Wuthering Heights

Wanting their works to be critiqued for their literary value and not on their gender, Anne, Charlotte, and Emily published their novels under somewhat masculine names: Acton, Currer, and Ellis Bell. Safeguarding their male identities was so vital to the Brontë sisters that Charlotte maintained that identity even in writing to her publishers, never once spilling out a clue that any of them could be women.

In addition, Emily had an keen sense of privacy, which made veiling her identity especially important to her.

Published in 1847, Wuthering Heights brewed up a superflous amount of mixed reviews and startled reactions, considering the fact that poeple in Emily's soceity were not used to such harsh romance stories. The consolidation of its innovative structure and components of passion, mystery and destroyed love as well as it's social points have made this romantic masterpiece an all-time classic. Set in 18th Century England, Bronte points out themes of revenge, religion, class and prejudice, producing an in-depth look at the human mind and soul.

In reality, it wasn't until after her death, that Emily Bronte's work started to recieve vast praise. Wuthering Heights is still in print today and has become the inspration to so many television and feature film adaptations.

Wuthering Heights is a novel that is told in a series of narrative stories, which are themselves told to the narrator, a gentleman named Lockwood. Lockwood rents a fine house and park called Thrushcross Grange in Yorkshire, and gradually learns more and more about the histories of two local families, told to him by a housekkeper named Ellen, who lived with one of the families, the Earnshaws, her whole life. In general terms, the story follows the lives of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, how their love bloomed and died at the same time, and how the consequencies of that lost love passes down to the following generations in both families.