Why It's Great: Wuthering Heights

Kicking off a new series.

I love classic novels. But I almost always dislike the discourse around them. Articles and analyses of these books tend to end up alienating a sizable chunk of readers — stuffy, scholarly, and snooty are words that easily come to mind. Classic novels have come to be seen as the domain of elitist readers.

But in their day, many classic novels were low-brow, populist, and even outright vulgar (as compared to the standards of their time).

The real difference between then and now is just a matter of vocabulary and style, rather than the content itself. Wuthering Heights and Great Expectations, two all-time great novels that I’ve recently enjoyed, are nothing more than drama-laced, relationally-focused stories of the kind you can easily find on TV today (Yellowjackets, Normal People, Succession, etc.).

There’s a challenge in writing about classic novels, though. It doesn’t always feel like they belong in a regular book list and I’d like to go beyond what I offer in a normal book review. I want to give these great books their due by asking different and somewhat deeper questions:

• Why have they resonated with millions of readers across decades and sometimes centuries?

• Why should modern readers care?

• Even if I don’t necessarily like the book, is it worth reading for folks who aren’t interested in literary history?

• What made this book great for me?

The larger cultural context of why a book is considered “great” is certainly valuable, but I tend to be more interested in it on a personal level. How and why did this book speak to me — and the natural follow-up, how can it speak to you, too?

So today I’m introducing a new series that I’m calling “Why It’s Great.” As I read classic novels, I’ll reflect on them in a non-stuffy way that (hopefully) makes you want to actually read them rather than toss them aside as titles only fit for Serious Readers.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

After utterly absorbing Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations last month — a book that took me two reads to fully “get” — I wanted to jump immediately into more Victorian lit.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, published in 1847, is universally found on “Best Novels of All Time” lists. Perfect.

I went into it knowing nothing at all about the story; by the end, I was equal parts entranced and flummoxed by what I had read.

From the start, you should know that Wuthering Heights doesn’t have a single character who’s easy to root for or even particularly likable. At one point, maybe a third or halfway through, I asked myself, “Is there anyone I can actually root for in this story?” But likability isn’t everything when it comes to characters — in this case, it’s their psychological depth and emotional verve that make the novel intriguing.

In terms of plot, there’s frankly not a whole lot on that front either. Family members and neighbors fighting over women, property, and inherited wealth is basically the gist of it. Heathcliff, the Earnshaws, the Catherines, Isabella — they’re all very memorable despite not actually doing much.

I know, I know. So far I’m really sellling it, aren’t I? Unlikable characters and not much of a noticeable plot.

That’s not really my thing, either. And yet the pages kept turning for me. I was always eager to pick it back up for the week or so that it took me get through its ~340 pages. Bronte wrote with such intensity and moodiness that the story felt propulsive enough on the strength of its raw emotion.

I was also really intrigued by the narration device. Rather than putting us in the characters’ shoes and minds, Bronte told this story through Mr. Lockwood and Ms. Nelly Dean, who were simply observers of the events in the story. We’re never told what the characters are feeling; we’re instead shown their intensity through the eyes of these secondary figures. The fact that Bronte could convey such psychological complexity without first-person or omniscient narration is simply remarkable.

There are moments in the story where you’ll groan about how toxic all these characters are, but that’s part of the point. Emotions — even the good ones — can be twisted and don’t always lead to enlightment or happy conclusions. This tone flew directly in the face of the more sentimental and ironic authors who dominated the era; love could lead to obsession and even destruction just as easily as leading to fulfillment or happiness.

Nobody from that time period displayed the full, dark range of human character and relationships in the way that Emily Bronte did in Wuthering Heights.

A final word before closing: There’s no doubt that Victorian language and writing styles can be tough for modern readers to digest — myself very much included. It just takes practice. Those first pages and chapters will feel slow and confusing, but if you keep going you’ll get the hang of it. The language will come and the characters will crystalize — it just takes practice.

Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte’s only novel, deserves a high place on everyone’s lifetime reading list.

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