This is great English literature, the fruit of a quite extraordinary childhood. The scope and drift of its imagination, its passionate exploration of a fatal yet regenerative love affair, and its brilliant manipulation of time and space put it in a league of its own. Looking back, it's clear that where Jane Eyre comes out of a recognisable tradition, and is conscious of that affiliation, Wuthering Heights releases extraordinary new energies in the novel, renews its potential, and almost reinvents the genre. I've included both in my list because their influence on the English imagination, and on subsequent English-language fiction, has been incalculable. Readers who love Jane Eyre are sometimes less enthusiastic about Wuthering Heights. For a long time it was judged to be inferior. Critics who had been swept away by Jane Eyre did not know what to make of it. The first reviews of Wuthering Heights were mixed. However, it is Emily who takes the bigger creative risks. Where Charlotte comes from the puritan tradition of John Bunyan (no 1 in this series), Emily is the child of the Romantic movement, and both sisters are steeped in the gothic. Brontë's narrative – fragmented, discordant and tortuous – revolves obsessively around a single, explosive transgression, and the theme of jealousy in the lives of Heathcliff and Catherine, before making a calmer return to the theme in the often neglected second half.
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