Wuthering Heights
22/05/2025
Wuthering Heights is a book written by Emily Bronte in 1847. For a plot summary; the Earnshaw family lives regularly at Wuthering Heights, a tempestuous mansion downwind from a far more esteemed household, Thrushcross Grange. The difference in civility is brought to a war, when Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff (a rambunctious adoptee of the Earnshaws) tow the line between the two worlds. This leads to a lot of death, pregnancies and abandonment. I will not get any more specific because it is a long book, with a lot of different events; 360 A5 pages, densely packed and paced. I would highly recommend reading the book, not only because its one of the most iconic classic tales of all time, but also since I will be referring to it as if you are intimately aware of its plot.
The thing about analysing WH is that its difficult to derive a singular message from it. It isn't like other media which picks a cake and eats it, whether that be anti-capitalism, commentary on the nature of humanitity, the futility of religion- etc. No, WH seems to get its grubby little hands in every cake on the table, succeeding in saying something about literally everything. If you read my foreword before clicking on the link, you know the main things I'm going to talk about. Lets start with the homosexuality.
Ok, so this book is 
as fuck.
And Catherine Linton is fucking awesome. Its a shame that they took Heathcliff for Limbus (although I don't blame them) because I would've EATEN UP the gacha-slop that emerged from copy pasting her character into an anime-visnov style. Fairly early on in the book, Catherine is conflicted between her bachelors: the illustrious Edgar Linton, head of Thrushcross Grange, and Heathcliff. In a discussion with the maid, Ellen (who rules and I will speak of later), she professes how her soul yearns for Heathcliff, but marrying him would "tarnish" her. To which, Heathcliff leaves for 4 fucking years, during which she (country girls) makes do and marries Edgar. But there's an inherent strife here! She complains of "queer" thoughts. Queer thoughts. Her love for Heathcliff, something she recognises as what her true self desires, represents queer identity. Now sure, this is a stretched gay reading of what is definitely just a pure identity crisis. But let's look a little more into it. How does Wuthering Heights challenge gender roles as a whole?
A core of the story is about Catherine Linton and Heathcliff, their love, and how that blossomed as children. They're both regarded as 'wild'and 'creatures' by the residents of Wuthering Heights. This isn't how proper ladies are supposed to act, and in general Catherine acts quite masculine. Of all the female cast, she's the only one to engage in violence, the only others being men. There's even a part where she is shown Hindley's gun- an impressive pistol with a large knife attached -and instead of being fearful or perhaps shocked, she admires it as a thing of beauty. That's so masculine! That's like, american levels of masculinity. In the end, she and Heathcliff die the same way too. Towing the line between masculine and feminine, natural and civilised, practical and romantic, each die of a brain-fever which I believe to be a form of psychotic depression (far more in Catherine's case).
These gender antics continue further, though. Namely in Catherine's daughter; Cathy. Firstly, Cathy is a pretty gay name. It being the shortened version of a formal name reduces it to a cute nickname, but its used in in the stead of a first name. That's quite transgender, no? A "silly" name being used as a proper one? This trans-osity is conveyed even further by Cathy's role in the story. She is herself! She succeeds where her mother (and immediate family) failed by walking the line between the two worlds. She breaks the rules and is wild, but still achieves civility through respect- both outward and towards herself. She knows who she is, and doesn't compromise on it at all. She even goes through the same problems as queer teenagers and children- having their private conversations gleamed. A large part of her life is spent sneaking letters to her love interest against the will of her caretaker, who discovers them and has to debate whether telling her father is a good idea. I have been through this! Having your identity uncovered by, say, a teacher, who you must then beg not to tell your parents. It's unbelievably modern!
Now I'm not calling the book specifically transgender. Well, I am, but its more interpretable as being generally queer. It's like Celeste- it's story isn't innately transgender, it's about general identity at heart, but my god is it gay as hell. But what about those other interpretations? I mean, WH is a perfectly written piece of text. At any connection you look at, there's a beautiful layout for some commentary. I do want to talk about Emily Bronte though. She was lower class growing up, and witnessed alot of death due to sickness. Her three immediate female family members all died in quick succession due to typhoid and tuberculosis, all while she was under 10 years old. The violence inherent in WH, especially through sickness, is the point, then. It's deliberately gorey to scare rich people, to which, by the way
This book hates rich people, which is awesome.
The entire story is told through Ellen Dean, a servant for both Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights. It gets kind of silly with this: like, 31 of the 34 chapters is just Lockwood (the protagonist, debatably) just recounting what Ellen tells us. I think Bronte structures the book like this to mimic real rich history. It's often old and barely surviving, barely mattering, living on only in the hearts of those who choose to rememeber it. This does make her an unreliable narrator; but that is the sort of idea that she would scoff at, because Ellen Dean fucking rules. She acts as Bronte's vehicle of expression for how the lower class interprets the ruling class. From the beginning, she is the intermediary between many of the upper class residents strictly because she doesn't matter. However, alot of the squabbling from the rich characters is very petty! There's highschool-ian love triangles, childish feuds, sneaking down the moors to kiss your secret boyfriend- it's all extremely silly and has little basis in the real world. It all takes place in the second layer above the physical, where our ideas of civility and "proper-ness" lie. As lower class, Ellen doesn't intereface much with this second layer. Through her, Bronte creates some really interesting commentary on how the human condition informs our class structure- the lower class writhe in nature and the material out of necessity. They are on the outskirts of society, giving them an objective set of eyes and a confident path to identity. Ellen never questions herself. In fact, many times throughout, she is entrusted with some upper-class political secret and she immediately snitches. It's comedic how quickly and how often she does this. It's usually the very next fucking line, and this happens like 4 times, and every time the rage does come to a head and there is a fight, it's the lower class individuals (like Heathcliff) who wins against the ruling class individuals (like Heathcliff). All in all, this book constantly makes fun of how weak and cowardly the rich are. Hindley literally drops a baby off a balcony. He dies of alcoholism. And why? He was too racist. He got so consumed by his own hatred for other people, he literally fucking dies.
This, I think, is how all rich people should go.
I hate rich people, which is awesome.
Bronte shows how greed and selfish hatred is not something innate to the human condition. It's born and nurtured, fed in a cradle and catalysed by money. It is no coincidence that as Heathcliff grows older and more civilised, the more vile (and misogynistic) he becomes. At the center of Wuthering Heights, the wet, golden core of it, there lies a question. Was Heathcliff in the wrong? To which I say, yes, but it wasn't his fault. He was meerly puppetered by the grand evil all rich people share a bit of. If the Earnshaws and Lintons were poor- there would have been no evil. They would have been in the mud together, and perhaps Heathcliff could have been happy.
In doing this, Bronte shows how identity is antithetical to the rich. They scoff at the idea, because they are all about conformity, because conformity makes money! Standing out only alienates you, and this is why we live in the world we do. Our modern society is all about identity. People are realising who they are, how they are, and it's amazing. But this is bad for rich people, and they have convinced the left half of the bell curve that it is bad for them too. Wuthering Heights is so close to the human condition, it can make deep societal analysis nearly 180 years later. It's fucking incredible, and if you read it, I guarentee you'll get something out of it too. Unless you're cishet. Then you'll probably like Heathcliff- the original sigma.
I have many other topics I would love to discuss about this book, but I have a train to catch and this article is already a little long. I think I'll leave some of the other topics (like, religion) for another time. Considering religion's thematic importance to Limbus Company, it may be more fun and appropriate to write a general article about it once I have read all these books. I'm not sure! Either way, thanks for reading. Fuck the rich, down with america, and Wuthering Heights is amazing. It should have had more yuri, though. 9/10.