About Wuthering Heights 

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Wuthering Heights is Emily Bronte's only novel. It was first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell, and a posthumous second edition was edited by her sister Charlotte. The name of the novel comes from the Yorkshire manor on the moors on which the story centres (as an adjective, wuthering is a Yorkshire word referring to turbulent weather). The narrative tells the tale of the all-encompassing and passionate, yet thwarted, love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys both themselves and many around them.

Now considered a classic of English literature, Wuthering Heights' innovative structure, which has been likened to a series of Matryoshka dolls, met with mixed reviews by critics when it first appeared.Excerpts from Contemporary ReviewsWuthering Heights: Publication & Contemporary Critical Reception Though Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre was originally considered the best of the Bronte sisters' works, many subsequent critics of Wuthering Heights argued that its originality and achievement made it superior.Later Critical Response to Wutheirng Heights Wuthering Heights has also given rise to many adaptations and inspired works, including films, radio, television dramatisations, a musical by Bernard J. Taylor and songs (notably the hit Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush), ballet and opera.

About The Author Emily Jane Bronte 

Emily Jane Bronte (July 30, 1818 - December 19, 1848) was a British novelist and poet, now best remembered for her only novel Wuthering Heights, a classic of English literature. Emily was the second eldest of the three surviving Bronte sisters, being younger than Charlotte and older than Anne. She published under the masculine pen name Ellis Bell. Emily was born in Thornton, near Bradford in Yorkshire to Patrick Bronte and Maria Branwell. She was the younger sister of Charlotte Bronte and the fifth of six children. In 1824, the family moved to Haworth, where Emily's father was perpetual curate, and it was in these surroundings that their literary oddities flourished. In childhood, after the death of their mother, the three sisters and their brother Patrick Branwell Bronte created imaginary lands (Angria, Gondal, Gaaldine, Oceania), which were featured in stories they wrote. Little of Emily's work from this period survived, except for poems spoken by characters (The Brontes' Web of Childhood, Fannie Ratchford, 1941).

Wuthering Heights Plot Summary 

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The narrative is non-linear, involving several flashbacks, and involves two narrators - Mr. Lockwood and Ellen "Nelly" Dean. The novel opens in 1801, with Lockwood arriving at Thrushcross Grange, a grand house on the Yorkshire moors he is renting from the surly Heathcliff, who lives at nearby Wuthering Heights. Lockwood spends the night at Wuthering Heights and has a terrifying dream: the ghost of Catherine Earnshaw, pleading to be admitted to the house from outside. Intrigued, Lockwood asks the housekeeper Nelly Dean to tell the story of Heathcliff and Wuthering Heights while he is staying at the Grange recovering from a cold.

Nelly takes over the narration and begins her story forty years earlier, when Heathcliff, a foundling living on the streets of Liverpool, is brought to Wuthering Heights by the then-owner, Mr. Earnshaw, and raised as his own. Ellen comments casually that Heathcliff might have been descended from Indian or Chinese origins. He is often described as "dark" or "gypsy". Earnshaw's daughter Catherine becomes Heathcliff's inseparable friend. Her brother Hindley, however, resents Heathcliff, seeing him as an interloper and rival. Mr. Earnshaw dies three years later, and Hindley (who has married a woman named Frances) takes over the estate. He brutalises Heathcliff, forcing him to work as a hired hand. Catherine becomes friends with a neighbor family, the Lintons of Thrushcross Grange, who mellow her initially wild personality. She is especially attached to the refined and mild young Edgar Linton, whom Heathcliff instantaneously dislikes.

A year later, Hindley's wife dies, apparently of consumption, shortly after giving birth to a son, Hareton; Hindley takes to drink. Some two years after that, Catherine agrees to marry Edgar. Nelly knows that this will crush Heathcliff, and Heathcliff overhears Catherine's explanation that it would be "degrading" to marry him. Heathcliff storms out and leaves Wuthering Heights, not hearing Catherine's continuing declarations that Heathcliff is as much a part of her as the rocks are to the earth beneath. Catherine marries Edgar, and is initially very happy. Some time later, Heathcliff returns, intent on destroying those who prevent him from being with Catherine. He has, mysteriously, become very wealthy. Through loans he has made to the drunken and dissipated Hindley that Hindley cannot repay, he takes ownership of Wuthering Heights upon Hindley's death. Intent on ruining Edgar, Heathcliff elopes with Edgar's sister Isabella, which places him in a position to inherit Thrushcross Grange upon Edgar's death.

Catherine becomes very ill after Heathcliff's return and dies a few hours after giving birth to a daughter also named Catherine, or Cathy. Heathcliff becomes only more bitter and vengeful. Isabella flees her abusive marriage a month later, and subsequently gives birth to a boy, Linton. At around the same time, Hindley dies. Heathcliff takes ownership of Wuthering Heights, and vows to raise Hindley's son Hareton with as much neglect as he had suffered at Hindley's hands years earlier.

Twelve years later, the dying Isabella asks Edgar to raise her and Heathcliff's son, Linton. However, Heathcliff finds out about this and takes the sickly, spoiled child to Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff has nothing but contempt for his son, but delights in the idea of him ruling the property of his enemies. To that end, a few years later, Heathcliff attempts to persuade young Cathy to marry Linton. Cathy refuses, so Heathcliff kidnaps her and forces the two to marry. Soon after, Edgar Linton dies, followed shortly by Linton Heathcliff. This leaves Cathy a widow and a virtual prisoner at Wuthering Heights, as Heathcliff has gained complete control of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. It is at this point in the narrative that Lockwood arrives, taking possession of Thrushcross Grange, and hearing Nelly Dean's story. Shocked, Lockwood leaves for London.

During his absence from the area, however, events reach a climax that Nelly describes when he returns a year later. Cathy gradually softens toward her rough, uneducated cousin Hareton, just as her mother was tender towards Heathcliff. When Heathcliff realizes that Cathy and Hareton are in love, he abandons his life-long vendetta. He dies broken and tormented, but glad to be rejoining Catherine, whose ghost had haunted him since she died. Cathy and Hareton marry. Heathcliff is buried next to Catherine (the elder), and the story concludes with Lockwood visiting the grave, unsure of what to feel.

Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier 

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Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM (; 22 May 1907 - 11 July 1989) was an English actor, director, and producer and the recipient of scores of awards. He is one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century, along with his contemporaries John Gielgud, Peggy Ashcroft and Ralph Richardson.Hodgdon, Barbara. Shakespeare Quarterly, "From the Editor", Fall, 2002 Olivier played a wide variety of roles on stage and screen from Greek tragedy, Shakespeare and Restoration comedy to modern American and British drama. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. He is generally regarded to be the greatest actor of the 20th Century, in the same category as David Garrick, Richard Burbage, Edmund Kean and Henry Irving in their own centuries.Walker, Andrew. BBC News, 22 May 2007 Olivier's Academy acknowledgments are considerable-fourteen Oscar nominations, with two wins for Best Actor and Best Picture for the 1948 film Hamlet, and two honorary awards including a statuette and certificate. He was also awarded five Emmy awards from the nine nominations he received. Additionally, he was a three-time Golden Globe and BAFTA winner.

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Wuthering Heights Main Characters 

Merle Oberon 

Oberon was born in Bombay (now Mumbai), British India. Her mother, Charlotte, was an Anglo-Indian nurse; her father, Arthur, was a British railway engineer[citation needed]. Merle was her mother's second child. Charlotte had abandoned her first daughter, Constance, and refused to take care of another child born out of wedlock. She insisted that Arthur marry her, although there is no evidence that he actually did.

In 1914, when she was three, Oberon's father died of pneumonia on the Western Front in the early months of World War I. Mother and daughter led an impoverished existence in shabby Bombay apartments for a few years. Then, in 1917, they moved to better circumstances in Calcutta (now Kolkata). Oberon received a foundation scholarship to attend La Martiniere College for Girls, a well known Calcutta private school. There, she was constantly taunted for her unconventional parentage and eventually quit school and had her lessons at home.

Oberon first performed with the Calcutta Amateur Dramatic Society. She was also completely enamored of the movies and enjoyed going out to nightclubs. As she entered her teen years, she dated increasingly older, urbane men.

In 1929, she met a former actor who claimed he could introduce her to Rex Ingram of Victorine Studios. Oberon jumped at the offer and decided to follow the man to the studios in France. However, when he saw Oberon's dark mother one night at her apartment and realized Oberon was mixed-race, he secretly decided to end the relationship. After packing all their belongings and moving to France, Oberon and her mother found that their supposed benefactor had dodged them. However, he had left a good word for Oberon with Rex Ingram at the studios in Nice. Ingram liked Oberon's exotic appearance. She was quickly hired to be an extra in a party scene.

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Wuthering Heights (1939) Movie. 

Wuthering Heights 

James David Graham Niven 

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James David Graham Niven (March 1, 1910 - July 29, 1983) was an English Academy Award-winning actor best known as the punctual-obsessed adventurer Phileas Fogg in Around the World in Eighty Days (1956).

David Niven was born in London, England. He was the son of William Edward Graham Niven and the French/British Henrietta Julia Degacher who, born in Wales, was the daughter of army officer William Degacher (who changed his original name of Hitchcock to his mother's maiden name of Degacher in 1874) and Julia Caroline, the daughter of Lieutenant General James Webber Smith[4]. He was named David for his birth on St. David's Day. Although he often claimed to have been born in Kirriemuir, Angus, Scotland in 1909, it was only after his birth certificate was checked following his death that this was found to be incorrect.

His father was killed during the Gallipoli Campaign in 1915 and his mother remarried Sir Thomas Comyn-Platt. In his biography, NIV: The Authorized Biography of David Niven, Graham Lord suggests that Comyn-Platt had actually been conducting an affair with Niven's mother for some time prior to her husband's death, and that Sir Thomas may well have been Niven's biological father, a supposition not without some support from her children.

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Wuthering Heights Websites 

Wuthering Heights (1939)

Directed by William Wyler. With Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier, David Niven. Visit IMDb for Photos, Showtimes, Cast, Crew, Reviews, Plot Summary, Comments, ...

Wuthering Heights

By This Author: Wuthering He... Literature.org: Contact · Wuthering Heights · Emily Bronte · Chapter 1 · Chapter 2 · Chapter 3 · Chapter 4 · Chapter 5 ...

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. Search, Read, Study, Discuss.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. Searchable etext. Discuss with other readers.

Wuthering Heights (1992)

Directed by Peter Kosminsky. With Juliette Binoche, Ralph Fiennes, Janet McTeer. Visit IMDb for Photos, Showtimes, Cast, Crew, Reviews, Plot Summary, ...

Wuthering Heights (1939)

Directed by William Wyler. With Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier, David Niven. Visit IMDb for Photos, Showtimes, Cast, Crew, Reviews, Plot Summary, Comments, ...

SparkNotes: Wuthering Heights

Home : English : Literature Study Guides : Wuthering Heights. Wuthering Heights ... Wuthering Heights · Victorian Literature ...

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Wuthering Heights (1939) Blog Posts 

A Collection, a Contest and a Doll

The first in the series is Wuthering Heights with a foreword by Carmen Posadas. The seventh will be Jane Eyre (foreword by Rosa Regàs) and the twenty-fourth, Charlotte Brontë's first novel The Professor (foreword by Nora Catelli). ...

The big question: Did Cathy and Heathcliff actually have sex?

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (Penguin, $7). Rich, innocent Edgar Linton pays the price for putting himself in the line of fire between the famously passionate Catherine Earnshaw and her beloved Heathcliff, the revenge-driven ...

Madame Alexander's Wuthering Heights Doll

Here's a cute Wuthering Heights doll. I wouldn't give it to a child, who probably hasn't read or wouldn't enjoy Wuthering Heights. But I might give it in combo with a DVD or leatherbound book to a friend for Christmas, if I knew this ...

lol wuthering heights

Dilly would make a good Catherine. He's over dramatic like her. XD And Vamp... looks like Heathcliff. Kind of. He wouldn't be as moody though.

 

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