A ghostly face in the dark, a child’s hand through the window, a doleful cry: “I’d lost my way on the moor! - I’ve been a waif for twenty years!” Are we talking about Kate Bush’s 1978 hit single “Wuthering Heights”? No! It’s Emily’s Bronte’s 1847 novel of the same name, back as never before.
Heathcliff and Catherine are the doomed lovers in a novel that defied the rules of both realism and fantasy, and redefined the genre for post-Romantic readers.
An intergenerational love story of passion, trauma and violence, Wuthering Heights is one of the most famous tales about undying obsession of all time. Sophie and Jonty explain how this masterpiece came to be written by a young woman who barely left her family home in Yorkshire, living with her sisters and brother her whole life. Find out why Wuthering Heights a daring rewriting of the Bronte family’s own tragic secrets, and how a book set on a wild and windy moor, with no buildings or townships for miles on every side, came to be a novel not just about England, but a wider world of revolution and rebellion.
Content warning: some references to emotional and physical abuse, mental illness and suicide.
Further Reading:
Producer: Boyd Britton
Digital Content Coordinator: Olivia di Costanzo
Designer: Peita Jackson
Our thanks to the University of Sydney Business School.