"Heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy."

There's been a lot of discussion whether Emily's gothic weather-beaten nightmare is a love story. To me it's not, at least not in the traditional sense, because it has very little of what you would associate with the word "love". It defies expectations and surprises everyone who thinks it's a dainty romance novel with ball gowns and good manners.

It's more a bitter revenge story rife with cruelty than anything else, or a story about obsession that rips you to shreds and transforms you into a ghoul devoid of reason, or obsession that transcends time and doesn't belong to the ordinary world. Heathcliff is associated several times with a wild animal, a wolf, a vampire etc., who bares his teeth and acts like the textbook example of a Byronic hero. He holds every real and perceived abuse close to his heart until it's filled with scars, but it's as if some of those scars have always been there.

According to Plato, humans had double bodies with two faces and two sets of limbs, but Zeus split them in half. Cathy is Heathcliff, Heathcliff is Cathy, but they became so dysfunctional that they can never truly be whole

Spoiler

until they're both dead

.

Although I love Jane Eyre equally, there's something about Emily's story and writing that hits you straight in the gut. Most of the characters are either unlikeable or downright disgusting, but they still manage to fascinate and draw you in. They disappoint and anger you so many times you just want to bang your head against a tree, yet you can't help but go back. With all its imperfections (a messy narrative device, a much less interesting second half etc.), Wuthering Heights is something you'd expect from an Émile Zola novel, not from a curate's daughter.