A review by book_busy
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

4.0

I think Brontë is the first author I have ever read to create a villain that actually endears you to them. Catherine and Heathcliff are grade A* rotters and so self possessed and yet she does quite a stellar job of humanising them. I personally found, despite the relatively static setting, this to be an incredibly dynamic novel, especially with temporal shifts straddling generations (though I did have to keep on checking family tree graphs seeing as everyone is named after each other). I think it's very interesting for the main narrator to be a female servant as it provides a very excellently intimate detail as to the lives of the characters involved. Out of all the characters, despite Heathcliff and Cathy being the narrative focus, I found myself personally warming to the relationship between Cathy Linton and Hareton Earnshaw as there was something warm and quite genuine about its roughness. I am undecided on where I fall on Heathcliff but mainly I pity the man. Given the implications of him maybe being mixed race and scorned for it by other characters, isolated in some Yorkshire moor with nothing but love to torment him, one finds it hard to not pity and fear him.

I don't think I fully grasped the narrative depth of this novel but I felt the inclusion of Yorkshire dialect (as a little tangential note) was really very fun for me to read.

One to re-read as when I have matured methinks.

Good stuff.