The second edition of Wuthering Heights, published after the death of the author with an introduction by her sister, Charlotte (credited, in this instance, as Currer Bell), open with her admission that “for the first time, [I] have obtained a clear glimpse of what are trmed (and, perhaps, really are) its faults.” She has
gained a definite notion of how it appears to other people—to strangers who knew nothing of the author; who are unacquainted with the locality where the scenes of the story are laid; to whom the inhabitants, the customs, the natural characteristics of the outlying hills and hamlets in the West-Riding of Yorkshire are things alien and unfamiliar.
Let me take a moment to recommend such to All Creatures Great and Small; though separated by nearly two hundred years, I think viewing might be instructive.
But back to Charlotte Brontë. She goes on to say that Wuthering Heights “is rustic all through. It is moorish, and wild, and knotty as a root of heath. Not was it natural that it should be otherwise; the author being herself a native and nursling of the moors.” I think probably half of the appeal of the novel—or at least a third of its appeal—is in this very rusticity. I am, after all, a nut for regional literature, and right from the title we know that’s what we are going to get. As Lockwood explains,
Wuthering Heights is the name of Mr. Heathcliff’s dwelling. “Wuthering” being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather. Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there, at all times, indeed: one may guess the power of the north wind, blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house; and by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs on way, as if craving alms of the sun. Happily, the architect had foresight to build it strong: the narrow windows are deeply set in the wall, and the corners defended with large jutting stones.
I almost feel like Lockwood could just have written this explanation of the term “wuthering” and how well it applied to the heights and skipped the rest of the story. All the high Romanticism is laid out right here; who doesn’t fall for “wuthering”? The power of the weather, which will be a significant force throughout the novel, is already laid bare. Wuthering Heights is a place of harshness, of stunted growth, of failed potential. Of gauntness, of thorns, of every living being craving the light of one being, far out of reach. And as an attempt to keep the outside tumult outside, the place is a fortress—just as good at keeping people in, with these narrow windows, as at keeping the wind out.
As a lover of regional fiction, I have an extra-soft spot for Wuthering Heights. Ditto as a lover of the Romantic. And of framing stories too, and unreliable narrators. It’s even funny, too. Surely I won’t say anything at all original about this one, at least not this time around when I fairly raced through it with simple delight at the story, but there’s little doubt I’ll be reading it again (and again, and again…).