Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte

Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. 

(Emily Bronte, 1830)

    This emotively dark and Gothic novel by Emily Bronte parts literary ways with the genre styles and plots of the works by her sisters Anne and Charlotte, and is possibly the one novel which has been the most hotly debated, interpreted and discussed by scholars and critics since its publication in 1846.

Containing the Gothic elements of ghosts, dungeons and madness, Emily Bronte combined such with the social context of 19th century England, with specific note of the treatment of women, the possibility of feminine empowerment, inheritance and class, whilst crossing the lines of moral and ethical proprieties.

Set on a hilltop property amidst the Moors of the English country side, the story of the Earnshaw and Linton families of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange are told by the character Nelly Dean, the former maid and nanny of Wuthering Heights. Although loosely defined as a tale of both romance and generational curses and redemption, the story focuses on the unhealthy and destructive soal-mate type relationship between the main characters of the novel Catherine Earnshaw (Linton) and the gypsy-type adopted child to the Earnshaw family, Heathcliff. However, every relationship in Wuthering Heights is poisoned with one type of tragedy, embittered episode, or longing for redemption and even death.
 

Wuthering Heights is a powerful, brilliant and disturbing novel which unleashed questions from her own sisters on Emily's view of the world and propositions from scholars concerning the dark ability of Emily Bronte to conjure and create such destructive forces and characters of this novel.

As stated, there are numerous interpretations of this novel, including musical adaptations, the most famous being Wuthering Heights by 1980's musician Kate Bush. Follow the link and observe her taking on the character of the ghost of Catherine Earnshaw through the song: www.youtube.com/watch?v=WChywYrwHBY

The following two links are reviews with different interpretations of the novel and students may benefit from the exegesis presented in both: 

http://www.iwise.com/Emily_Bront%C3%AB/Communism%20and%20Socialism_quotes

academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel.../gothic.html