New Delhi, March 8 -- I am a sucker for movie adaptations of literary texts. So, despite the deluge of bad press, I simply had to watch Emerald Fennell's recent remake of Wuthering Heights. Let's say, the only good thing to have come out of that experience was my keen desire to revisit Emily Bronte's first and only novel, published in 1847 under the pseudonym "Ellis Bell", a year before her untimely death at the age of 30.

For the last several days, I have been savouring the Gothic pleasures of the story, its multi-layered narrative framework, and the fiendishly clever ploys the author employs to entrap the reader in the unending nightmares surrounding Wuthering Heights, a farmhouse in the remote Yorkshire moors of England. The novel rem...