Gothic Elements in Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights”
The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the most prominent Gothic Elements found in Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights. Due to the fact that the number of these elements and the significance and timelessness of the novel itself by far surmount the limitations of this assignment I shall focus mainly on two major components of Wuthering Heights that could be explored in the light of being Gothic. Those are the novel’s setting (both exterior and interior) and a particular type of love that occurs between the two main characters, Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw. In order to do so, I must first offer a short explanation of the term Gothic and how it applies to this novel; secondly, I shall glimpse into Emily Brontë’s life (her life and her life-work being so closely entwined). Thirdly, I shall pay my full attention to the setting of the novel and love story that takes place in it because, in my humble opinion, the peculiar combination of these two elements along with its upside-down and unconventional concept of morality gives this novel its life-force and timeless appeal. To put it simply, it eternalizes Wuthering Heights and makes it one of the greatest and most baffling English novels of all times.
The online edition of Encyclopedia Britannica defines Gothic literature as “pseudomedieval fiction”, filled with the atmosphere of mystery, terror and abuse, with its heyday in the 1790s, but with many revivals in following centuries. According to EB this fashion in literature started in England with Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto (1765), but “continued to haunt the fictions of such major writers as the Brontë sisters […]”. Having in mind that Wuthering Heights were ...
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Society today embellishes the words romance and passion, claiming them to be all good and positive. However, almost no works of media capture the darkness of intense fervor like Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Her two protagonists, Heathcliff and Catherine, are one of literature’s most romantic star-crossed lovers, whose only parallel is Romeo and Juliet. Once her father brings the young and wild gypsy home, Catherine forms an unbreakable attachment with him. They embody the term “gothic romance” with tragedy and distress in every chapter threatening the relationship and sanity of the two characters. Catherine and Heathcliff’s amorous affinity and bond towards each other kindles drama that inflicts pain and suffering on those around them, causing the world that encompasses Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange to fall apart.
Have you ever read a book where you have a hard time keeping track of characters and events and the order of the book? Well than you must have come across this gothic novel called “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Bronte. She combines more than one element of a gothic novel and that is craziness, obsession and villain heroes. The novel is formed around the two similar love stories of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff and the young Catherine Linton and Hareton Earnshaw. The motif of this book is full of doubles and repetitions; it has two protagonists as mentions earlier, Catherine and Heathcliff, two narrators, Mr. Lockwood and Nelly, and two houses, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. In spite of all this, Emily Bronte wasn’t just torturing us for no reason but the cycles in violence and the repeating or scrambling the characters names even in intermarriages tells us that it is trapped in something overpowering and unresolved. Assume the chaos of doubling and repetition, their symptoms are increasing on an unresolved issue that drives this entire story around for the sake of Catherin and Heathcliff unresolved passion. Catherine and Heathcliff share a love so deep that the two souls seem to have intertwined into one. In result Bronte deliberately arranges the characters, and the place into pairs. She shows the particular difference on the double to demonstrate both the imaginary ideal and the tragic reality of relationships that are surrounded by the restraints of class, and society.
Novels are often taken by the reader at face value, and are never looked into on a deeper level. It is important to search for more than what is seen in a literary work. Wuthering Heights is a great example of a book with its own hidden secrets that can surface with a little research. Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights depicts the oppression of women from mentally unstable individuals.
Emily Bronte, a skilled novelist, is able to toy with the minds of her readers by forcing them to sympathize for an irrational love story in her one and only novel, Wuthering Heights. As readers, we are drawn to the love and passion possessed by Heathcliff and Catherine, even though it represents evil and flawed love. Through this, Bronte forces us to reconsider the definition of “true love”. As opposed to most scholars’ readings of the novel, I strongly believe that Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights privileges the tortured relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine over the healthier, more stable relationship of Cathy and Hareton. Cathy and Hareton’s relationship represents a compromise of sorts for Bronte, a socially acceptable love that’s nevertheless not as deeply felt as Heathcliff’s and Catherine’s. This argument is supported by Bronte’s own biography and by the novel’s ending, which many fail to decrypt correctly. Bronte advocated for passion – a depth of commitment to another – over compromise, which is a theme presented in the novel Wuthering Heights.
When the words gothic literature come to mind, most people would automatically assume that Poe or King are being spoken of, but two authors who have seemed to have slipped through the cracks in the world’s idea of gothic literature have not only succeeded in many things, but have written two lovely gothic novels in their own ways. Horace Walpole wrote The Castle of Ortanto and Jane Austen wrote Northanger Abbey; and while these two pieces are vastly different, they both employ the same devices to keep the reader in the world of the gothic. The main device they both share is their use of the setting. Walpole’s setting of a dark and passage-filled castle is a perfect place for things to go array but Austen on the other hand, must make up her own stories about what she wishes her setting were like, which fits her parodical writing perfectly. No matter how different, the settings of both these pieces contribute to the victimization of the female protagonists, Isabella, and Catherine Morland and by placing these characters in certain situations; the authors create a gothic theme.
Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights. Norton Critical ed. 3rd ed. Ed. William M. Sale, Jr., and Richard J. Dunn. New York: W. W. Norton, 1990.
with Edgar. He shows love of the past by pointing out to her how little
Varghese, Dr. Lata Marina. "Stylistic Analysis of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights." IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science 2.5 (2012): 46-50. Print.
McLeod, Jennifer. "Emily Brontë." Magill’S Survey Of World Literature, Revised Edition (2009): 1-4. Literary Reference Center. Web. 23 May 2014.
Bronte’s Jane Eyre is brimming with feminist ideology rebuking Victorian-Era gender-roll ethics and ideals. As a creative, independent woman with a strong personality and will growing up during this period of female repression, Bronte wrote Jane Eyre as a feminist message to society. She criticizes the average, servile, ignorant Victorian woman, and praises a more assertive, independent, and strong one. She does this through her protagonist Jane, who embodies all of Bronte’s ideal feminine characteristics. She is a strong woman, both mentally and physically, who seeks independence and is in search of individuality, honesty, and above all equality both in marriage and in society in a world that does not acknowledge women as individuals.
‘Wuthering Heights’, although having survived the test of time as a work that is poignant and passionate, and eminently capable of holding the reader’s attention, received mixed criticism upon publication in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. Apparently, the vivid description of mental and physical violence and agony was hard to stomach, and the atmosphere was too oppressive to merit popular liking. But many later readers and critics have given ‘Wuthering Heights’ the mantle of being the best of the works of the Bronte sisters, displacing Charlotte’s ‘Jane Eyre’. One of its prime merits, at least to my eyes, lies in Emily’s ability to make Nature an eloquent party to the story-corresponding closely with a character’s emotions, with the incidents, with the movement of the plot, and thus adding to the quality of the story. Emily was born in Thornton, Yorkshire, and her love for the landscape that she grew up with is reflected in the novel in the moors and the crags, the storms and the spring. One can see an extension of this one-ness with nature, this unity, in her choice of Wuthering Hei...
Wuthering Heights is not just a love story, it is a window into the human soul, where one sees the loss, suffering, self discovery, and triumph of the characters in this novel. Both the Image of the Book by Robert McKibben, and Control of Sympathy in Wuthering Heights by John Hagan, strive to prove that neither Catherine nor Heathcliff are to blame for their wrong doings. Catherine and Heathcliff’s passionate nature, intolerable frustration, and overwhelming loss have ruined them, and thus stripped them of their humanities.
A multitude of feelings and sentiments can move a man to action, but in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, love and revenge are the only two passions powerful enough to compel the primary actors. There is consensus, in the academic community,1 that the primary antagonist in the novel, Heathcliff is largely motivated by a wanton lust for vengeance, and it is obvious from even a cursory reading that Edgar Linton, one of the protagonists, is mostly compelled by a his seemingly endless love for his wife, and it even seems as if this is reflected in the very nature of the characters themselves. For example, Heathcliff is described as “Black-eye[d]” [Brontë,1], “Dark skinned” [Brontë, 3] and a “dirty boy” [Brontë, 32]; obviously, black has sinister connotations, and darkness or uncleanliness in relation to the soul is a common metaphor for evil. On the converse, Edgar Linton is described as blue eyed with a perfect forehead [Brontë, 34] and “soft featured… [with] a figure almost too graceful” [Brontë, 40], which has almost angelic connotations. When these features and the actions of their possessors are taken into account, it becomes clear that Edgar and Heathcliff are not merely motivated by love and revenge as most academics suggest, but rather these two men were intended by Brontë to be love and hate incarnate.
Wuthering Heights is filled with different examples of the Romantic Movements. Heathcliff is an exceptionally difficult character to analyze because he displays numerous altered personalities. This raises the question: which Romantic Movement was most common in Wuthering Heights? An analysis of Wuthering Heights reveals the most common Romantic Movement in the text: Romanticism. Romanticism is based upon the ideas of subjectivity, inspiration and the primacy of the individual. Various examples of these from the text are when Heathcliff has Catherine’s grave excavated, the repeated possibility of supernatural beings, and the love from the past that is seen from Heathcliff and Catherine.
“Wuthering Heights is a strange, inartistic story”(Atlas, WH p. 299). “Wuthering Heights is a strange sort of book” (Douglas, WH p.301). “This is a strange book” (Examiner, WH p.302). “His work [Wuthering Heights] is strangely original” (Britannia, WH p.305). These brief quotes show that early critics of Emily Bronte’s first edition of Wuthering Heights, found the novel baffling in its meaning - they each agreed separately, that no moral existed within the story therefore it was deemed to have no real literary value. The original critical reviews had very little in the way of praise for the unknown author or the novel. The critics begrudgingly acknowledged elements of Wuthering Heights that could be considered strengths – such as, “rugged power” and “unconscious strength” (Atlas, WH p.299), “purposeless power” (Douglas, WH p.301), “evidences of considerable power” (Examiner), “power and originality” (Britannia, WH p.305). Strange and Powerful are two recurring critical interpretations of the novel. The critics did not attempt to provide in depth analysis of the work, simply because they felt that the meaning or moral of the story was either entirely absent or seriously confused.