Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is the story of unfortunate lovers Heathcliff and

Catherine who, despite a deep affection for one another, are forced by circumstance and
prejudice to live apart. Heathcliff and Cathy first meet as children when her father
brings the abandoned boy to live with them. When the old man dies several years later
Cathy's brother, now the master of the estate, turns Heathcliff out forcing him to live
with the servants and working as a stable boy. The barrier of class comes between them
and she eventually marries a rich neighbor, Mr. Edgar Linton, at which point
Heathcliff disappears. He returns several years later, now a rich man, and sets about
gaining his revenge on the two families that he believed ruined his life.
Theme LoveThe book is actually structured around two parallel love stories, the first
half of the novel centering on the love between Catherine and Heathcliff, while the less
dramatic second half features the developing love between young Catherine and
Hareton. In contrast to the first, the latter tale ends happily, restoring peace and order .
Family and Revenge Instead of bringing comfort and peace, families in Wuthering
Heights are a source of violence, alienation, jealousy, and greed. Almost every
character is either an Earnshaw or a Linton, or in some cases both. And because
Heathcliff is never accepted into either family, he gets revenge by taking everything
that they own.The supernaturalThe moors, the people, and Wuthering Heights itself are
all infused with supernatural elements so that we have much more than a conventional
haunted house. The book ends with the suggestion that together Heathcliff and
Catherine will haunt the moors for ever after.
The sufferingJust about everyone in Wuthering Heights suffers physical and
emotional trauma, and many of them even die from it. Heathcliff avoids physical
illness, but his love for Catherine causes an extraordinary amount of suffering, both
for himself and others. He seems to enjoy the suffering, pleading to be haunted by her
after her death
Society and class Even though Wuthering Heights' two families live out in the middle
of nowhere, they still abide by the constraints of class. The Lintons and the
Earnshaws are both members of the middle class – between the working class and the
elite – as they have servants running the house. But marriage to Edgar Linton is still
the means through which Catherine becomes the "greatest woman of the neighbourhood"
Doubles and repetition Brontë organizes her novel by arranging its elements—
characters, places, and themes—into pairs. . It seems that nothing ever ends in the
world of this novel. Instead, time seems to run in cycles, and the horrors of the past
repeat themselves in the present. The way that the names of the characters are recycled,
so that the names of the characters of the younger generation seem only to be
rescramblings of the names of their parents, leads the reader to consider how plot
elements also repeat themselves.
The Conflict Between Nature and Culture
In Wuthering Heights, Brontë constantly plays nature and culture against each other.
Nature is represented by the Earnshaw family, and by Catherine and Heathcliff in
particular. These characters are governed by their passions, not by reflection or ideals of
civility. Correspondingly, the house where they live—Wuthering Heights—comes to
symbolize a similar wildness. On the other hand, the Linton family represent culture,
refinement, convention, and cultivation.
It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I
love him; and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more
myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the
same, and [Edgar’s] is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost
from fire.

Catherine’s speech to Nelly about her acceptance of Edgar’s proposal, in

Chapter IX, forms the turning-point of the plot. It is at this point that
Heathcliff leaves Wuthering Heights, after he has overheard Catherine say
that it would “degrade” her to marry him. Although the action of Wuthering
Heights takes place so far from the bustle of society, where most of Brontë’s
contemporaries set their scenes, social ambition motivates many of the
actions of these characters, however isolated among the moors. Catherine’s
decision to marry Edgar Linton out of a desire to be “the greatest woman of
the neighbourhood” exemplifies the effect of social considerations on the
characters’ actions.
In Catherine’s paradoxical statement that Heathcliff is “more myself than I
am,” readers can see how the relation between Catherine and Heathcliff often
transcends a dynamic of desire and becomes one of unity. Heterosexual love
is often, in literature, described in terms of complementary opposites—like
moonbeam and lightning, or frost and fire—but the love between Catherine
and Heathcliff opposes this convention. Catherine says not, “I love
Heathcliff,” but, “I amHeathcliff.” In following the relationship through to
its painful end, the novel ultimately may attest to the destructiveness of a
love that denies difference.