The other day I purchased a cute copy of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights from a bookstore in Fort Lauderdale. It’s a short, plump little book with flowers on the cover and burgundy binding with gold lettering. As soon as I saw it, I pictured it sitting on my nightstand. I imagined myself grabbing it from time to time, opening to a random page, and sinking into the story.
I think it’s odd that I would purchase this book.
Not because it isn’t a great book and worth every penny spent.
It’s odd because I already own a hardcover copy sitting on my bookshelf. I also have a paperback version. Oh, and I own the audiobook narrated by Emma Messenger.
So it is a little strange that I bought it again.
And yet I did.
Tonight I finally opened the book to a random page, just as I had imagined, and began to read.
And there, right where I left him, was Heathcliff.
Still brooding.
Still simmering with anger.
Still waiting to exact his revenge.
And there I was, sinking back into the story, happy to have found my way home again.
I think it’s strange that I find comfort in a book.
I especially think it’s strange that I find comfort in such a dark and eerie book as Wuthering Heights.
It’s not scary in the way modern horror novels are scary. It isn’t a psychological thriller.
It’s a tragedy.
A boy is rescued only to grow up feeling more captive than saved. He is treated as less than family and barely better than a servant. He is rejected by the woman he loves. He disappears and somehow gains status and wealth, only to discover that success cannot heal what was broken inside him.
They say the best revenge is success.
Heathcliff chooses something else.
He chooses revenge itself.
He spends years tormenting the people around him, hurting others because he has been hurt.
And Catherine?
She dies carrying the weight of her own choices, having allowed distance, pride, and perhaps prejudice to separate her from the one she loved most.
Usually when a main character dies, that’s enough to close the book.
Not this one.
Catherine seems to linger, haunting the house where she grew up, almost as though the regrets of her life refuse to let her rest. Only when Heathcliff finally dies do we get the strange comfort of imagining them together at last, wandering the moors as ghosts.
Dark, right?
And yet reading these pages brings me comfort.
I probably need a therapist to unpack that because it definitely sounds weird.
But on a more serious note, Heathcliff breaks my heart.
His life breaks my heart.
I know he’s fictional, but every time I read the book I find myself hoping for a different ending. I keep waiting for some Disney-like intervention. Some unexpected mercy. Anything other than a life that starts badly and ends badly, with only brief glimmers of hope in between.
But Walt Disney never sent Tinker Bell Heathcliff’s way.
The best we get is the image of his ghost finally walking beside the woman he loved.
Maybe that’s why I keep coming back.
Not because the story is happy.
Because it isn’t.
Maybe I come back because Wuthering Heights understands something true about grief, longing, regret, and love. It understands that some wounds don’t heal neatly and that some people spend their whole lives searching for a home they can never quite find.
And every now and then, I like to go visit them on the moors.
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Share it with someone who might need it, too. Whether it’s a quiet encouragement or a new way of seeing things, these reflections are meant to be passed along.
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Martina Griffin is a Catholic convert, writer, wife, and mother of four. She writes about faith, motherhood, beauty, books, and the quiet ache of transformation. A lover of popcorn, deep questions, and old classics, she shares her heart at Big Bowl of Popcorn—one post at a time. Instagram | Facebook | Email Me |
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