Heathcliff felt real. When he’s explaining his plans to Nelly he just feels so frighteningly real. Which is worse because he’s not just an angry character, he’s a calculating one, and we know his revenge is inevitable.

Linton, Hareton, Heathcliff and Hindley were interesting characters. They could all have been good people, and Hareton proves this, but they all become either obnoxious or downright hateful because of the circumstances in which they were raised. Which means I can understand what has made them that way, even if I struggle to like their characters later on.

Nelly and Lockwood are good narrators - very, very unreliable. Nelly skews our interpretations of the characters to her own preferences, whilst Lockwood is entirely absorbed in himself.

The ending was something quite beautiful too. I haven’t looked into it much, this is just my first impressions, but when Linton died, right, who of the younger generation were we left with? Hareton, raised by Heathcliff, and Cathy, Catherine’s daughter. And I would say she’s more Catherine’s than Edgar’s, because despite her physical resemblance to the Lintons, her personality is very much that of Catherine’s - albeit with softer edges and a kinder nature.

So anyway, we’ve looped back to the start of the novel, and it’s Heathcliff and Catherine reunited, but this time it’s Hareton and Cathy, and they’re growing into their own people and building a kinder future, working to abandon the cruelty of their past. And I think that was the perfect ending, though that may just be the teen side of me that really really needed something happy after 300 bleak pages of depression.

It happens to be my favorite book, but I certainly get that it’s not popular.

I’ve never found it confusing at all. I think Bronte’s descriptive language is beautiful, and I love a good villain! Heathcliff is awful, but he’s also complicated.

I read it every other summer for enjoyment.

Fun fact, there was a brazilian metal band called Angra that made a song inspired/based in the book, also called Wutherin Heights. The voices and the progressions are amazing if you are into that kind/genre of music. So maybe that’s one way to enjoy it.

When I read it, I thought Heathcliff was extremely unlikeable, & not remotely “romantic”.

Most of the characters are paper-thin.

I am probably not in the intended readership.

Full disclosure, this is a response to the same question, that I wrote and am copying here:

It’s one of the best novels I’ve ever read that deals with the theme of the sins of one generation passing on to those that follow.

When it appears in pop culture lists, it’s often as an example of a great tragic love story (Catherine and Heathcliff), and that’s not unimportant to the story, but I find a lot of other things to love about it. I love the isolated feel of the houses on the moors. It creates a stifling atmosphere – as much as they’re situated in this wide open wilderness, the small handful of characters, all resentful of each other, are tied to this home and this twisted heritage.

I first read the novel in highschool, and I remember at the time, that it was one of the first novels I had ever read that really explored the grey area between right and wrong with its characters. None of the characters come off as thoughtlessly evil. Well, maybe Joseph does. But otherwise, they all have very well-defined motivations, and you can trace all the malice backward as you read.

There was also some fun to be had for me, in taking the picture of the present that we’re given at the beginning of the novel with Lockwood’s visit, and then jumping back with Nelly’s recitation of the past to kind of fit the puzzle together. The novel’s a study in patterns, imo. Most of the characters are shown as children at some point in the book, and you follow them all into adulthood, seeing each one gradually poisoned, and desperate that someone should escape alive. And then at the end, with Cathy and Hareton, it’s a real image of rebirth. One of the few hopeful, happy endings that has stuck with me as feeling completely articulate and genuine, whereas most feel either sappy or dishonest. You’ve gone this whole novel watching the story of a haunted house (haunted by spirits, but also by the living) play itself out, and it’s finally been cleansed. It’s a super well-earned and satisfying catharsis. But the possibility of unquiet slumbers still casts a shadow; I’m always partial to a well-placed note of uncertainty at the end of a novel.

I didn’t love it and i don’t hate it i was getting frustrated about halfway thru and just wanted to get to the end (linton could not die fast enough for me that kid was annoying) i read the annotated version to help with some of the language issues i knew i was going to have (18th century writing) then some i didn’t (Joseph) it was ok and apparently i had a copy the whole time but I’ll probably read it again later

High school English ruined this for me. I found it awful then and have no need to revisit it now.

It’s my favorite novel of all time. So atmospheric you can practically taste the fog on the wild moors.

We had to read that in high school, and I hated it. Couldn’t keep track of who was who - too many people with similar names or literally the same name - and then we couldn’t figure out what the one character was saying most of the time with his thick northern accent, in text.

I like the Puppini Sisters cover of the song, though.