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Wuthering Heights

E. P. WHIPPLE (ESSAY DATE OCTOBER 1848)

SOURCE: Whipple, E. P. "Novels of the Season." The North American Review 67, no. 141 (October 1848): 354-70.

In the following excerpt, Whipple presumes that the author of Wuthering Heights is male and faults the novel as amoral and offensive.

Acton Bell, the author of Wuthering Heights,… when left altogether to his own imaginations, seems to take a morose satisfaction in developing a full and complete science of human brutality. In Wuthering Heights he has succeeded in reaching the summit of this laudable ambition. He appears to think that spiritual wickedness is a combination of animal ferocities, and has accordingly made a compendium of the most striking qualities of tiger, wolf, cur, and wild-cat, in the hope of framing out of such elements a suitable brutedemon to serve as the hero of his novel....

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Primary Sources
   1. Emily Brontë (Novel Date 1847)
4. Title Commentary
   1. Wuthering Heights
5. Further Reading