This version of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights aims to make the book more accessible to both the general reader and those whose first language is not English – although a good standard of English is still required.
Many people find Wuthering Heights a difficult book because of its complex structure and its sometimes obscure language. It is constructed of layers of narration nested inside each other, like a Russian doll. The outermost layer is narrated by Mr. Lockwood, a visitor to rural Yorkshire where the book is set. Lockwood relates the tales of Nelly Dean, the housekeeper, about the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights and its neighbouring house, Thrushcross Grange. Then, within Nelly Dean’s narration, the innermost parts of the story are told by its protagonists – Heathcliff, Catherine, Isabella and Cathy.
Readers who come to the book expecting a straightforward love story of Catherine and Heathcliff are likely to be confounded. The book spans three generations and thirty years; and Heathcliff and Catherine’s love affair forms a relatively small part of it. The story goes back and forth in time, comparing the fates of Catherine and her daughter (also called Catherine or Cathy), and the male hierarchy of Hindley, Heathcliff and Hareton. It is easy to become confused by the similar names, the alternating viewpoints and the tangled relationships of the tale.
This abridgment leaves the book’s structure intact, but aims to make it easier to follow by shortening long passages, adding extra paragraph breaks, making it clear who is being referred to, and changing old-fashioned or ambiguous words.
Two characters in particular required extensive simplification: Mr. Lockwood, the educated outsider, who never uses one plain word where three fancy ones will do; and Joseph, the old servant whose dialect can be baffling even to those who (like me) were brought up in Yorkshire. Emily Bronte had a purpose in highlighting the contrast between the speech of these two, showing how different the fashionable urban culture of Lockwood was from the archaic rural life represented by Joseph. The reader of this abridgment should bear in mind that some of this contrast has been lost.
In all, the book has been shortened to around two thirds of its original length. This version should not be relied on by those making a study of Wuthering Heights. The full book may be read or downloaded free at Project Gutenberg (whose text provided the basis for this abridgement) as well as numerous other sources. If you enjoy this abridgment, then I would urge you to seek out the original and give it a try.
Emma Laybourn
Emily Bronte used numbered chapters only. I have added chapter titles below in order to aid navigation through the book.