The Ex

Throughout The Ex, Cassie makes frequent references to Wuthering Heights, a gothic novel written by Emily Brontë and first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. Cassie considers Wuthering Heights the greatest love story ever told, one rivaled only by the real-life love story of her grandparents, Marv and Bea. Through allusions to Wuthering Heights, Freida McFadden’s novel explores Cassie’s tendency to idealize romantic love, searching for a literary fantasy of “true love” rather than facing herself and her relationships as they really are.

Set on the bleak Yorkshire moors, the novel takes its name from the remote farmhouse where the action takes place. The novel explores love, revenge, and the destructive power of obsession through the intertwined lives of two families, the Earnshaws and the Lintons. At the heart of the story is the intense and often toxic relationship between the mysterious Heathcliff and the beautiful Catherine Earnshaw. Heathcliff, a dark-skinned orphan brought to Wuthering Heights by Mr. Earnshaw, grows up facing cruelty and exclusion, which fuels his bitterness and thirst for vengeance. Catherine is a wild and passionate young woman who loves Heathcliff but is pressured to marry the more socially acceptable Edgar Linton, son of her neighbor.