“Wuthering Heights” Review

Warning: If you have not read “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë,, do not read this review unless you have already read the book or don’t mind spoilers.

I’m back with another book review, and this time it’s “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Brontë,! Here’s a summary so we know what it’s about:

“Wuthering Heights is a wild, passionate story of the intense and almost demonic love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a foundling adopted by Catherine’s father. After Mr Earnshaw’s death, Heathcliff is bullied and humiliated by Catherine’s brother Hindley and wrongly believing that his love for Catherine is not reciprocated, leaves Wuthering Heights, only to return years later as a wealthy and polished man. He proceeds to exact a terrible revenge for his former miseries. The action of the story is chaotic and unremittingly violent, but the accomplished handling of a complex structure, the evocative descriptions of the lonely moorland setting and the poetic grandeur of vision combine to make this unique novel a masterpiece of English literature.”

I’m just going to put it out here now: I hated this book.

From how the characters in “Book Girl” discussed it at length in one volume, I thought “Wuthering Heights” was going to be a complex love story! Forbidden love, love triangles and all that jazz, written with fully in-depth characters! I admit my expectations for this book were somewhat higher than usual because of this.

…It wasn’t as great as that, sadly.

I mean, there was some forbidden love as an appetizer, technically, but it came with what I’d call another side serving of unneeded revenge, followed by a heaping main course consisting of everyone yelling at each other in every chapter. I should probably explain what I mean by this, and so I will break it down.

Everyone just started yelling at each other in nearly every single chapter during the main story. I assumed at first it was because Bronte is fond of exclamation marks in every two to three sentences of dialogue, but then I realized that there was no need for a lot of the yelling. Just because everyone is yelling at each other doesn’t mean that it gives them any further depth in character.

The plotline of Heathcliff’s revenge wasn’t needed, but this was what made up majority of the plot after Catherine died birthing one of her children. I find this confusing, given that Catherine was supposed to be the object of Heathcliff’s revenge in the first place, not her descendants, but Heathcliff suddenly became hellbent on getting revenge on her children despite the fact that they never did anything to harm him, unlike other characters.

The romance that was supposed to happen didn’t feel romantic. The yelling definitely didn’t help with that, and eventually I just gave up on the book after about 250 pages in.

Overall, I would rate this 0 out of 5 stars.