Romance · Gothic
Wuthering Heights
On the wild Yorkshire moors, the passion between Catherine and Heathcliff destroys two families.
Five levels, about 80 languages
- A2ElementaryShort sentences and everyday words.
- B1IntermediateYou follow clear stories about familiar things.
- B2Upper intermediateLonger sentences, richer vocabulary.
- C1AdvancedClose to the original, lightly condensed.
- C2ProficientThe complete novel.
One purchase is one book, in one language, at one level: $4.99. Another level of a book you own is $1.99. Editions nobody has asked for yet are written on request: chapter 1 in a few minutes, the rest while you read. How the levels work.
About the book
A tenant’s visit
In 1801 Mr Lockwood, a gentleman looking for solitude, rents Thrushcross Grange on the Yorkshire moors and calls on his landlord, Heathcliff, at the old farmhouse of Wuthering Heights. He finds a household of strange, hostile people, and a snowstorm forces him to stay the night, in a bedroom where something taps at the window. Back at the Grange, the housekeeper, Nelly Dean, tells him the story of the two families: how old Mr Earnshaw brought home a ragged orphan boy he had found in the streets of Liverpool, and what happened between that boy and Earnshaw’s wild daughter, Catherine. It was Emily Brontë’s only novel, published in 1847 under the name Ellis Bell.
Why it works for learners
The emotions in Wuthering Heights are huge and simple: love, jealousy, revenge, grief. The scenes are intense and memorable. The vocabulary of weather and landscape (wind, moor, snow, rain, rock, fire, window) runs through the whole book.
The challenge is the structure. Lockwood tells the story, mostly by retelling what Nelly tells him, and it covers two generations whose names repeat and overlap; there are two Catherines. It helps to know that in advance, and a family tree on paper doesn’t hurt. In the original, the old servant Joseph speaks such thick Yorkshire dialect that native readers struggle too.
Which level to start at
B2 is the best start for most learners: the structure and the passions both need room. A B1 edition makes the plot and the generations much clearer, and makes a good first read. At C1 and C2 you meet Brontë’s wild, poetic prose. Narration with different voices for different characters helps you keep track of who is speaking.
Read next
- Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë’s novel of the same year
- Frankenstein, another story told inside a story
- Pride and Prejudice, the same country at a very different temperature