What Is Wuthering Heights About? Emily Brontë's Wild Love Story Explained

Wuthering Heights is the only novel by the English writer Emily Brontë, published in 1847, about the fierce, destructive bond between Heathcliff, an orphan taken in by the Earnshaw family, and Catherine Earnshaw, the girl he loves, and about the revenge he takes on two families when he loses her. Set on the wild moors of Yorkshire, it shocked many early readers with its cruelty and passion. Today it is considered one of the greatest novels in English.

The writer

Emily Brontë (1818–1848) grew up in Haworth, a village on the Yorkshire moors, with her sisters Charlotte and Anne, who also became novelists. The sisters first published under male-sounding pen names; Emily used "Ellis Bell". She was shy and loved the open moorland, which fills her novel. She died of tuberculosis about a year after Wuthering Heights was published, at just thirty.

Who tells the story?

The novel has an unusual structure. It begins in 1801 with Mr Lockwood, a visitor who rents a nearby house and meets the bitter Heathcliff at Wuthering Heights. Curious, he asks the housekeeper, Nelly Dean, about the past, and most of the story is her account told to him. Because we see events through two narrators, neither fully reliable, readers must decide for themselves what to believe.

The story in brief

Mr Earnshaw, owner of the farmhouse Wuthering Heights, brings home a dark-haired orphan boy from Liverpool and names him Heathcliff. Earnshaw's daughter Catherine becomes Heathcliff's close companion, but his son Hindley hates the newcomer. After the father dies, Hindley treats Heathcliff as a servant.

Catherine loves Heathcliff deeply but decides to marry the gentle, wealthy Edgar Linton of nearby Thrushcross Grange, because marrying Heathcliff would "degrade" her. Heathcliff overhears part of this and disappears. Years later he returns, mysteriously rich and educated, and sets out on revenge. He marries Edgar's sister Isabella and treats her cruelly, gains control of Wuthering Heights through Hindley's gambling debts, and torments those around him. Catherine, torn between the two men, falls ill and dies after giving birth to a daughter, also named Catherine.

In the second half, Heathcliff's revenge passes to the next generation. He forces young Catherine to marry his sickly son Linton so that he can take Thrushcross Grange too. Yet in the end his hatred fades. Haunted by the memory of the first Catherine, he stops eating and dies, and young Catherine and Hindley's son Hareton, whom Heathcliff had kept uneducated, fall in love and look towards a gentler future.

Love or obsession?

Catherine's famous cry, "I am Heathcliff", expresses a love so complete that it erases the line between two people. But that love leads to cruelty, revenge and suffering for almost everyone. Many modern readers see the book less as a romance and more as a study of obsession, class and the damage that passes from one generation to the next.

The moors and the two houses

The two houses stand for two ways of life. Wuthering Heights is rough, exposed to storms and full of violent feeling; "wuthering" is a Yorkshire word for the roaring of wind. Thrushcross Grange is sheltered, comfortable and refined. The open moor between them is where Catherine and Heathcliff feel most free, and it remains at the heart of the book's atmosphere.

Learn with Wuthering Heights: English phrases

Phrase	Meaning	Example
a soulmate	a person you feel deeply connected to	She called him her soulmate.
to bear a grudge	to stay angry for a long time	He bore a grudge for twenty years.
stormy	full of strong emotion and conflict	They had a stormy relationship.
to haunt someone	to stay painfully in their mind	Her words haunted him for years.
to get even	to take revenge	He swore he would get even.

Try this: Write three English sentences about a dramatic story you know, using "to bear a grudge" and "stormy".