë's headstrong and beautiful Catherine Earnshaw and her tall, dark, handsome, and brooding hero/devil, Heathcliff.
Forget the romantic candlelit dinners, the wine, and the roses. Catherine and Heathcliff's love exists on an entirely different plane: one that involves ghosts, corpses, the communion (or possession) of souls, and revenge. And, speaking of revenge, Heathcliff—who harbors more than one grudge against his adoptive family, the love of his life, and his neighbors—manages to make every revenge drama look like kids' play.
Though Wuthering Heights is considered a classic, the book wasn't always so popular. In fact, when it first came out there was all sorts of confusion about the author, because Brontë published the book under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. Readers thought the book was by the same author who wrote Jane Eyre (which was more immediately embraced by the public because the characters are a lot more likable). Turns out, Emily's sister Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre... under the pseudonym Currer Bell.
To set the record straight, Charlotte wrote the preface to the 1850 edition of Wuthering Heights and also took the opportunity to address some of the bad press the book had received. Critics basically thought the book was a downer and some even characterized it as immoral.
Um. We don't usually agree with critics from the 1850's but they were half right. This book is a downer. Heathcliff is amoral.
But that doesn't keep the love story in Wuthering Heights from being one of the most passionate love stories ever told—or one of the most often-adapted. Sure, its idea of love is psychotic. Sure, it's uber-unhealthy. Sure, it makes "Blank Space" look like a really level-headed approach to eros.
But that's the point. Sometimes "madly in love" means just that: that love has rendered you literally mad. Sometimes it ain't healthy. It's not a good idea. But all-consuming, stay-up-all-night, hurts-worse-than-a-root-canal love is real—and Emily Brontë's novel tells it like it is.
Welcome to Wuthering Heights, where love will tear you apart, follow you every step you take, and come in like a wrecking ball.