Book Review

The book Wuthering Heights was written by Emily Brontë and was first published in 1847, a year before the author's death. During the process of reading this book, many questions surfaced within me, concerning it's content. First of all, at the beginning, too much information was given at the same time, not altogether coherent. Up until the beginning of the story-telling by Ellen Dean, I did not understand many things. The setting was very confusing; one moment the narrator was at Wuthering Heights, and the next, he was talking about a morning elsewhere. My first question when I read this passage was: Where is he?. This passage brought many more questions to my mind. Most of all, my questions were axed toward this quotation: "On coming up from dinner, however, (N.B. -- I dine between twelve and one o'clock; the housekeeper, a matronly lady, taken as a fixture along with the house, could not, or would not, comprehend my request that I might be served at five.)". It says he dines between twelve and one o'clock; why does the matronly lady serve him dinner so early? It is lunchtime at this hour. Furthermore, the sentence does not make sense. The narrator says "On coming up from dinner, however...", and then parenthesis are opened, to be closed at the end of the sentence. However what?

Further in the book, we learn that Catherine Linton, one of the main characters, is ill from a conflict between the man she loves, her husband, and herself. How can she contract a fever from a little fight, and stay abed for at least two months? Then suddenly, at the very beginning of chapter sixteen, we learn that she delivers a baby girl. Catherine was pregnant? I was extremely surprised. I reread at least five times this passage, and never understood how she could have borne a child, since it was never mentioned beforehand that she was indeed pregnant. Isn't it crucial to mention something as important as this, instead of surprising the reader of this startling fact?

The previous most questionable aspects of the story line, brings me now to develop one of several of its ambiguous parts. When Heathcliff, an orphan boy that Mr. Earnshaw found in Liverpool, was younger, and lived with the Earnshaw family, he was daily beaten by the son called Hindley. The father never realized these events. Wouldn't a sensed man take notice of a beaten child, and even more Heathcliff being his favourite? Why did the nurse, Nelly, left the Hindley beat up Heathcliff, without preventing them?

Finally, in this book, although it is very interesting, many of its aspects are questionable. Apart from this unfortunate literary negative point that obstructs the flow for the reader, the book, overall, was a good story, that pleased me and entertained me.

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