As David Lodge expresses in his Art of Fiction, “weather affects [people’s] moods” and it has the ability to evoke certain emotions and feelings in characters (Lodge, 85). Weather is therefore an author’s tool in a way as “the novelist is…able to invent whatever weather is appropriate to the mood he or she wants to evoke” (Lodge, 85). In Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë uses this method many times throughout the course of the novel. John Ruskin’s term, pathetic fallacy, is present in several instances throughout the novel. Pathetic fallacy, “the projection of human emotions onto phenomena in the natural world,” is even reflected in the title as “wuthering” suggests unruly and aggressive weather, which is accurately reflected in its tenants (Lodge, …show more content…
Associating weather with emotion allows the reader to draw parallels to a more abstract concept like nature, which takes the emotion out of context and is more relatable for the reader. It is simpler for readers to understand and relate to these abstract emotions when it can be observed in their natural surroundings. Before Lockwood experiences his nightmare in Wuthering Heights, the mood of nature reflects the nature of events. Lockwood observes the weather to be “one bitter whirl of wind and suffocating snow,” personifying the elements to create an eerie sense of feeling (Brontë, 14). Following Lockwood’s description of the weather, the reader can understand that a dark, stormy, winter night may not bring along the most pleasant of events. In this case, the weather itself portrays the nature of the events that occur, more specifically Lockwood’s terrifying nightmare of Catherine’s ghost and his subsequent classification of Wuthering Heights as haunted. This use of pathetic fallacy helps the reader relate to abstract emotions and to apply this understanding to the text itself as the author successfully portrays a certain nature of