Two Sisters One Verdict
Spoiler warning. This video gives away both plots, including the Jane Eyre wedding and the Wuthering Heights ending. If you have not read them yet, skip ahead to the scorecard near the end, where I stay spoiler free.
Here is the short answer, and it is only my opinion. Start with Jane Eyre. It has one clear narrator, a heroine who says what she thinks, and a love story that pays off. Then read Wuthering Heights when you want something darker, stranger and shorter. Same year, eighteen forty-seven, two sisters, and two very different ways to break your heart.
The Count
First, the numbers, which I counted myself from the Penguin Brontë volume in our library, using the book text only. Jane Eyre runs about one hundred eighty-eight thousand words, in thirty-eight chapters. Wuthering Heights is about one hundred eighteen thousand words, in thirty-four. I am saying words, not pages, because pages change with every edition.
A quick note on who wrote what. Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre, and the volume’s own note to the third edition, dated April eighteen forty-eight, is signed Currer Bell. Emily wrote Wuthering Heights. Two sisters, one shelf.
So Jane Eyre is about one and a half times as long. At two hundred fifty words a minute, which is my guess at an average reader, that is about twelve and a half hours, against just under eight. The same volume holds Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey, which I am leaving out.
Chapters tell the same story. Jane Eyre’s average nearly five thousand words, and its longest, chapter twenty-seven, passes eleven thousand. Wuthering Heights averages about thirty-five hundred, and its longest stays under seven thousand. One is a long walk. The other is shorter, and steeper.
Jane Eyre in Four Moves
Jane Eyre follows one woman from childhood to marriage. Jane is ten, an orphan living with her aunt, Mrs Reed, and bullied by her cousin John. After a fight she is locked in the red room, then sent to Lowood, a harsh charity school, where her friend Helen Burns dies.
As a young woman she becomes governess at Thornfield Hall, to a girl named Adèle, and falls for the master, Mr Rochester. Along the way come a mirthless laugh in the night, and a fire in his bed curtains that Jane puts out.
Rochester then throws a house party, flirts with the glamorous Blanche Ingram, and even turns up disguised as a gypsy fortune teller to question Jane. A visitor named Mason is stabbed one night on the third floor. Then Jane is called away to Gateshead, where Mrs Reed confesses she hid a letter from Jane’s uncle.
The wedding is stopped in the church. A solicitor says Rochester already has a wife, Bertha, who is alive and locked on the third floor. Jane leaves at dawn, nearly starves on the moor, and is taken in by the Rivers family.
Then she inherits twenty thousand pounds, shares it with her cousins, and refuses a missionary marriage to Saint John. She hears Rochester calling her name, goes back, and finds Thornfield in ruins and him blind. Reader, I married him.
Wuthering Heights in Four Moves
Wuthering Heights opens with a stranger. In eighteen oh one, a tenant called Lockwood visits his landlord, Heathcliff, gets snowed in, and has a nightmare about a ghost child at the window. The housekeeper, Nelly Dean, then tells him how it all began.
Years earlier, old Mr Earnshaw walks home from Liverpool carrying a ragged, black-haired child, and names him Heathcliff. Hindley, the son, hates him. Catherine, the daughter, loves him. Then she decides to marry the rich Edgar Linton, and Heathcliff overhears part of it and vanishes.
Heathcliff returns rich and elopes with Edgar’s sister Isabella. It goes badly for her, and she runs away in the end.
He spends the rest of the book on revenge. Catherine dies after giving birth to a daughter, also called Catherine, but known as Cathy. Heathcliff then goes after the next generation, Hindley’s son Hareton and his own sickly son Linton, and forces Cathy into marriage with Linton.
It ends quietly. Heathcliff loses his appetite for revenge, stops eating, and dies. Cathy and Hareton, the two he damaged most, are set to marry on New Year’s day. Lockwood walks out to the graves on the moor.
The Heroes
Now the leading men. Rochester is rude, funny, rich, and he lies to Jane. He hides a living wife, then asks Jane to live in a villa in the south of France. She says no. In my view that refusal is the spine of the book, and the book breaks him for it, with fire, a lost hand and his sight.
Heathcliff is a different animal. Nobody redeems him, and he is cruel to people who never wronged him, including his own son. Rochester ends softened. Heathcliff ends worn out, and in my view the book never asks you to forgive him.
There is one moment I love. In the garden, Jane tells Rochester she has as much soul as he does. A poor, plain governess, saying that to the master. Catherine never gets a speech like that. She gets Heathcliff, and the line that he is more myself than I am.
Then the women. Both Jane and Catherine face a choice between love and something else. Jane keeps her self respect and walks away. Catherine picks money and position, says so out loud, and dies before the book is half over.
The Tone
Both books are gothic, but they use the dark differently. In Jane Eyre it is seasoning. There is the red room, a laugh on the third floor, a torn wedding veil, a voice across the moor. Most of the scares turn out to have a human cause, and the book keeps climbing back toward hope.
In Wuthering Heights the dark is the whole house. The ghost at the window arrives in chapter three, and the weather and the grudges never lift. There is cruelty to children, a forced marriage, and a man who opens a coffin.
The endings show it best. Jane Eyre closes on a marriage that has lasted ten years. Wuthering Heights closes on a death and a graveyard, with a wedding saved for the next generation.
If Jane Eyre is a stormy walk that ends at a warm fire, Wuthering Heights is the storm. Both carry cruelty, so check the content note on each of our pages.
Both books are also funnier than people expect. Rochester teases Jane and Jane teases him back. In Wuthering Heights the joke is Lockwood, a visitor so bad at reading people that the first chapters play like a comedy of manners. Then the book turns.
Readability
On readability, Jane Eyre is easier to follow, because one woman tells her own story in order. The hard part is stamina. Jane skips eight years of school in one dense chapter, the house party drags, and the longest chapter holds Rochester’s long confession. Adèle speaks French, mostly untranslated, and Saint John preaches.
Wuthering Heights is shorter but harder, page for page. Two narrators, Lockwood and Nelly, tell it one inside the other. The servant Joseph speaks thick Yorkshire in nearly every chapter. And two generations carry near identical names, Catherine and Cathy, plus Linton Heathcliff, so keep a family tree handy. Our characters guide has one.
A tip, in my view. If Jane Eyre drags around the house party, keep going, because the fortune teller and the night stabbing are close. If Wuthering Heights feels tangled once Nelly starts talking, keep going, because the family settles into focus.
The Scorecard
Here is my scorecard, and it is opinion. Five categories, out of five. Jane Eyre first. Romance four and a half, darkness three, readability four, pace three and a half, impact four and a half. That is an average of three point nine.
Now Wuthering Heights. Romance two and a half, because it is obsession, not a swoon. Darkness five, readability three and a half, pace four, impact five. That is an average of four.
A word on how I scored. Darkness is not good or bad, it is how heavy the book feels. Romance means how much the love story is the point, and how much it comforts you.
Pace is the one place I would argue with myself. Jane Eyre is slow in the middle, but its big scenes, the fire, the wedding and the voice, land hard. Wuthering Heights moves faster because its chapters are shorter.
So the averages are nearly tied, and I think that is the point. The scorecard does not pick a winner. Your taste does. Do you want a heroine you can argue with, or a storm you can only watch?
Who Starts Where
My pick for most people is Jane Eyre first. It is the easier door into the Brontës, because the voice is clear and the love story pays off. Choose it if you want romance with a spine, a long classic you can settle into, or a heroine who says what she thinks.
Start with Wuthering Heights if you want darkness over comfort, a shorter read, and characters you will argue about for years. Skip it first if cruelty, dialect or nested narrators will put you off. And if you have only seen a film, the book is another animal, so try our film against book video.
If you only have a weekend, Wuthering Heights fits. If you have a long holiday and want to disappear into one voice, Jane Eyre does. Either order works, and the second book will make the first look different.
Which did you start with, and did it go well? Tell me in the comments. Our Wuthering Heights review, characters guide, ending explained and complete guide are linked in the description. Subscribe, tap like, and the Jane Eyre page is at book explained dot com.
