How Wuthering Heights drew on King Lear
A documented line of influence: Emily Brontë demonstrably engaged William Shakespeare’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
King Lear
William Shakespeare · c. 1605
ShakespeareThe influenced
Wuthering Heights
Emily Brontë · 1847
The Age of the NovelRelevance
8/10
On Wuthering Heights’s page
- The only secular work Brontë names in the whole novel — Lockwood's threats, he says, "smacked of King Lear," a wink at the play behind the book
- Brontë was reading her father's Shakespeare as she wrote, and Heathcliff's revenge and storm-driven madness run on Lear's engine: a great house wrecked by its own inheritance
- Read the play first and Heathcliff reads less like a Gothic villain and more like Lear's heir — wronged, vengeful, raging at the weather
On King Lear’s page
- The one secular book Emily Brontë names inside Wuthering Heights — Lockwood says his threats "smacked of King Lear"
- Brontë had the run of her father's Shakespeare and is reported to have been reading Lear as she wrote; its storm-lashed madness and inheritance-poisoned revenge are stamped all over Heathcliff
- Lear gave her the template for a tragedy of houses torn apart from within — bloodline, betrayal, and a man raging on the moor