Emily Brontë - Wuthering Heights (Puffin Classics)

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First published 1847

Published in Puffin Books 1990

Reissued in this edition 2009

Introduction copyright S. E. Hinton, 2009
Endnotes copyright Penguin Books, 2009

All rights reserved

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

ISBN: 978-0-14-195500-1

PUFFIN CLASSICS

Let me in let me in!

Who are you? I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to
disengage myself.

Catherine Linton, it replied shiveringly (why did I
think of Linton? I had read Earnshaw twenty times for
Linton), Im come home, Id lost my way on the moor!

A romance. A ghost story. A love so fierce and intense it could be mistaken for a nightmare. Ive read a few books that seem to sink into my subconscious, to remain there. Wuthering Heights, however, seems to have been there all along. Emily Bront took a chisel to granite (as her sister Charlotte once said) and carved a masterpiece that somehow feels like a memory.

I have to admit I had difficulty getting through Wuthering Heights when I first read it as a teenager. There werent any young adult novels at that time; I was through with the horse books and had to go on to more mature reading if I didnt want to waste my brain on Mary Sue Goes to the Prom.

Wuthering Heights was my first experience of an unreliable narrator. Black Beauty, well, he pretty much told it like it was. But Lockwood, the first narrator of Wuthering Heights (more about the second one later), is a soft man from a soft place, unable to recognize or understand any of the harsh realities of the land he has chosen for his self-imposed exile. (While holidaying at the seaside, he flirts with a girl until she flirts back, and then he runs as far away as he can.) In fact, within a few pages I was thinking, Is this guy an idiot? and the answer is yes.

Lockwood misreads character his take on everyone he meets between Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights is wrong. He guesses wrong at relationships. He mistakes guard dogs for pets, and is stupid enough to make faces at them after hes been rescued from being torn limb from limb (resulting in the need for another rescue). He mistakes dead rabbits for kittens; theres no need for cuddly things on the moors, but there is a need for food and warmth it is a matter of life and death.

Location, location, location. This story could not have happened anywhere else. The desolate and dangerous moors (where the wind-warped trees bend as if craving alms of the sun) strengthen those who respect them, but seem to leech the life of those who shun them. Lockwood blithely assumes that he can navigate this wilderness like its a city park, and it almost costs him his life.

I love the outdoors, but coming from Oklahoma I dont always consider nature a source of comfort. In fact, there is nothing more natural than a rattlesnake curled up on a piece of poison ivy. In Wuthering Heights it is the people who respect nature who deserve to live amongst it. It is when the free-roaming children of the moors, Cathy and Heathcliff, leave them, that their slow disintegration begins.

Wuthering Heights is haunted: by a ghost, by memories, by scenes of violence and despair. Even Lockwood, insensitive as he is, realizes it. Partly curious, partly bored, he coaxes the story of the Earnshaws, the Lintons and the dark gipsy brat, Heathcliff, from Nelly Dean.

Nelly Dean, the servant who grew up at Wuthering Heights, is a great choice for the other narrator. Honest, though tending to gloss over her own transgressions (her betrayals cost Cathy Earnshaw both her love and her life), Nelly Dean is the domestic anchor that holds this storm-tossed story in reality. The use of the domestic to keep a foothold in reality is something I can relate to, as a writer and as a person. It is said that Emily Bront was a great baker and loved a clean house, and she was rumoured to be a good shot. And yet, as she did these things, she held a whole other universe in her head, moving from one to the other with the ease of stepping from one room to the next because to her they coexisted. So the thundering passion, the treachery, the revenge visited on the next generation, all take place in a setting where fires are essential, pans are scoured clean, the kitchen smells of cooking food. Necessity and imagination coexist.

Nelly, who witnessed it all, calmly tells of Catherine Earnshaw, the wild, wicked slip of a girl, and dangerous, sadistic Heathcliff (surely the darkest of heroes) and their passion for each other that destroyed themselves, many who came between them and, almost, those who came after.

Nelly Dean is a little flabbergasted (like the rest of us) that Catherine is miffed because her husband is resentful of her lover, and because her lover detests her husband, but she relates it cheerfully and without question. She never runs screaming, Enough of these crazy people! her acceptance of this story fuels our acceptance.

Extraordinary stories can take place in ordinary places, the wilderness can breed wild passions, and mild observers can witness the clash of Titans.

There are quite a few books on my favourites list, but Wuthering Heights is the only one I wish I had written. I would like to believe I once had that kind of courage. But I didnt.