If you have read Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, you already understand that it is a novel with a complicated plot, lots of conflicts, and several themes. Indeed, because of the flashback telling of this story, it is really difficult to even keep the characters straight, especially since so many of them have the same names! But you should have at least been able to understand the basics of the plot revolving around Heathcliff and his transformation from waif, to privileged child, to common laborer, and then back to a member of the landed gentry, all the time being consumed with love and revenge – traits that really destroyed his life and sanity. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte is, in fact, a story of love, jealousy, and revenge.

Topics for an Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights Essay

If you have been assigned a Wuthering Heights essay, and the topic has been left up to you, you should begin the process of selecting a topic based upon the elements of a novel.

Conflict

All novels have at least one conflict, and some have more than one. In this novel, there are more than one, and all of them would make great Wuthering Heights essays:

1. Discuss the conflict between young Heathcliff and Hareton. On what emotions is this conflict based? How is the conflict ultimately resolved?
2. Discuss the inner conflict in Catherine as she struggles between her love of Heathcliff and her desire to move into a social class that gives her status. How is this conflict resolved in the novel?
3. Discuss the more subtle conflict between Heathcliff and Edgar Linton? How is it resolved?

Plot

A couple of plot questions could be turned into solid essays:

1. How does the “flashback” aspect of the tale enhance or detract from the plot development?
2. Where is the climax in this plot? Are there more than one climax? If so, which are they?

Themes

Three themes are apparent in this novel – love, jealousy, and revenge. All of these can be used as Wuthering Heights essay questions:

1. Contrast the type of love that Catherine has for Heathcliff and for Edgar? Is either one of these loves productive and fulfilling? Why or why not?
2. Discuss love as a destructive force and as the cause of most of the conflict in the novel.
3. Discuss love as a redeeming force in the end, as depicted by the marriage of young Catherine and Hareton.
4. How has Hareton’s jealousy of Heathcliff ruined both of their lives?
5. What did Heathcliff accomplish through taking revenge on those he perceived to have destroyed his life? Does revenge ever really satisfy someone?

General Essay Topics

1. Contrast the two families in this novel – the Earnshaws and the Lintons. How do they depict the social classes of England in the late 18th and early 19th centuries?
2. Contrast the characters of Heathcliff, Hareton Earnshaw and Edgar Linton.

Wuthering Heights is a complicated novel, not because its themes are difficult to understand but because it is a tale that is told in an extremely disjointed manner. If you are having trouble grasping the story, you are not alone. And if you have to write an essay and are not certain how to do it, certainly get some help.