(Wuthering Heights as a Gothic Novel)

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IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science (IOSR-JHSS) Volume 22, Issue 7, Ver. 1 (July. 2017) PP 01-05 e-ISSN: 2279-0837, p-ISSN: 2279-0845. www.iosrjournals.org
DOI: 10.9790/0837-2207010105 www.iosrjournals.org 1 | Page
(Wuthering Heights as a Gothic Novel)
Mushtaq Ahmed Kadhim Aldewan
(Department of Science, College of Basic Education / University of Sumer , Country :Iraq )
Abstract: Wuthering Heights "is an English genre of fiction popular in the 18th century. It is characterized by
an atmosphere of mystery and horror and having a pseudo-medieval setting. It is a multi- generational Gothic
and romantic novel. It revolves around the doomed love between Heathcliff and Catherine .Wuthering
Heights sheds the lights with Lockwood, an owner of Heathcliff's, coming the home of his landlord Mr.
Earnshaw, a Yorkshire Farmer and owner of Wuthering Heights, brings home an orphan from Liverpool. The
baby is called Heathcliff and lives with the Earnshaw children, Hindley and Catherine.It is a movement that
refers to ruin, decay, love, romance death, terror, and chaos, and unusual irrationality and compassion over
rationality and sense.
I. INTRODUCTION
Wuthering Heights was written by a young woman named Emily Bronte who was one of the four
children of hardworking clergyman, Patrick Bronte. Wuthering Heights, the romantic and passionate love story
between the barbarous and uncomfortable Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw. The story is told through the
narrator Mr Lockwood, a visitor to Wuthering Heights who is told the fascinating tale by Nelly Dean, the
servant. Her tale revolves around the orphan Heathcliff, Catherine Earnshaw and her descendants, and the
Linton relatives. Heathcliff was a enthusiastic gypsy child adopted by the Earnshaw family. He loves Catherine
Earnshaw. She loves him, but she doesn't get married to him but she chooses for Edgar Linton, who has property
and status. Heathcliff elopes with Isabella, Edgar's sister. Heathcliff becomes a rich and respected man. He
could take over the Earnshaw family home and the Linton family home. Heathcliff loves Catherine throughout
the story, in spite of he is led to inflict revenge as he cannot own her. He is buried next to her when he dies.
Bronte describes natural forces and events vividly while narrating the plot by means of Nelly Dean and
Lockwood in order to display the connection between the inner and outer natural world in the Wuthering
Heights.Virginia Woolf comments on Wuthering Heights, and       
   
6 Using the extreme and sometimes contemptible behavior of the difference among characters
that Brontë is able to convey significant lessons about the world and universe as a whole, rather than just the
lives of the characters themselves. Barbara Benedict explained Brontë herself in her role as a female author is an
object of curiosity, yet she becomes even more of a curiosity in her brilliant ability to create a completely unique
reality. Woolf describes Brontë as almost possessing magical powers .
The novel is filled with boorish, antagonistic characters that endlessly betray, mistreat and enact
violence and revenge upon each other. The characters do not conform to any recognizable set of social values or
follow any conventional moral code. However, despite the uncivilized characters and the ambiguous morality of
the novel, Wuthering Heights was exceedingly popular in its time, and has continued to be regarded in high
esteem over the years. While the novel is much loved and consistently praised for its beautiful poetic writing
style, Wuthering Heights raises countless questions and lends itself to numerous interpretations. Within its
unconventional framework, Wuthering Heights deals with timeless themes; obsessive love, the thirst for
revenge, and the precariousness of social classes. Interwoven with ghostly appearances and references to
demons and other supernatural elements, Wuthering Heights   
  . By snubbing convention in numerous ways, Wuthering Heights is a
curious novel which has attracted curious readers for many generations.
II. THE HORROR ELEMENT IN WUTHERING HEIGHTS
Gothic narrative novel involves the concepts of paranoia, the barbaric, and the taboo.! Gothic fiction invariably
involves a theme of persecution, often ambiguously rendered, with the victim of persecution being transformed
into a persecutor, or vice versa.An undercurrent of insanity is a staple of any Gothic plot, with ambition or
vengeance driving at least one character to the brink of madness.(Longmans ,1980,15). "Terror made me cruel
,Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find
you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I can not live without my life! I can not live without my soul!" Emily Brontë,
Wuthering Heights,

(Wuthering Heights as a Gothic Novel)
DOI: 10.9790/0837-2207010105 www.iosrjournals.org 2 | Page
The Gothic novel characteristically includes a story of the supernatural, the melodramatic or the
macabre. It was a fashionable form of writing in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Some of the
characteristic features and conventions of the Gothic are listed in the box below often set in a sinister place such
as a castle or ruined building, preferably with underground passages, labyrinths and dungeons. The supernatural
element of the story might result from a curse or omen.David Daiches supports this point of view and expresses

12). This emphasizes that while exploring the environment, Bronte also remarks the coexistence of passion to
protest the dominance of nature over human psychology. "It is as if she could tear up all that we know human
beings by, and fill these unrecognizable transparences with such a gust of life that they transcend reality. Hers,
.
The supernatural may take the form of ghosts, nightmares or animation of previously inanimate
objects. The hero is generally passion-driven, violent and melancholic when Catherine says in the following
quotation. "I have not broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine".Arnold
Kettle explains the deviation into vengefulness          o
Hareton, to Cathy, to his son,even to wretched Hindley, is cruel and inhuman beyond normal thought. He seems

the gothic consistently approached the supernatural as if it can be described or observed in the mode of formal
realism. By novelizing the supernatural, the monstrous and the unspeakable, the gothic attempts to inscribe the
passions of fear and terror.(Ellis,2000,21-22)
III. DEATH AND DESTRUCTION OF LIVES
In 'Wuthering Heights' by Emily Bronte, the characters find destiny and death most of time , which
causes s in a kind of intrigue with doom that colours the novel. In this lesson, we figure out at death in
'Wuthering Heights. 'Demise is all revolves around Wuthering Heights! Things start to descending for the
residents of Wuthering Heights when Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw die leaving siblings to take care oneself
and themselves. In addition to mourning, the children have to learn about love in a loveless and harsh
environment.
            
             
emphasizes that Wuthering Heights has become  literary
canon. Moreover, the use of setting and nature imagery in Wuthering Heights helps to assess how human beings
are affected by the environment and are in a struggle to oppose natural impact through their inner worlds. This
implies that some characters, especially Heathcliff and Catherine, intend to suppress the strength of the natural
landscape by their passion.
The novel is curious in its convoluted narrative-within-a-narrative format, its embodiment of the
Gothic genre, and its lack of concern with social conventions, but it also contains curiosities in the form of
supernatural phenomena, the portrayal of the female, and the character of Heathcliff. Curiosity in English
culture, according to Ba   
that takes the form of a perceptible violation of species and categories: an ontological transgression that is
registered empirically. (Cavaliero, 1995. 2.) There is no doubt that Earnshaw ,her father's death influenced
Catherine. Not only she have to deal with mourning the loss of her father, but Catherine and Heathcliff are left
in the care of her abusive brother, Hindley. In addition, Catherine's sister-in-law, Frances, dies in childbirth and
Edgar's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Linton, die from an illness Catherine gave them as they were caring for her in
their home.
Wuthering Heights itself is exploring by a curious inclination. Mr. Lockwood, a person entering the
world of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, is seeing after his first faced with Heathcliff and has a
voracious urge to find out the history of the strange web of characters. Lockwood questions Nelly Dean, the
     oping sincerely she would prove a regular
 
            nerves
   

While Catherine is forward to her marriage offering to Edgar, Catherine tells Nelly,her housekeeper
about a dream that she has had her death. ''I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and
I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into
the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.'' It looks odd and
strange that Catherine would contemplate death what should be a happy and enjoyable time in her living, but
her dream provides two goals. Firstly, it is a metaphor for how Catherine feels about leaving Wuthering Heights.
Secondly, it threatens, warns of, Catherine's life after death.

(Wuthering Heights as a Gothic Novel)
DOI: 10.9790/0837-2207010105 www.iosrjournals.org 3 | Page
Catherine's Death chooses Edgar, it prompts Heathcliff to run away from Wuthering Heights. When he
returns and begins courting Edgar's sister, Isabella, Edgar refuses to allow him back at Thrushcross Grange. As a
result, Catherine stops eating and ends up going mad. When Heathcliff realizes the condition Catherine is in, he
is angry with her for killing them both by betraying her heart and marrying Edgar. Heathcliff says, ''Do I want to
live? What kind of living will it be when you - oh, God! would you like to live with your soul in the grave?''For
Heathcliff, living without Catherine is a fate worse than death. He actually feels like a part of him dies with her
and begs her to haunt him rather than to leave him .Heathcliff has miserable stupidity of his character, child, and
                
benevolence and affec        - a pearl-containing oyster of a


                   

The Death of Mr Earnshaw ,at of time Mr. Earnshaw began to fail. He had been active and healthy, yet
his strength left him suddenly; and when he was confined to the chimney-corner he grew grievously irritable. A
nothing vexed him; and suspected slights of his authority nearly threw him into fits. This was especially to be
remarked if any one attempted to impose upon, or domineer over, his favourite: he was painfully jealous lest a
word should be spoken amiss to him; seeming to have got into his head the notion that, because he liked
Heathcliff, all hated, and longed to do him an ill-turn. This          
human beings, with recognizably human needs, capabilities and failings, but the embodiment of the special
             l side
through their passion. To compare between Catherine and natural events in some cases, the winds on Wuthering
Heights devastate the harmony of nature and Catherine destroys the cosmic unity through her marriage to Linton
instead of Heathcliff. Actual
response to the destructive changing natural elements. Hagan expounds this frustration:
IV. THE ROMANTIC ELEMENT IN WUTHERING HEIGHTS
"He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same".
First of all , we could fully understand the characteristics of romantic literature in 18th Century
England through Wuthering Heights.Actually, the Romanticism believed that man, as an individual, is superior,
so romantic novels really probe deeply inside characters. You can see this most obviously with Heathcliff and
his rage and jealous, and also in Catherine, with her need to conform to social standards and her willful
stubbornness. If all else perished and he remained, I could still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he
were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger. [. . .] My love for Linton is like the foliage in the
woods. [. . .] My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but
necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff. [. . .] not as a pleasure. [. . .] but as my own being. (Brontë,1985: 122)
Emily emphasizes the natural quality of her emotions by enriching her feelings for Heathcliff and
Edgar by means of natural imagery. Moreover, Catherine indicates that she is the other self of Heathcliff, i.e.,
               
Heathcliff."In the evening, the weather broke; the wind shifted from south to north-east and brought rain first
and then sleet, and snow. On the morrow, one could hardly imagine that there had been three weeks of summer:
the primroses and crocuses were hidden under wintry drifts; the larks were silent, the young leaves of the early
trees smitten and blackened". (Brontë,1985,206)  Wuthering Heights,
Catherine is depicted as a beautiful person in a way responding to the beauty of nature. Landscape descriptions
in Wuthering Heights become much clearer when
"I have just returned from a visit to my landlord in 1801 the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled
with. This is certainly a beautiful country! In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation
 
            human
beings by, and fill these unrecognizable transparences with such a gust of life that they transcend reality. Hers,
  What vain weather-cocks we are! I, who had determined to
hold myself independent of all social intercourse, and thanked my stars that, at length, I had lighted on a spot
where it was next to impracticable, I, weak wretch, after maintaining till dusk a struggle with low spirits, and
solitude, was finally compelled to strike my colours; and, under pretence of gaining information concerning the
necessities of establishment". (Bronte, 1985: 74)
The fictional and romantic characters of Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights are also in
conflict with their environment in Wuthering Heights   
              
existence of two different worlds signified through Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange.

(Wuthering Heights as a Gothic Novel)
DOI: 10.9790/0837-2207010105 www.iosrjournals.org 4 | Page
While Wuthering Heights represents nature involving rivers, trees, rocks, leaves, air, and wind, Thrushcross
Grange stands for the modern world of money, greed, and technology. Such a contrast ends up a rivalry in most
cases and relatively signifies t         
problems in their lives and through being indifferent towards it. The existence of a dualistic structure in their
lives implies the endless developing conflicts in these families. Unlike Wuthering Heights, Thrushcross Grange

splendid place carpeted with crimson, and crimson covered chairs and tables.
While stressing the relation between the beauty and that of nature, Catherine is depicted as part of the
natural habitat she lives in. However, she becomes much more powerful than nature in respect to her passion.
       ss is reflected by most critics and, thus, they
support how Catherine contradicts with nature. Like most critics Phyllis Bentley, a very early critic who
        masterpiece. Her powerful reason would have
deduced new spheres of discovery from the knowledge of the old; and her strong imperious will would never

younger Cathy, for example, becomes elevated to new prominence in this reading. If Heathcliff is the tyrannical
monster enslaving the kingdom, it is Cathy who "slays the beast," so to speak. It is her love for Hareton that can
be argued to have broken Heathcliff's spirit, and it is she who educates him and prepares him for his new role.
At the end of the novel, when Nelly narrates Lockwood about the death of Heathcliff and Catherine, she
describes their fearlessness. they reflect their contradictory evaluations of each other (Sedgwick, 1986: 110)
Being assessed as a non- human supernatural being, Heathcliff is noted as powerful and wild, --even more
powerful than nature because of his passion to have dominance over it. Catherine Earnshaw, on the other hand,
embodies the characteristics of both Heathcliff and Edgar. Besides, doubts begin to appear as to whether
Heathcliff is human at all and people around him become the victim of his inhumanity10 (Sharma, 1994: 43).
Heathcliff is depicted as wilder than nature in his natural peculiarities. Outlying hills have basically been
portrayed as wild and fearful as well as mystic in its nature.
However, Heathcliff has been described as much wilder in his inner nature in Wuthering Heights
mouth watered to tear you with his teeth, because he is only half mannot so much and theand the rest
       
universal love continuing on the moors which cannot be ended by death (Anderson, 1993: 114). This continuity

as well as universal such as the natural forces of Wuthering Heights. This indicates that they respond to natural
atmosphere by their eternal love to each other. However, their own passion which is more powerful than the
hills also destroys their love. Heathcliff reflects how he is worried about losing Catherine
V. CONCLUSION
Emily's novel includes the relationship between Nature and humanity; and between Romance and
horror; ways in which the soul might survive after death; personal betrayal and injustice; the imagination;
separation and loss. Such themes must have been in her mind as she thought about the new novel. In Wuthering
Heights she had learned the value of tight arranged in order of occurrence dominance ; it seems likely that this
time she would want to start with a project , but this may be deceptive , since it is actually in the writing that
Emily finds out her narrative novel. Emily Bronte achieved her artistic success through a combination of
inspiration and hard work: this is not a startling conclusion. Gothic romances were mysteries, often involving
the supernatural and heavily tinged with horror, and romance they were usually set against dark backgrounds of
medieval ruins and haunted castles. Wuthering Heights, published in 1847, revolves around the passionate and
destructive love between its two central characters, Edgar, and Heathcliff .Emily Bronte's headstrong and
beautiful Catherine Earnshaw and her tall, dark, handsome, and brooding hero/devil, Heathcliff.
The Novel revolves around the family of the Earnshaws, own      
where the defeniftly hedgehog, Heathcliff, is brought by the father of the foundling who has found him deserted
        first
brings the kid home,Heathcliff and Hindley. Both boys, indeed, hate each other with a passion partly born of
 
inferred more than an ac              
When Earnshaw dies, Hindley wastes time in correcting the unlawful takeover of control from which he thinks
he has got sorrow by recognizing Heathcliff to the level of a servant. Although, Cathy and Heathcliff have
formed a 

(Wuthering Heights as a Gothic Novel)
DOI: 10.9790/0837-2207010105 www.iosrjournals.org 5 | Page
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