Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights is Emily Brontë's first and only novel. Published in 1847, it stands alone as a masterpiece in grief and longing. The novel was influenced by Romanticism and Gothic fiction. Wuthering Heights is now widely considered to be one of the greatest novels ever written in English, but contemporaneous reviews were polarised. It was controversial for its depictions of mental and physical cruelty, including domestic abuse, and for its challenges to Victorian morality and religious and societal values.

Wuthering Heights tells the epic story of star-crossed lovers Heathcliff and Catherine, who can't be together because of their differing classes. Heathcliff is an orphan that was raised with the Earnshaw children (The man who took him from the orphan), Hindley, and Catherine. Catherine loves Heathcliff but Hindley hates him and does everything he can to destroy Heathcliff, but Catherine and Heathcliff grow up playing wildly on the moors, oblivious of anything or anyone else — until they encounter the Lintons.

The Lintons welcome Catherine into their home but shun Heathcliff. Treated as an outsider once again, along with the fact that Catherine now spends more time with Edgar, Heathcliff begins to think about revenge. They eventually split up and many troubles follow their lives from then. Filled with anger and furious after Catherine died giving birth to Edgar's child, Heathcliff vows revenge and destroys everything Edgar Linton holds dear. At the end of the novel, Heathcliff and Catherine are united, but in death.

Wuthering Heights has inspired an array of adaptations across several media, including English singer-songwriter Kate Bush's song of the same name. One of the most adaptations of the novel was a film by the same name released in 2011. The film was directed by Andrea Arnold starring Kaya Scodelario as Catherine Earnshaw and James Howson as Heathcliff.