Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.72 AVERAGE
3.72 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
There are novels one reads to escape—and then there are novels one survives. Wuthering Heights belongs firmly to the latter. Emily Brontë’s only published work is less a love story than it is a gothic fever dream—a howling meditation on revenge, grief, and the ruinous weight of passion that consumes everything in its path. It is cold, brutal, bleak, yet eerily beautiful. A tragedy wrapped in thorns.
Let me say it plainly: the characters in this novel are not likeable. But therein lies Brontë’s genius. She dares to present human beings as they are at their most raw and unfiltered. Catherine Earnshaw is not a heroine—she is untameable, vain, arrogant, and destructive. Heathcliff is not a romantic hero—he is obsessive, unrelenting, and, at times, inhuman. Their so-called love is not tender or redemptive—it is a cursed bond, forged in childhood and calcified by pride. Theirs is a love that does not heal—it haunts.
And everyone around them pays the price.
The body count in this novel is staggering. Frances, Edgar, Isabella, Hindley, Linton and Catherine—all fall to the grim and ceaseless unraveling that stems from Catherine and Heathcliff’s toxic, unfinished union. And then finally, Heathcliff himself wastes away—hollowed by obsession and ghost-lust—until death finally gives him the reunion he spent decades ruining lives to obtain. I will not call it peace. Peace was never his currency.
But perhaps what redeems the novel—what saves it from being an endless symphony of suffering—is the quietly powerful arc of the second generation. Young Catherine and Hareton, though born of tragedy and raised in bitterness, choose tenderness over cruelty. They grow where others withered. In their decision to marry, to forgive, to live—it is as if the moors themselves exhale. The past is buried (quite literally), and for the first time, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange may become homes rather than battlegrounds.
---
🕯️ On the Execution of the Story
Brontë’s narrative structure is ambitious—perhaps too ambitious. The story is told through a layered framework: Mr. Lockwood, the outsider, relays the tale as told to him by Nelly Dean, the housekeeper, who herself is often interpreting and editorialising events. This double-layered narration distances the reader from the emotional core. One is always peering through a veil—never allowed to truly enter a character’s soul, only to observe it flickering behind someone else's judgment.
And herein lies both the brilliance and the flaw of the novel’s execution. On one hand, it preserves the mythic, ghostly quality of the tale. It’s as if the whole story is a rumour carried by the wind—uncertain, distorted, legendary. On the other hand, it creates a kind of emotional opacity. Characters often feel symbolic rather than flesh-and-blood. And while that works for Heathcliff, who is more spectre than man, it occasionally renders the narrative cold and remote, especially during the middle sections dominated by the joyless second generation.
Moreover, Nelly Dean, our main narrator, is deeply unreliable. She meddles. She omits. She judges. Her biases bleed into the text, making it hard to know who truly said or felt what. Yet perhaps this was Brontë’s intention all along—to make the reader question truth, to blur the line between story and storyteller, between memory and manipulation.
---
🕯️Final Thoughts
To say I loved Wuthering Heights would be inaccurate. But to say I am haunted by it—shaken, pierced, possessed—that would be the truth.
It is a dark, elemental novel that refuses to fit any neat category. It is not romantic. It is not moral. It is not even, strictly speaking, hopeful. But it is fierce. It is honest in its depiction of the ugliest parts of human nature—and it does not flinch.
At its heart, Wuthering Heights is about what happens when love becomes a curse instead of a balm. When grief turns to vengeance. When the living become as ghostly as the dead. And when, despite it all, something good—something whole—manages to grow from the ashes.
Four stars. Not because I adored it, but because I respect it. It is not a book you like. It is a book you remember.
There are novels one reads to escape—and then there are novels one survives. Wuthering Heights belongs firmly to the latter. Emily Brontë’s only published work is less a love story than it is a gothic fever dream—a howling meditation on revenge, grief, and the ruinous weight of passion that consumes everything in its path. It is cold, brutal, bleak, yet eerily beautiful. A tragedy wrapped in thorns.
Let me say it plainly: the characters in this novel are not likeable. But therein lies Brontë’s genius. She dares to present human beings as they are at their most raw and unfiltered. Catherine Earnshaw is not a heroine—she is untameable, vain, arrogant, and destructive. Heathcliff is not a romantic hero—he is obsessive, unrelenting, and, at times, inhuman. Their so-called love is not tender or redemptive—it is a cursed bond, forged in childhood and calcified by pride. Theirs is a love that does not heal—it haunts.
And everyone around them pays the price.
The body count in this novel is staggering. Frances, Edgar, Isabella, Hindley, Linton and Catherine—all fall to the grim and ceaseless unraveling that stems from Catherine and Heathcliff’s toxic, unfinished union. And then finally, Heathcliff himself wastes away—hollowed by obsession and ghost-lust—until death finally gives him the reunion he spent decades ruining lives to obtain. I will not call it peace. Peace was never his currency.
But perhaps what redeems the novel—what saves it from being an endless symphony of suffering—is the quietly powerful arc of the second generation. Young Catherine and Hareton, though born of tragedy and raised in bitterness, choose tenderness over cruelty. They grow where others withered. In their decision to marry, to forgive, to live—it is as if the moors themselves exhale. The past is buried (quite literally), and for the first time, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange may become homes rather than battlegrounds.
---
🕯️ On the Execution of the Story
Brontë’s narrative structure is ambitious—perhaps too ambitious. The story is told through a layered framework: Mr. Lockwood, the outsider, relays the tale as told to him by Nelly Dean, the housekeeper, who herself is often interpreting and editorialising events. This double-layered narration distances the reader from the emotional core. One is always peering through a veil—never allowed to truly enter a character’s soul, only to observe it flickering behind someone else's judgment.
And herein lies both the brilliance and the flaw of the novel’s execution. On one hand, it preserves the mythic, ghostly quality of the tale. It’s as if the whole story is a rumour carried by the wind—uncertain, distorted, legendary. On the other hand, it creates a kind of emotional opacity. Characters often feel symbolic rather than flesh-and-blood. And while that works for Heathcliff, who is more spectre than man, it occasionally renders the narrative cold and remote, especially during the middle sections dominated by the joyless second generation.
Moreover, Nelly Dean, our main narrator, is deeply unreliable. She meddles. She omits. She judges. Her biases bleed into the text, making it hard to know who truly said or felt what. Yet perhaps this was Brontë’s intention all along—to make the reader question truth, to blur the line between story and storyteller, between memory and manipulation.
---
🕯️Final Thoughts
To say I loved Wuthering Heights would be inaccurate. But to say I am haunted by it—shaken, pierced, possessed—that would be the truth.
It is a dark, elemental novel that refuses to fit any neat category. It is not romantic. It is not moral. It is not even, strictly speaking, hopeful. But it is fierce. It is honest in its depiction of the ugliest parts of human nature—and it does not flinch.
At its heart, Wuthering Heights is about what happens when love becomes a curse instead of a balm. When grief turns to vengeance. When the living become as ghostly as the dead. And when, despite it all, something good—something whole—manages to grow from the ashes.
Four stars. Not because I adored it, but because I respect it. It is not a book you like. It is a book you remember.
Nao tem o menor sentido esse livro ser contado em forma de fofoca quando a pessoa ouvindo a fofoca nao faz a menor diferença na historia
adventurous
dark
emotional
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
medium-paced
dark
emotional
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
medium-paced
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
what a chore. checks out dass das bella swans lieblingsbuch ist
l’ho odiato forte fortissimo non ho mai superato sincera le prima 30 pagine è noiosissimo lo leggerò quando sarò vecchia e non avrò nient’altro di bello da leggere
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes