The characters in Emily Brontë’s novel are so extreme, so given over to their passions, so driven and wilful that you will, certainly, want to pull your own hair out. From the dissipated yet cruel Hindley, to the emotionally divided and divisive Cathy, to the mindlessly foolish Isabella, and her ineffectual brother, Edgar, to the stunted, brutish Hareton, it is a cavalcade of distasteful, even monstrous, types. But none compare to the fiendish Heathcliff himself, whose unrelenting vengeful monomania brings ruin upon them all. How Heathcliff’s perverse passion for Catherine came to represent any sort of ideal of romantic devotion in the many years subsequent to the novel’s publication is a mystery to me.
If possible, it might be best to set aside the principal characters and their extreme emotions and actions, and turn instead to the descriptive prose with which Emily Brontë renders the wild moors, the relentless inclement weather, and the brief wonder of spring or a sunny summer day. Even more intriguing is the bracketed narrative technique, initiated by the loquaciously risible Mr. Lockwood and then, more prosaically, carried forward by Ellen Dean. That Ellen Dean at one point encourages Mr. Lockwood to pursue a possible marriage with the younger Catherine deliciously risks the confusion of narrative and plot, and Mr. Lockwood does well to get himself as far away from Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights as possible. His return later in the year rightly heralds the wrapping up of loose ends and the natural dénouement of the tale.
Wuthering Heights, even today, seems so singular, so extreme that, if you still have hair at the end of it, you might wish to set it on its own shelf in your library, isolated and incomparable. A curious, dark masterpiece recommended only for the brave of heart.