linguistic:paraphrasing, quality:correction, structural:scholar_edition
Influences

Brontë possessed an exceptional education of classical culture for a woman of the time. She was familiar with Greek tragedies and was a good Latinist. In addition she was especially influenced by the poets John Milton and William Shakespeare. There are echoes of and allusions to Shakespeare's tragedies, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth and Hamlet in Wuthering Heights.

Another major source of information for the Brontës was the periodicals that their father read, the Leeds Intelligencer and Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Blackwood's Magazine provided knowledge of world affairs and was a source of material for the Brontës' early writing. Emily Brontë was probably aware of the debate on evolution. This debate had been launched in 1844 by Robert Chambers. It raised questions of divine providence and the violence which underlies the universe and relationships between living things.

Romanticism was also a major influence, which included the Gothic novel, the novels of Walter Scott and the poetry of Byron. The Brontës' fiction is seen by some feminist critics as prime examples of Female Gothic. It explores the domestic entrapment and subjection of women to patriarchal authority, and the attempts to subvert and escape such restriction. Emily Brontë's Cathy Earnshaw and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre are both examples of female protagonists in such a role.

According to Juliet Barker, Walter Scott's novel Rob Roy (1817) had a significant influence on Wuthering Heights, which, though "regarded as the archetypal Yorkshire novel... owed as much, if not more, to Walter Scott's Border country". Rob Roy is set "in the wilds of Northumberland, among the uncouth and quarrelsome squirearchical Osbaldistones", while Cathy Earnshaw "has strong similarities with Diana Vernon, who is equally out of place among her boorish relations".

From 1833 Charlotte and Branwell's Angrian tales began to feature Byronic heroes. Such heroes had a strong sexual magnetism and passionate spirit, and demonstrated arrogance and black-heartedness. The Brontës had discovered Byron in an article in Blackwood's Magazine from August 1825. Byron had died the previous year. Byron became synonymous with the prohibited and audacious.