Wuthering Heights

by Emily Brontë

Mr. Earnshaw brings an orphan boy, Heathcliff, home to Wuthering Heights. He bonds with Earnshaw's daughter Catherine and is bullied by her brother Hindley. Catherine marries the wealthy Edgar Linton instead. Heathcliff leaves, returns rich, marries Edgar's sister Isabella, and wrecks both households. Catherine dies after giving birth to a daughter, also named Cathy. Heathcliff takes over Hindley's property and bullies Hindley's son Hareton. Heathcliff dies, and young Cathy and Hareton plan to marry. Lockwood, the tenant who hears all this from housekeeper Nelly Dean, sees the graves. A love story where everyone is miserable.

• The author hid behind a man's name. Emily Brontë published the novel in 1847 as Ellis Bell. Her sisters Charlotte and Anne also took male-sounding pen names, Currer Bell and Acton Bell.
• Heathcliff has no surname. Nelly Dean says his name came from an Earnshaw son who died in childhood. It serves him as both first name and last. The book never gives him another.
• Anne's novel filled out its third volume. Wuthering Heights took the first two volumes of a set published in December 1847. Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey filled the third. Thomas Cautley Newby published both.

• “Heathcliff and Catherine end up married.” Not even close. Catherine marries Edgar Linton, and Heathcliff answers by marrying Edgar's sister Isabella. The two leads never wed. Catherine is dead before the book is even half over.
• “Heathcliff narrates his own story.” Wrong narrator. Lockwood, a tenant, opens the book, and housekeeper Nelly Dean tells most of the rest. Heathcliff never gets a chapter in his own voice, which is part of his menace.
• “Catherine outlives Heathcliff.” Backwards, actually. Catherine dies in chapter 16, after giving birth to her daughter. Heathcliff lasts until chapter 34, the final chapter, so he spends most of the book as the survivor.

• If they say: “So it is a great love story, right?”
  You say: “I'd call it a revenge story. Heathcliff wrecks two families, and the marriage the book actually ends on is Cathy and Hareton, the next generation.”
• If they say: “Why does everything feel secondhand?”
  You say: “Because it is. Lockwood hears the story from Nelly Dean, and he even reads Catherine's old diary entries himself. Almost nothing reaches the reader without a middleman.”