Wuthering Heights Gothic

Wuthering Heights was the only novel written by the British Emily Brontë and it was published in 1847 under her pen-name Ellis Bell. Unsurprisingly, the novel was considered controversial for Victorian society as it challenged its strict ideals regarding religion, morality, social classes and gender inequality. Thus, the doomed love affair between the fiercely and passionate Catherine and Heathcliff was too strong for the prudish Victorian English society.

However, Wuthering Heights is not just a haunting love story. Emily Brontë structured the story around matched, contrasting pairs of themes and characters and it is interesting the amount of pairs she wrote about. Some of the pairs include: the two manor houses, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross

Throughout the novel, the story of the Earnshaws is rough and violent. The moment when Heathcliff arrived at Wuthering Heights set an inferno-like life for the members of the family who had to bare his father’s favoritism towards that strange creature that had no resemblance with them. Besides, Heathcliff had to be tough so as to resist Hailey’s abusive behaviour and eventually, that neglected childhood contributed to the development of his evil nature and his extreme hate towards his enemies. As regards Catherine, she was savage and loved mischieving with Heathcliff. All in all, the life in Wuthering Heights might be depicted as chaotic and obscure. Then, the setting may be considered Gothic whilst the irrational nature of the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights can be seen as a romantic element. The first instance of the Gothic in the novel is Lockwood’s encounter with the ghost of Catherine Earnshaw in his first night at Wuthering Heights. This event raised the idea that Catherine was haunting his beloved Heathcliff and that boundaries were being trespassed allowing Heathcliff to “interact” somehow with Catherine; however, these can be also thought as the product of their imagination which would

The obscure and irrational of the literary movements can be found in both houses and in all characters, but depending on the place where the characters were born, their nature is more obscure or weak. Neither Isabella could have been happy in Wuthering Heights nor Catherine in Thrushcross Grange. But both of them change while living in their husband’s houses: Isabella had to leave behind her cowardice and escape; Catherine had to be a conformist until her death. I consider the author’s way of contrasting all the characters and elements in the story very enriching and there are an infinite number of parallelisms that are worth analysing. Her magnificent way of contrasting matching pairs made the story balanced and