"Wuthering Heights" and the Critics

Abstract

WUTHERING HEIGHTS is now generally acknowledged to be one of the greatest English novels, but it has gained this recognition only after a battle with the critics and general public which has lasted a large part of the hundred years since its publication. It seems proper, therefore, to study this body of criticism and appreciation with several questions in mind: How much is there? What different attitudes have been shown toward the book and its author? How rational and penetrating have the comments been? What reasons have been given for its greatness? How much attention has been paid to interpreting Wuthering Heights as a work of art and how much merely to appreciation or to side issues?' Certain themes appear often enough to provide a series of leitmotifs in this critical opera. Forcible writing, powerful and original, awkwardly and illogically constructed-these run right through the comments, with scarcely a dissenting voice. Many feel compelled to compare Emily to Charlotte and Wuthering Heights to Jane Eyre, with the foregone conclusion that Charlotte and Jane Eyre are superior. work of immature genius, shouts a chorus. The early charge of unnatural passion (made by a contemporary reviewer) is essentially repeated in the dominant sexuality which, according to a French writer, pervades the entire book. Hysterical, delirious, nightmarish, primeval, and elemental-all these are used in describing the book. Comparisons with Elizabethan tragedies