Wuthering Heights Review: Worth Reading in 2026?

Wuthering Heights is one of my favorite books; it used to be the favorite but I would be lying if I said I haven’t read books I liked better since. Nevertheless, it’s still very important to me and close to my heart.

I first read it when I was thirteen or fourteen, during the summer when my beloved grandfather died of cancer and we just found out my mother had cancer too. In my pre-adolescent brain, I was convinced I would lose my mom too, and so I slipped into what turned out to be one of the darkest times of my life. 

I don’t remember much of that period, but I do remember an elderly neighbor, a retired teacher, lending me copies of Wuthering Heights and Rebecca (by Daphne du Maurier). Why she did this, I’ll never know, but these books became my comfort and solace in a way you wouldn’t quite expect given the themes. 

For years later, I carried Wuthering Heights with me everywhere I went, always in my bag, always near so I can read a paragraph or chapter or two when I need some comfort. 

So, obviously, my own views on it are a little biased. I have read this book hundreds of times and appreciated something new about it every time. But I am not blind to its faults either.

A quick, spoiler-free overview: Wuthering Heights is a gothic tragedy, a story of revenge and how it can ruin people’s lives. It’s not a romance (like some people or Emerald Fennel’s movie will try to convince you), but it does contain a love story that is as passionate as it is toxic (by today and every day’s standards). None of the characters in this book are truly good, all of them are deeply flawed and you may find yourself without anyone to root for. But the story in itself is masterful and told in such a way that it’ll grab your attention immediately. The atmosphere is also fantastic — read this book in November, when the winds are howling and nature has lost all of its greenery, and you, too, can feel like running through the moors while the ghost of your lover chases after you. Just as long as you’re prepared for everything this novel is (a tragedy) — and what it isn’t (a romance). 

• My rating: 5⭐
• Heat level: Nope! 
• Standalone or series? Standalone.
• Content warnings: Yes. Just, whatever you can imagine (death, abuse, drinking, gambling, even a dog is hanged; nothing is overly explicitly written out, it doesn’t feel gratuitous, but it’s there nonetheless, so please be careful as you read). 
• Page count: 359 pages
• Read if: If gothic literature, deeply morally gray characters, and revenge arcs interest you. Don’t expect Jane Austen politesse or gentility, not even romance; instead expect obsession, dramatics, awful characters, death, confusion about names, and ghosts!

Wuthering Heights Summary

Wuthering Heights opens, unlike most of its movie adaptations, with Mr. Lockwood, the new tenant of Trushcross Grange, very happy about his new circumstance. He sees himself as a misanthropist, and enjoys being so far from society. He believes Mr. Heathcliff, his landlord, is his perfect match, and in his desire (and foolish belief) goes to visit him at Wuthering Heights, where Mr. Heathcliff lives. 

By the end of that first page, Mr. Lockwood realizes Mr. Heathcliff is not the friendly fellow he believed him to be, and that he is none too pleased to be in his company. In fact, the whole household seems to be increasingly hostile and the tensions are high. There’s a beautiful woman named Cathy who behaves rudely (though Mr. Lockwood briefly fancies himself the perfect man for her and considers wooing her), a dirty young servant named Hareton, etc. 

Mr. Lockwood is so blind to all of this at times, and he believes in his host’s basic decency so much (again, foolishly), that he even asks to stay overnight because the weather has turned for the worse. They give him a room (grudgingly), but that entire night he is haunted by something. When Mr. Heathcliff hears of this, he kicks him out of the room and locks himself up in there. 

Mr. Lockwood is so at a loss on what to do that he ends up trying to leave, at which point the dogs attack him and he’s bed-bound at Thrushcross Grange for quite a while. 

There, his maid Nelly begins to tell him a story (at Mr. Lockwood’s behest) of Heathcliff and how this all came to be. Heathcliff, it turns out, was adopted by the old Mr. Earnshaw on a whim, to surprise of absolutely everyone in the house. Mr. Earnshaw’s daughter, Cathy, becomes fast friends with him after a while, but the son, Hindley, is always antagonizing him. Mr. Earnshaw, though, loves Heathcliff and treats him as he would a real son. 

Thankfully, Hindley leaves soon to go to school, and Cathy and Heathcliff have a few wonderful (for them) years where they just run around the moors and have fun. But then Mr. Earnshaw dies, and Hindley returns with his new wife to be the master of the house. Immediately, he kicks Heathcliff out of the house, starts beating him and treating him as a servant, and Hindley’s wife wants to turn Cathy into a lady. 

The thing is, Cathy doesn’t want to be a lady, so she still runs around with Heathcliff whenever possible, and one day they go to Thrushcross Grange to spy on the spoiled, rich kids there. But then Cathy hurts her leg, and their dogs attack Heathcliff. Cathy has to stay with the Lintons, and Heathcliff is chased off, back to Wuthering Heights. 

Weeks pass and though Cathy obviously initially hates her situation, she changes over that time, and the Lintons return Cathy a changed woman. She became a lady, and in the process Edgar Linton, the son, grew to like her. 

Hindley and his wife are overjoyed about this. But then Hindley’s wife, Frances, gives birth to their son Hareton and dies in the process, turning Hindley more vicious, more angry than ever. He treats Heathcliff even worse than ever, and all of this comes with the proposal from Edgar Linton. 

Cathy is unsure what to do — she knows it would be proper to marry Edgar, and it plays to her vanity that she should. But she also knows she doesn’t belong there, that she would wither in the polished rooms of Thrushcross Grange. Yet, she says to Nelly, she cannot marry Heathcliff now that he has been so thoroughly degraded because it would degrade her (otherwise she would, is implied). 

Heathcliff overhears this, of course, and runs away in the night. But then Cathy explains herself further — unbeknownst to Heathcliff who is already on his way — and says the iconic lines “he is more myself than I am”. By the time she ends her speech, she realizes what happened, and then she looks for Heathcliff desperately, making herself sick with it (as she is wont to do many times in this book). 

She doesn’t find him, though, and he doesn’t come back — so she marries Edgar. 

A few years later, Heathcliff returns, now a new man — almost handsome, rich beyond belief and ready for revenge. He tricks Hindley out of Wuthering Heights, turning Hareton into a filthy servant. He torments Cathy and Edgar, though Cathy is very happy to see him. 

But then Heathcliff marries Edgar’s beautiful, naive sister Isabella by once again, running away in the night. He treats her very poorly, gets her pregnant, abuses her, and finally when their son, Linton Heathcliff, is born, flees south with him. Then she dies and Linton is returned to Wuthering Heights.

Cathy, meanwhile, is pregnant and sick (again, mostly from her own spite) and she dies during childbirth when her daughter, also Cathy is born. 

Years later, young Cathy meets Linton and Hareton on the moors. And when Edgar Linton dies, Heathcliff forces Cathy to marry Linton so he can take over the Grange. Linton dies soon after, though, and Cathy is stuck in Wuthering Heights and miserable (where Mr. Lockwood meets them). You begin to see the start of the second generation redemption here — Cathy teaches Hareton to read, and they get closer. 

Heathcliff, desperate to be with Cathy, obsessed with her ghost and haunted by it, finally dies mysteriously, the only evidence an open window and him being gone. Hareton and Cathy are allowed to marry, moving to Thrushcross Grange with Nelly and leaving Wuthering Heights and its bad memories behind. 

Here’s a bit of a timeline, in case you get lost: 

First generation

• 1757 – Hindley Earnshaw born
• 1762 – Catherine Earnshaw born
• c. 1764 – Heathcliff born (his exact age is implied but isn’t stated)
• Summer 1771 – Mr. Earnshaw brings Heathcliff home from Liverpool
• 1773 – Mrs. Earnshaw dies
• 1774 – Hindley sent away to college
• 1777 – Mr. Earnshaw dies; Hindley returns as master with his new wife, Frances, and begins degrading Heathcliff
• Nov 1777 – Catherine and Heathcliff are caught spying at Thrushcross Grange; Catherine is injured and stays five weeks with the Lintons
• 1778 – Catherine returns transformed into a “lady”; Hareton is born; Frances dies shortly after childbirth
• 1780 – Hindley spirals into drinking and gambling
• 1783 – Catherine agrees to marry Edgar Linton; Heathcliff overhears her say marrying him would “degrade” her and vanishes that same night
• 1783 – Catherine marries Edgar; Heathcliff returns three years later, wealthy and transformed
• 1784 – Heathcliff marries Isabella Linton purely out of spite; Catherine, pregnant and ill, dies shortly after giving birth to her daughter — also named Catherine (“Cathy”)
• 1784 – Hindley dies within months of Catherine, deep in debt, having already lost Wuthering Heights to Heathcliff

Second generation

• 1785 – Linton Heathcliff (son of Heathcliff and Isabella) is born; Isabella flees south with him
• 1797 – Isabella dies; Linton is brought back to live with his father at Wuthering Heights
• 1800 – Young Cathy meets Hareton and Linton on the moors, kicking off the second-generation storyline
• 1801 – Edgar Linton dies; Heathcliff forces Cathy to marry his son Linton to seize control of Thrushcross Grange; Linton dies soon after
• Nov 1801 – The frame narrative begins here: Lockwood arrives, rents Thrushcross Grange, and meets Heathcliff — this is where the novel actually begins. 
• 1802 – Heathcliff dies
• 1803 – Cathy and Hareton plan to marry, closing the novel

A quick note that Bronte almost never states these dates outright; this is what the scholars have pieced together since the book’s publication based on what little information there is in the book, gravestones, ages, etc. 

Wuthering Heights vs. Thrushcross Grange

The biggest theme of Wuthering Heights, in my mind, is the difference between the wild, stony, almost archaic Wuthering Heights and the fancy, polite Thrushcross Grange. Not that the book itself doesn’t have other themes — perhaps more important ones — but this one is harped on again and again. 

Even Cathy, in her now-famous monologue talks about deciding whether to marry Linton or Heathcliff as a decision between the two homes. Wuthering Heights where she can be uncivilized, wild and free, herself as she truly is; of Thrushcross Grange where she has to play at being a lady and belonging to society. 

“This is nothing,” cried she: “I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy. That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other. I’ve no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn’t have thought of it.”

Heaven, in my opinion, symbolizes Thrushcross Grange and the safe, genteel life she would lead with Edgar Linton, versus the seemingly cold and wild Wuthering Heights — her misery at the thought of heaven, and her happiness with the moors. Passionate love versus traditional, cold marriage. Edgar vs. Linton. What Cathy wants vs. what she settles for. 

Heathcliff and Catherine

Heathcliff is probably one of literary history’s most misunderstood characters. People either view him as this romantic, swoony hero or a complete villain, neither of which he actually is, in my opinion. He is a complex character, who does some very bad things (very, very bad), but he is also a victim of his circumstance and a sort of epitome of our basest desires. 

While our rational brains are completely sure that digging someone’s grave up because you love them so much is unhealthy, our primal, basest ID loves this. To think that someone could love you — be obsessed with you — so much that they would resort to such lengths after you’re gone is attractive to us in some way, and it plays well into our other primal desire: to be remembered, to never be forgotten. 

“Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living. You said I killed you–haunt me then. The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe–I know that ghosts have wandered the earth. Be with me always–take any form–drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”

Heathcliff, a boy of unknown origin and an undetermined, but foreign race, arrives at Wuthering Heights frightened and wary. And while Mr. Earnshaw shows him kindness, it’s in Cathy that he finds his first friend, the first friendly face who sees him for all he is and loves him fully. She is not especially kind or merciful, all traits Heathcliff finds relatable, I believe, and this is why he grows so attached. 

In the beginning of the storyline, when they’re younger, Heathcliff is almost better than Cathy in many ways. He is willing to sacrifice himself over and over for her, he respects and loves her father almost more than she does, he is willing to be whoever they want him to be. He is beaten and degraded and abused, but is stalwart in his love and in his beliefs. He is even kind, more often than not. 

“I have not broken your heart – you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.”

But once he overhears what Cathy thinks of him, and finds she married Linton, he becomes this brutal, cruel person we remember him as — it’s Cathy and this love they share, the obsession, that turns him that way. 

Cathy, meanwhile, has always remained the same. She is a selfish, self-centered girl. From page one, she feigns illness whenever things don’t go her way (in fact, she makes herself physically ill), she treats people poorly, even Heathcliff, and her only worry is herself and what works for her. Her illnesses are famous, and you can see her (though through Nelly’s view) almost enjoying them, the attention they bring, how everyone bends to her will. 

Truth be told, I found myself quite enamored with her in particular, rather than Heathcliff, when I was younger. She is a true teenager, a dramatic, messy girl who loves attention and believes herself better than everyone. I wanted to be Cathy, I found it fun to put myself in bad moods so people would worry (again, refer back to the time of my life when I first read it).

Now, obviously, I know better, and I recognize youth for what it is. You, too, also have to consider that Cathy was barely 19 when she died. She was a teenager through and through, and never got to reconsider her actions. 

Heathcliff, on the other hand, definitely did. But age has made him worse, not better, and Cathy’s death in particular, made him the horrible man he is when he dies. Due to all of his abuse, all the misery, he never got to grow out of this phase of obsession and drama. 

“It is hard to forgive, and to look at those eyes, and feel those wasted hands,’ he answered. ‘Kiss me again; and don’t let me see your eyes! I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer—but yours! How can I?”

I mean, think back to your own teenage years. You were likely dramatic too, especially about the people you liked. You probably believed you were meant to be, star-crossed lovers. I know I did — there was a boy I thought I would never stop loving, though he wasn’t even my boyfriend but only a crush. The dramatics I got into because of him are legendary (to me only, though, I was a quiet girl). Reading my journals from that time, the level of obsession with him I had, makes me physically cringe. 

“I pray every night that I may live after him; because I would rather be miserable than that he should be — that proves I love him better than myself.”

So picture that sort of mental state, but with heightened emotions because of the terrible circumstances — the abuse, the trauma — and you have a recipe for disaster. 

“I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff’s miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.”

And Heathcliff’s morals are completely centered on Catherine. Whatever she says, he’ll do — his moral compass, in some ways, is Cathy.

“I wish you had sincerity enough to tell me whether Catherine would suffer greatly from his loss: the fear that she would restrains me. And there you see the distinction between our feelings: had he been in my place and I in his, though I hated him with a hatred that turned my life to gall, I never would have raised a hand against him. You may look incredulous, if you please! I never would have banished him from her society as long as she desired his. The moment her regard ceased, I could have torn his heart out, and drunk his blood! But, till then – if you don’t believe me, you don’t know me – till then, I would have died by inches before I touched a single hair of his head!”

Once Cathy dies, he is completely and utterly a broken man, a man who is waiting for death itself to take him because he doesn’t want to endure any longer:

“In the first place, his startling likeness to Catherine, connected him fearfully with her. That, however, which you may suppose the most potent to arrest my imagination, is actually the least – for what is not connected with her to me? and what does not recall her? I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped on the flags! In every cloud, in every tree – filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object, by day I am surrounded with her image! The most ordinary faces of men, and women – my own features mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!”

His moral compass is gone, the lens through which he sees the world is gone, his safe space is gone, so he decays over the years, becoming worse and worse, now with Cathy as almost an enemy because she abandoned him (and in some ways, she died out of spite, just to hurt Heathcliff). 

Their love (at least the version of it we hear about; more on that later) is not the healthy sort — it’s an obsessive, kind of ugly thing that certainly doesn’t appear normal to polite society of the time, but I’d still argue is the kind of thing Bronte didn’t disapprove of entirely. This is just my opinion, again, but you don’t give those kinds of lines to characters you’re disgusted by. 

These two characters would have been happy (in their own unhinged way) if only they’d been allowed to be together. Or, at least if Cathy left with Heathcliff. But think about her place in society for a moment — with Edgar, she would be safe, respected, never fearing for her life or livelihood. With Heathcliff, she could not continue to live at Wuthering Heights, and she would have had to go into uncertainty, also probably far from home. 

“I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free… Why am I so changed? I’m sure I should be myself were I once among the heather on those hills.”

So she picked the safe option, and sure, that part is her blame, but did women of the time really have another choice? 

And then, doesn’t it follow that all the tragedy that happens is the direct result of the society keeping these two apart in one way or another? 

Revenge, Destruction, Tragedy

Together, Cathy and Heathcliff are a destructive duo — one that has ruined not just one family but two, and not just one generation but several. 

When Heathcliff finally returns, he wreaks his revenge. From Hindley, he takes his son and his ancestral home; from Edgar Linton, he takes a beloved sister, ruins her, then takes away his nephew, his daughter, and finally his home. No one is spared — Joseph, the man who used to beat him and abuse him, is now forced to bend to Heathcliff’s every whim. Isabella, who turned his precious Kathy into a lady, is ruined, eventually dead, even her dog is hanged. 

Even Nelly, whom Heathcliff blames for the conversation Kathy and she had the night he went away, and many other things, is punished — first, he makes her leave Wuthering Heights and Hareton whom she loved dearly and raised from the moment he was born. Then, when he lures her and Kathy to Wuthering Heights under the pretense of visiting a dying Linton, he locks Nelly in a room for days until the marriage is in place. Then he makes her go to Grange and abandon another child she loved — Kathy. 

You could say that Nelly is punished most harshly of all in some ways — two children she loved and raised are taken away from her forcibly. Especially for what she’s done compared to others; her crimes are minimal. But then again, we see the entire story from her perspective, which could mean that things are in actuality different. 

In comparison, Hindley, who has done the most to Heathcliff, and has already gambled and drunk himself away, is only nudged over the edge. 

The Narrative Distance

This story is told entirely from the perspective of Nelly the maidservant, and Mr. Lockwood, rather than its main actors, which creates a lot of narrative distance and plenty of blank slots the filmmakers have been happy to fill over the years. What went on between Cathy and Heathcliff in reality is entirely unknown — Nelly wasn’t always with them and she doesn’t know any more than she has observed or heard. 

Her story is judgemental most of the time — she finds Cathy and Heathcliff sinful, bad people, who deserved what they got. She’s not always unkind about them, though, but her strong religious beliefs and superstitions play a big role in creating this story’s atmosphere. 

“Treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends; they wound those who resort to them worse than their enemies.”

The fact is, Heathcliff and Cathy’s story is most often filtered to you through two or three perspectives (Nelly and Mr. Lockwood, Cathy junior or whoever is speaking), so there’s that to contend with, and there’s a lot of reading between the lines if you want to get the truth of it. 

Interpretations are many. Some find a swoony dark romance story, some a tragedy, a warning against revenge and self-absorption. And I guess you’ll find what you find in it — there’s no right or wrong way to read and understand this story, no matter what people tell you. As long as you enjoy it, and get something from it, that’s all that matters. 

Personally, when I first read it (at thirteen or fourteen, then later at fifteen, sixteen, seventeen…), I found it to be a love story, because that is what I was looking for. Even years later, I still think that somewhere in there, perhaps away from Nelly and Mr. Lockwood, there is a love story, because you can’t deny that Heathcliff and Cathy loved each other, no matter how toxic it was.

But I also understand now that this isn’t what the author intended (probably), or what we should draw from the story. Emphasis on should because again, you can read it as you like. No one should conclude this story on Cathy and Heathcliff’s side, but then again, we don’t see the story from their side at all, so what truly went on is a mystery. 

Nelly could have changed things in her re-telling, made herself or others look better, because her perspective is skewed as well — she hates Heathcliff now at this point because of his revenge on her. If someone asked her years before, would she still tell it the same? Is she spicing the story up for her wounded master, to make it more entertaining? And again, the story is filtered through Nelly and then through Lockwood who’s telling it to you — one has to wonder how much truth the story retains and what the point of Lockwood even was. 

Nelly (or Ellen) is admittedly a superstitious woman, so how does that change her story now that most of its actors are dead? Sure, she’s not very kind to Kathy or Hindley in her re-telling most of the time, but there’s also the fact that she was the same age as the two of them when Heathcliff first arrived. Could she have harbored affection for Heathcliff that she won’t admit to now? Would that — and the resulting jealousy — color her experience?

If you couldn’t tell, I have opinions and many theories on Wuthering Heights and believe me, you don’t want all of them. 

But isn’t it curious that these two pious and “civilized” people tell such a story about two people they deem “uncivilized” and strange, whose passions are foreign to them as much as Heathcliff himself is? People who, by the standards of the world then, didn’t fit in? 

Should You Read Wuthering Heights?

If what you want to know is whether Wuthering Heights is worth your time or not, I would say yes, it definitely is. For a classic, it’s extremely readable, written as it is in a sort of gossipy way, and the story in and of itself is so fun to read. There’s, as I said many times, so much drama happening everywhere, everyone is so awful to each other and self-absorbed, that it’s a riot to read. 

But also be mindful because it gets kind of dark at times. What stuck in my memory the most is the abuse of Heathcliff, which is quite bad, so I would avoid it if this is a trigger for you. And obviously, there’s racism towards Heathcliff, tons of religious trauma, etc. 

If you’re curious and are already used to some darker stories, just read it! As I mentioned above, the ebook is free and there’s definitely a copy in your library. 

If you watched the Emerald Fennel movie and have no knowledge of this book beyond that, and expect the same thing — adjust your expectations but still read it. The actual story is much less steamy romance and much more gothic tragedy, plus there’s not nearly as much Cathy and Heathcliff smooching. 

If you don’t do well with darker themes and expect something like Jane Austen — just avoid it, this is not the book for you. You won’t enjoy it because it’s filled with morally gray characters who don’t ever grow or change, they’re never warm or soft. They, much like the eponymous Wuthering Heights and the moors around it, are stony, cold, and wretched. 

In the end, the choice is up to you. I would say that this classic has held up surprisingly well, and though the movies always get it wrong, the book itself is more than worth a read.