The following materials has been included by permission of the
publisher from Derek Traversi, "The Brontë Sisters and Wuthering
Heights", in The New Pelican Guide to English Literature 6. From
Dickens to Hardy, 1996. A notable difference in imaginative
quality separates the novels of Charlotte (1816-55) and Emily
(1818-55) Brontë from those of the other great English novelists
of the nineteenth century. The difference seems to be one of
emotional intensity, the product of a unique concentration upon
fundamental human passion in a state approaching essential
purity. Whether this concentration is compatible with the nature
of the novel as generally conceived - and there has been a
tendency to regard the Brontës as something of a 'sport', a
remarkable oddity in literary history - is no doubt open to
discussion. Many of the great novelists of the period — Dickens,
Thackeray and George Eliot — showed moral and social
preoccupations more explicit than those revealed in Wuthering
Heights. We may agree that the range