“I don’t understand why you like it. The characters are ghastly people who ruin each others lives. I don’t know how Heathcliff and Cathy ended up being ranked with couples like Romeo and Juliet or Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. It isn’t a love story, it’s a hate story.” – Edward Cullen

It’s “Bella and Edward’s Favorite Book” and it is an age old story. Besides its mention in the Twilight books (Eclipse, to be specific), the parallels are quite obvious as well. After all, Emily Brontë’s novel is a dark story of love, where one man leaves and the female lead is pushed into the care of another man, yet her love for the first remains solid and eternal.

In addition, Wuthering Heights is written in a non-linear fashion, with flashbacks and the story has a dark and murky setting (like Forks) and includes gothic and supernatural elements (in this case, ghosts; with Twilight, it’s vampires and werewolves).

The parallels and inspiration are evident, as is the increased fan interest in the classic Brontë novel. Twilight fans are no longer only standing in long lines to see the movie or drooling over Robert Pattinson (Edward Cullen), but they are also hitting the library stacks and reviving the original all-consuming and yet insatiable love relationship of Healthcliff and Catherine by reading Wuthering Heights.

Perhaps encouraging teenage girls to read yet another story of addictive and dangerous love is not the best idea, but the HarperTeen marketing department definitely knows when to jump on the Twilight bandwagon. A Twilight themed cover of Wuthering Heights is set to come out, echoing the same black and red theme of the Twilight forbidden fruit cover.

Are you headed to the library to catch up on your classics? Do you love Emily Brontë’s novel as much as Bella does or do you think it’s a “hate story,” like Edward does?