Wuthering Heights sucks

That sounds as if I had been labouring the whole time, only to exhibit a fine trait of magnanimity. It is far from the case – I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction, and I am too idle to destroy for nothing.
-- Heathcliff; Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

I am Heathcliff!
-- Catherine; Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

The most evil character in literature is Shakespeare’s Iago; in history it is Karl Marx. The hype surrounding Wuthering Heights is that Heathcliff’s character approaches the evil of these two figures. The first quotation above shows that, at the end of the novel, Heathcliff wishes no longer to ensure the destruction of Cathy and Hareton because he cannot be bothered. Apparently, the tone of his dialogue is supposed to indicate his twisted nature, speaking as he is so casually about wrecking the lives of his enemies. But to me Heathcliff seems neither evil nor twisted; he is just boring.

Emily Brontë probably thought that her descriptions of Heathcliff were chilling and made him an extraordinarily twisted character. In fact, the strongest pejorative that I could find against Heathcliff was Isabella calling him a “devil”. Yes, in her letter to Nelly she writes that he tortures her inhumanely and has a cruel plan to get possession of Thrushcross Grange, but none of this is adds to Heathcliff’s characterisation as a symbol of evil.

Brontë’s readers would have been disgusted at Heathcliff exhuming Catherine’s corpse, but to me it just shows his lunacy. In fact, the whole plot of Wuthering Heights is illogical and boring because Heathcliff is not sufficiently evil, and the rest of the characters too morose to act.

In Victorian fiction, characterisation was deemed to be the most important part of the novel, and it is clear that Brontë failed in this respect. Why is the elder Catherine so obstinate in her supposed love for Heathcliff? (Don’t give me that nonsense about her psyche being as free as the moors and identical with Heathcliff’s soul – the second quotation sounds good perhaps but doesn’t give a proper motive for Catherine’s actions.) Why can’t Isabella Linton just run away? Why can’t Linton Heathcliff stop being such a pussy (for lack of other appropriate vocabulary) and face up to Heathcliff? And finally, why does Heathcliff just drop dead one day?

Critics have praised the presence of the thinly veiled ‘Gothic’ supernatural in Wuthering Heights, but all this does is to cover up Emily Brontë’s pathetic lack of skill. I need Heathcliff to drop dead now. But that doesn’t make sense. No matter, I shall write that he saw Catherine’s ghost. Aha yes! Everybody will buy that! Furthermore, the structure of the novel is annoying. Reading a novel requires the reader to suspend some belief, yes, but the manner in which the story comes to the reader third- or fourth-hand makes it seem completely implausible. But the fact remains that a simple third-person narrative wouldn’t work either, because the author presents so many fantastical stories. Thus the plot is ridiculous, and there is no good way to write it.

Wuthering Heights should never have been written.