Wuthering Heights: Not your Typical Love Story

Reading Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte is a wonderful experience. It’s one of those novels that leaves you with the impression you were in some roller coaster, meaning it has its ups and downs. Characters for one thing are really flat; most of them are one-dimensional such as Nelly one of the narrators of the story (it is told in third person through some of the characters) who is kind and patient, or the main character himself, Heathcliff, who is greedy and revengeful for no apparent reason. The strong points are in the plot itself, full of surprises, and the dialogs which perfectly capture the spirit of each of the characters. Though it’s not a love story Wuthering Heights is about a love story. Truly, it’s the story of how the members of two families become pawns of Heathcliff, a man who is cold, calculating but at the same time immensely driven by his love for Catherine Earnshaw who in turn loves him, and yet such love is doomed to never be consummated, not at least in this world. Heathcliff moves his pawns with the only purpose of destroying both families and thus become the master of their lands. In the end, he discovers that after being successful he’s not happy and seeks comfort in his own death. Is this an essential reading? Most definitely. In a time where most of those considered classics can be downloaded from the Internet for free there’s no reason for not reading it. And this is a classic only that not your classical love story.

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