9. Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
"Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!"
The Brontë's [sic] are often set side-by-side with Austen's novels though the two share only a little in common (and mainly that they were female authors at a time when this was revolutionary). "Wuthering Heights", in particular, couldn't be further from the polite, etiquette-driven plots of Austen's satirical romances, instead set in Victorian-era Yorkshire across blustering heathland and condemning the upper classes for their stitltedness, punishing Cathy's ambition when she gets to know the family at Thrushcross Grange, far removed from her family's house, the titular Wuthering Heights.
As a novel filled with unlikeable, selfish people, it can be hard to understand its everlasting appeal. But the characters, from Catherine Earnshaw, a young lady living at Wuthering Heights, who forms a deep, unsettling bond with her adopted brother, Heathcliff, drag you under the book's spell, even as the 'protagonists' behaviour descends further into violence and cruelty.
Complement with: walks on the Yorkshire moors, ghost stories and dramatic cries from a window. (Daisy Finch)
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