Emily Bronte
Wuthering Heights, Abridged
A Note on the Abridgement
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
their neighbours at 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
abridgement 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 and numerous other
sources. If you enjoy this abridgement, then I would urge you to seek out the original
and give it a try.
Emma Laybourn
2
