Hadn’t read this before; quite hard work but interesting book, particularly given publication pre 1850.
Maybe there were lots of similar books around then, but I was thinking Jane Austin (1810ish) Balzac (1820ish) then into Dickens, Gaskell, George Eliot (from 1850’s); how does this fit in?
The narrative device was clever; almost the entire story is told (to the narrator) by an old servant who had witnessed the events around Wuthering Heights.
Heathcliffe is a pretty extraordinary character; mostly vilely unpleasant, but a man who had been abused and had loved passionately. The older Catherine, his lover, is Lear-like in the brief period of madness that precedes her death.
The families are so fragmented and generally fucked, and all the deaths are pretty premature, maybe common enough in rural life at the time.
I can’t say I enjoyed it hugely, but it was certainly very different.
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