Wuthering Heights is #902 on the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list. See the whole list and my progress here. This summer, I’m reading from the list for my 20 Books of Summer challenge, and instead of straight reviews, I’m going to compare the 1001 Books write ups with my own impressions – or in this case, I’m going to compare one of my 20 Books to a book on the 1001 list.

I am once again drawing parallels between two books based on what very well may be coincidences. Hear me out on this one, though. If I’m wrong, at the very least, take this as a sign that if you are a Wuthering Heights fan, you will probably like Self-Portrait With Boy by Rachel Lyon, too. 

I have found no evidence that Rachel Lyon has even read Wuthering Heights, let alone been influenced by it. She tends to recommend modern writers, and talks about real-life inspiration for this novel. But look, it’s a story about a motherless girl living in a sprawling, ramshackle building who is haunted by a ghost that knocks on and eventually breaks her window. My heights are officially wuthered!

Then there are the copious details that could be pulled from any number of gothic novels of Brontë’s time: filthy living conditions (including a memorable scene with a family of rats), evil landlords, orphans, grieving parents, a closed society (the 1990s NYC art scene), clearly defined class structure (poor Lu even becomes an art teacher for wealthy children, a modern day governess), a beautiful woman in distress…

But the most important parallel didn’t become clear until the very last line, and it’s a feature of Wuthering Heights that I tend to discount, and even forget in between rereadings: the frame story.

In a story full of literal frames (art, window) the literary frame in Self-Portrait is conventional enough: an old(er) woman looking back at her life. It’s unobtrusive at first. The story of Lu capturing a photograph of a child falling to his death, a moment that will define her career if it doesn’t tear her apart, is so compelling that it’s easy to forget that we are reading the thoughts of a self-aware, middle-aged woman looking back on it all, until the story catches up with itself at the end. 

The frame in Wuthering Heights feels a bit more dated (as it should, 200ish years on): someone is being told a story. And it’s not subtle at all. On every reread, I forget how much of Lockwood’s perspective we have to get through before Nelly Dean gives him (and us) the goods on Cathy and Heathcliff.

These frames are totally necessary though. They allow both books to end on a haunting and devastating note. In Wuthering Heights, Lockwood wondering “how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers, for the sleepers in that quiet earth” would not hit the same if it was just some omniscient narrator, or one of the remaining Lintons or Earnshaws. It has to be an outsider who’s slowly come to understand the tragedy that played out on these moors, alongside the reader. In Self-Portrait, the last line (which I won’t quote – spoilers apply to novels from 2018) is similarly devastating, and would not make sense coming from twenty-something Lu; she doesn’t have the insight yet. The reader feels the truth of it, and the weight of the time that’s passed, all in that final sentence.   

If Wuthering Heights is the epitome of Georgian gothic (yes, it was written in the Victorian era, but it’s a historical novel, set a generation or two in the past, just like Self-Portrait), then Self-Portrait With Boy has a strong claim on late 20th century NYC gothic. Or whatever that era eventually gets called.