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Summary
Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.
Wuthering Heights: Introduction
A concise biography of Emily Brontë plus historical and literary context for Wuthering Heights.
Wuthering Heights: Plot Summary
A quick-reference summary: Wuthering Heights on a single page.
Wuthering Heights: Detailed Summary & Analysis
In-depth summary and analysis of every chapter of Wuthering Heights. Visual theme-tracking, too.
Wuthering Heights: Themes
Explanations, analysis, and visualizations of Wuthering Heights's themes.
Wuthering Heights: Quotes
Wuthering Heights's important quotes, sortable by theme, character, or chapter.
Wuthering Heights: Characters
Description, analysis, and timelines for Wuthering Heights's characters.
Wuthering Heights: Symbols
Explanations of Wuthering Heights's symbols, and tracking of where they appear.
Wuthering Heights: Literary Devices
Wuthering Heights's key literary devices explained and sortable by chapter.
Wuthering Heights: Quizzes
Detailed quizzes covering every chapter of Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights: Theme Wheel
An interactive data visualization of Wuthering Heights's plot and themes.
Brief Biography of Emily Brontë
Born to a clergyman from Yorkshire, Brontë left home at age six to join her sisters at a harsh boarding school. After two of them died, Emily and her sister Charlotte (author of Jane Eyre) returned home, where, with their sister Anne and their brother Branwell, they created a complicated fantasy world; the children wrote a series of stories, plays, and poems, some of which they collected and published. Though Emily left home several more times, she always returned to the beloved moors of her childhood. She published Wuthering Heights the year before she died of tuberculosis.
Get the entire Wuthering Heights LitChart as a printable PDF.
Historical Context of Wuthering Heights
The American Revolution, which often symbolizes the ability of the common man to prevail over old, established power, coincides with some of the action in Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff, the book's little guy (who may have actually come from America), stages a revolution of his own by trying to bring down two old, powerful families.
Other Books Related to Wuthering Heights
Like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights contains elements of Gothic literature as well as Romanticism, which focuses on people's natural goodness and imagination and favors "the sublime" of nature and spirituality over urbanity and technology. Yet Brontë's novel also has much in common with George Eliot's Middlemarch (1871), which realistically examines life in a provincial village.
Key Facts about Wuthering Heights
- Full Title: Wuthering Heights
- When Published: 1847
- Literary Period: Victorian
- Genre: Romanticism / Realism / Gothic (e.g., mysterious family relationships, vulnerable heroines, houses full of secrets, and wild landscapes)
- Setting: Yorkshire, England, late 18th to early 19th century
- Climax: Heathcliff and Catherine's tearful, impassioned reunion just hours before Catherine gives birth and then dies
- Antagonist: Heathcliff (we root both for and against Heathcliff)
- Point of View: Nelly Dean, a housekeeper, tells the story of the Lintons and Earnshaws to Mr. Lockwood, who passes along her story to the reader.
Extra Credit for Wuthering Heights
The Bronte Family: Two of Emily Brontë's sisters are also respected writers. Charlotte Brontë wrote Jane Eyre, Shirley, Villette, and The Professor, and Anne Brontë wrote Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Because the Brontës collaborated, critics love to analyze the whole family, not just the individual authors. The family also appeals to readers because it experienced so much tragedy: five of the six children died young (four daughters died of tuberculosis, or "consumption," as it was known at the time, and Branwell, the only son, turned to drugs and alcohol when his career as an artist failed).
