Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Wuthering Heights was published in 1847 under Emily Brontë's androgynous pseudonym, Ellis Bell. Many Victorian reviewers were shocked by its emotional intensity and depictions of cruelty, and it was only after Emily's death that the novel began to gain serious literary recognition.

The novel uses two frame narrators: Mr. Lockwood, a tenant who rents Thrushcross Grange and initially encounters the haunted atmosphere of Wuthering Heights, and Nelly Dean, the longtime family servant who recounts the multi-generational saga of the Earnshaws and Lintons to Lockwood.

Despite its reputation as a great love story, Wuthering Heights is more accurately a gothic tragedy chronicling obsessive, destructive passion rather than romantic love. Heathcliff and Catherine's bond drives cycles of revenge, abuse, and suffering across two generations on the Yorkshire moors.

Catherine dies shortly after giving birth to her daughter, Catherine Linton, having been weakened by self-starvation and psychological torment from her conflict between marrying Edgar Linton and her bond with Heathcliff. Her death occurs around the midpoint of the novel, and her ghost's presence on the moors drives Heathcliff for the rest of his life.