Review of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Do you enjoy stories with untraditional endings? Does it make you happy when the main characters do not come together at the plot’s climax?
If you answered yes to both of these, then you will love the novel Wuthering Heights.
In honour of Women’s History Month, I would like to honour Emily Brontë, one of the three Brontë sisters whose novels, originally published pseudonymously, have been on reading lists since the mid-nineteenth century.
Despite the canonical status of the Brontë sisters’ books today, they were not always considered successes. According to Linda Peterson, Emily and Anne sent the manuscripts for Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey to publisher Thomas Newby. They paid him £50 as a deposit to publish the books and cover advertisement costs. After the authors died, Newby did not return the deposit to their surviving sister, Charlotte. Charlotte had to ask her publisher, George Smith, to intervene in 1850 and he purchased new editions of Wuthering Heights and Agnes Grey for republication. Peterson concludes that ‘both might have sunk into oblivion without Smith, Elder’s intervention.’[1] Thankfully, Charlotte’s belief in her sisters’ works and Smith’s influence in the publishing industry saved two of English literature’s most beloved novels.
Wuthering Heights is a classic family drama – like Keeping Up with the Kardashians, but in the nineteenth century and with characters we actually care about. Although the characters demonstrate a frustrating lack of communication and conveying emotions, the story is a bittersweet tale of love and loss.
I recommend it to anyone who enjoys nineteenth-century literature and a hauntingly complicated love story.
By Sam, Information Adviser at York St John
[1] Linda H. Peterson, ‘Working with Publishers’, in The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Women’s Writing, ed. by Linda H. Peterson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 43-58 (p. 45).
