Book review

Wuthering Heights takes us to a world that is somehow outside of all social and moral norms. It's closer to the realm of dreams or Greek myth than the rational everyday life of civilised habit. I used to think this was a romantic novel untiI I've read it. I bet most people who haven't read the book have the same perception as I had before. Forget the romantic candlelit dinners, the wine, and the roses. Catherine and Heathcliff's love exists on an entirely different plane! The one that involves ghosts, corpses, the possession of souls, and revenge. Structurally this book is a brilliant enigma. It feels like a series of unconscious decisions on Emily's part which for a novel that spends a lot of time dramatizing the darker realms of the human psyche is another masterstroke. Our narrator is almost immediately shoved aside by a first-hand witness of all events, Nelly, the housekeeper. Bronte uses this technique of doubling up throughout the novel - eventually Catherine and Heathcliff's children will replace Catherine and Heathcliff. Virtually every character in this novel has a twin. At times it's confusing trying to recall who is whose offspring or relative but this only adds to the novel's atmosphere of some kind of elemental drama unfolding in which individuals are no less cyclical, no less driven by primitive energies than the surrounding moors. Wuthering Heights is an adventure into the heart of darkness, anticipating Conrad by more than fifty years. It's also a novel that feels spookily intimate with death.