Emily Brontë’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ has endured for generations not just because of its raw emotion, but because of how deeply its characters are bound together by family, obsession, and revenge.
As a new version, directed by Emerald Fennell, featuring Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie, has just been released, many are re-examining just how tangled the relationships truly are.
The Earnshaws And Lintons: Where The Tragedy Begins
On the surface, the novel is about two adjacent estates: Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. However, behind that mere arrangement, there is a generational knot of love and resentment that is not going to loosen. ‘Wuthering Heights’ is rooted in the Earnshaw family. Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw have two children, Hindley and Catherine. All this is transformed when Mr. Earnshaw comes back to Liverpool with a poor orphan named Heathcliff.
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Although brought up with the Earnshaw children, Heathcliff never truly belongs, especially with Hindley, as he develops a strong, near-elemental relationship with Catherine. Catherine’s choice to marry Edgar Linton, a kind and rich neighbor, is the start of the tragic course of the story. She does it out of social ambition, not out of love, which breaks her relationship with Heathcliff and makes him spend his life in the desire to avenge.
Catherine and Edgar have a daughter, Catherine “Cathy” Linton, who inherits the pain without knowing it. Meanwhile, Heathcliff vanishes, comes back mysteriously rich, and gets married to Edgar’s sister, Isabella. Their marriage is unloving and inhuman, and they have a son, Linton Heathcliff, another chess piece in the long game that Heathcliff plays with both families.
The Next Generation And The Cycle Of Revenge
The second generation is the one that has to pay the price for the mistakes of their parents. Hindley has a son, Hareton Earnshaw, who is to inherit Wuthering Heights.
However, Heathcliff intentionally leaves him uneducated, repeating the process he had to endure before. Cathy Linton and Linton Heathcliff are manipulated into a marriage that benefits no one but Heathcliff himself.
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At the heart of it all is Nelly Dean, the main narrator of the novel, and long-time housekeeper. Readers, through her eyes, can see how love turns to cruelty and how revenge lives longer than the people who initially gave it life.
Adaptations can simplify or even eliminate characters, but the emotional backbone of ‘Wuthering Heights’ remains the same. It is a story where families are inseparable from their grudges, and where the past never truly lets go.
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