Terrible people being terrible. While, for me, this does not live up to Jane Eyre, I do laud Emily for the beauty of her novel. Wuthering Heights is highly allegorical. It reads like a prose poem, full of symbolism, beautiful imagery, and intensely emotional.

I've been on a Bronte kick recently inspired by the recent movie, "To Walk Invisible" about the three sisters. I decided to read Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte, whose poetry may be the finest work produced by the sister trio. I HATED IT. That is to say, I hated the characters and the behavior and cruelty even as I admired the writing style.

Here's a review I liked from Wikipedia:
Douglas Jerrold's Weekly Newspaper wrote "Wuthering Heights is a strange sort of book,—baffling all regular criticism; yet, it is impossible to begin and not finish it; and quite as impossible to lay it aside afterwards and say nothing about. In Wuthering Heights the reader is shocked, disgusted, almost sickened by details of cruelty, inhumanity, and the most diabolical hate and vengeance, and anon come passages of powerful testimony to the supreme power of love – even over demons in the human form. The women in the book are of a strange fiendish-angelic nature, tantalizing, and terrible, and the men are indescribable out of the book itself. Yet, towards the close of the story occurs the following pretty, soft picture, which comes like the rainbow after a storm ... We strongly recommend all our readers who love novelty to get this story, for we can promise them that they never have read anything like it before. It is very puzzling and very interesting, and if we had space we would willingly devote a little more time to the analysis of this remarkable story, but we must leave it to our readers to decide what sort of book it is."[26]

This is another classic that I was pretty sure that I had read but find that I hadn't. I had read a reference to it and thought it was time for a reread. Ha.
No, it isn't a romance. Yes, the characters are very flawed people. It isn't set in 2018 or written recently. I loved the high drama, the depiction of the time, place, and expectations, and most of all, the fine writing and story.

This electronic version appears to be missing pages.

How messed up are Catherine and Heathcliff? Sheesh! A rather dismal read.

Highly overrated novel. There are soooooooo many other books worth reading. I'm sorry I wasted my time with this one. As others have said in their comments, this is not a love story. I think it was written by a demented mind, without much grasp on reality. After reading about Emily Bronte's life story, she suffered a lot of pain (from the death of family members) and ill health of her own. And this novel was the product of her suffering.

This is one of those books that everyone is supposed to have read, a literary classic, blah blah blah. It's been on my to-read list for ages, but I finally got around to reading it because it was on my sister's list as well.
Because it was written in the mid-1800s, I thought for sure I would have difficulty with the language, but it was actually a fairly smooth read. Several of the characters speak a North England dialect, but luckily, this edition of the book had a section of notes at the back that translated most of those characters' dialogue. And there were a number of places where I had to rely on the context to figure out a line or two.
The toughest part of reading this, really, was figuring out why anyone would give a damn about Heathcliff. He is one of the most unpleasant, thoroughly horrible literary characters I've ever met. A terrible, mean-spirited ogre from childhood straight up (almost) until death. His and Catherine's love is held up as one of the great loves in literature, right up there with Romeo and Juliet, but the feeling I got was less star-crossed lovers, and more two thoroughly unlikable egomaniacs that deserved no better than each other. Bill Sykes and Nancy from Oliver Twist were a more sympathetic couple.
Really, there were so few likable characters here; even the sometime-narrator Ellen made me angry. The only one I had even a little sympathy for was Hareton Earnshaw.
That brings up my other main difficulty with reading this book: the inter-marriage of the Earnshaws, the Lintons, and the Heathcliffs. I honestly could have used a scorecard or chart to remember who was married to whom, and how they were all related. And those relationships are really the crux of the whole story - the relationships, inheritances, and how Heathcliff manipulates them.

I found this old classic a little complicated in part, especially some of the archaic dialogue (like Joseph the old servant, still not sure what he was saying) took me a few chapters to get into, but interesting in terms of 17th/18th century way of life, especially from a moral standpoint. I feel inclined to re-read it immediately to gain a deeper understanding. Having said that, I was totally hooked by the end.

Beautifully written. Gorgeous yet tragic story. I can't believe it took me so long to get around to reading it!

This is an amazing book about revenge over love.