Wuthering Heights Essay

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Beyond the rarely trodden paths of the moors, several mystical conduits run between the heavenly Thrushcross Grange and the hellish Wuthering Heights. Dreams, memories, wishes, and spirits pervade the narrative of Wuthering Heights, and these mystical experiences regularly serve as escape mechanisms for the novel’s female characters. Catherine Earnshaw Linton clings to her childhood memories of the moors and Wuthering Heights, and her daughter imagines a wild paradise away from society. In Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë describes these mystical experiences of her female characters with words contrasting the prison of civilized society and the freedom of the wild moors to convey that women can only be free in a wilderness untainted by society. For the world of Wuthering Heights, Thrushcross Grange represents Victorian society and serves as the prison for its women. Catherine comes to realize this the day after her argument with Edgar when she suddenly feels trapped by the Grange and desires to return to the moors.
Oh, I’m burning! I wish I were out of doors! I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free; and laughing at injuries, not maddening under them! Why am I so changed? why does my blood rush into a hell of tumult at a few words? I’m sure I should be myself were I once among the heather on those hills. Open the window again wide: fasten it open! (Brontë 98)
Catherine’s outburst includes two anaphora: “I wish I were…I wish I were” and “Why…why”.