Introduction
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (yes, it was written in 1847, but it’s more Postmodern than you'd think). Everyone in this book is emotionally unstable, haunted by love, and trapped in an identity crisis. There are ghosts. There’s obsession. There’s yelling on the moors. It’s basically Euphoria in 19th-century Yorkshire. Through a Postmodern lens, Wuthering Heights isn’t a love story, rather a collapse of identity, meaning, and reality itself. Just like in Naomi Shihab Nye’s “Making a Fist,” Gorillaz’s “Humility,” and Jonathan Haidt’s “Why the Last 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid,” the characters in this novel are constantly grasping for something real in a world that doesn’t offer it.
🧩 Identity Crisis - Fragmentation
Catherine says:
“I am Heathcliff” (Brontë, p. 82).
Cool line, right? Actually terrifying. This isn’t about love, it’s about erasing oneself. Catherine doesn’t know where she ends and Heathcliff begins. Her identity is fragmented, scattered across someone else. This is peak Postmodern fragmentation: identity as something unstable, chaotic, and constantly in flux.
Compare that to Nye’s “Making a Fist”:
“When you can no longer make a fist” (Nye, p. 2).
That’s a line about survival, about holding on to some shred of the self. Both Catherine and Nye’s speaker are trying to endure in worlds that offer no clear answers. Catherine dissolves into love; Nye’s speaker clenches what little she has. Together, they’re grappling with Postmodern fragmentation, which is when identity is no longer something solid but something you’re desperately trying to keep from slipping away.
🎭 Simulation & Surface - Metafiction
Heathcliff says:
“I cannot live without my soul” (Brontë, p. 151).
Sounds deep, but from a Postmodern view, the “soul” is a construct, or an idea played out like a role. Heathcliff doesn’t have a core self without Catherine; he’s performing grief, love, rage. He’s a hollow character playing a part in a drama that knows it’s a drama.
That’s literally what Gorillaz does in “Humility”:
"Calling the world from isolation.”
In a 2-D manner, the animated singer, doesn’t exist. He’s a cartoon trapped in a performance of joy. Just like Heathcliff, he’s fake-happy, disconnected, and aware he’s not “real.” Both characters exist in layers of performance, aware of their artificiality. That’s classic Postmodern metafiction. The mask becoming the true face.
🗣️ No One Agrees on Reality - Unreliable Narrators & Embrace of Randomness
Wuthering Heights has multiple narrators: Lockwood, Nelly, and none of them are reliable. The plot jumps timelines, ghosts may or may not be real, and no one agrees on the same version of events. Reality collapses into chaos. That’s the Postmodern embrace of randomness and narrative confusion. Meaning? Who knows.
Jonathan Haidt echoes this collapse:
“Social media... dissolved the mortar of trust, belief in institutions, and shared stories.”
He could be describing the novel. Everyone in Wuthering Heights is haunted, misunderstood, and emotionally isolated. There’s no shared truth, just chaos, confusion, and storytelling as survival.
💬 My Take
Brontë didn’t write this as a Postmodern novel, but it acts like one. It plays with reality, identity, and narrative in messy, emotionally charged ways. In the end it’s not about romance, it’s about falling apart and calling it love. The wildness of the moors matches the mental chaos of its characters, all wrapped in gothic drama and emotional spirals. This is all supported and further developed in British Library's "Wuthering Heights: Fantasy and Realism" below:
Conclusion
Wuthering Heights might wear the costume of a tragic romance, but underneath is a full-blown existential unraveling. Through a Postmodern lens, Catherine and Heathcliff aren’t romantic icons, they’re unstable identities clinging to one another like wreckage. From Nye’s fist to 2-D’s pixelated smile to Haidt’s fragmented America, one thing is clear: when reality stops making sense, people search for something to hold on to. Even if it’s a ghost, a memory, or a feeling that never really existed, it is something people take a hold of. Brontë’s story is less “love conquers all” and more “what even is love when you’ve lost yourself entirely?”
I like how you were able to take a gloomy, dark story like Wurthering Heights and compare it to one of the goofiest song cartoon characters on the internet. the comparison is clear yet still points out the differences between the vibes.