A review by ahbartlett
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

4.0

I read Wuthering Heights in April, and when I finished it I honestly thought “this is not a book I am going to think about ever again.” However, here we are 2 months later, and I think about it multiple times a week. This is why you wait to let a book simmer and percolate before rushing to write the Storygraph entry! 

Months later I continue to find Heathcliff such a compelling protagonist; an arbiter of abuse despite being abused himself, yet being despised - in many cases actually rather unjustly - for his opportunism and single-mindedness against the bumbling idiots in this book. Yes, every character is actually deeply unlikeable and intellectually challenged, not just our dear disturbed anti-hero. Reading Heathcliff and the events of this book through the lens of race and racism has made for a sustaining retrospective analysis for me, and I think why I’ve found Wuthering Heights more ripe for reflection than other books of that time period. 

It is interesting to read a novel like Wuthering Heights and start to see its influence in places you didn’t have the context and language to understand before. It is a deeply absurd, nonsensical, and strange novel. It asks you what true love really is, and argues that it’s probably not what Heathcliff and Cathy had; but maybe also it is what they had, if you approximate love by degree of obsession for another. If you think about any plot point for too long, everything stops making sense. See, how did Heathcliff disappear and suddenly come back inordinately wealthy? How did Nelly have access to every single intimate conversation that happened in this novel? Is everything we read actually just embellishment? If you are anything like me, these questions will plague you for months afterwards. 

I look forward to continuing to delve into the Brontë sister universe - independent of any bullying by my girlfriend to do so!