Gothic Novel Wuthering Heights

WUTHERING HEIGHTS AS A GOTHIC NOVEL

Dr. Seeme Mahmood

Assistant Professor English

Institute for Excellence in Higher Education

Bhopal

Introduction

Wuthering Heights was Emily Bronte’s only novel and it is considered the fullest expression of her highly individual poetic vision. It was published in 1847 under the pseudonym of Ellis Bell, and attracted considerable critical attention: many people were shocked and horrified by the sheer violence of Emily 's novels .The plot of the Gothic novels typically involved the common innocent folk getting themselves ensnared in a complex, mysterious and oftentimes evil paranormal intrigue, usually against a feeble, vulnerable damsel. The gothic novels were more than some sinister tales told to horrify

The settings often play a significant part in the unfolding of the narrative: their features may directly influence the action; they may also symbolize some aspects of the personalities of the protagonists. Wuthering Heights is a novel of passion, revenge, and the destructiveness of a love that is too fierce. The action of Nelly’s story begins in the 1770s; Lockwood leaves Yorkshire in 1802. The constant emphasis on landscape within the text of Wuthering Heights endows the setting with symbolic importance. This landscape is comprised of moors: wide, wild expanses, high but somewhat soggy, and thus infertile. Emily Bronte makes great use of the story’s Gothic landscape and setting to draw into her story and complement its ongoing themes. The book divides its plot between the wild farmhouse, Wuthering Heights, and the cleanly kept mansion, Thrushcross Grange. The first symbolizes man’s dark side while the latter symbolizes an artificial utopia. Wuthering Heights is a setting filled with passion and strength, but it is also filled with doomed intensity. Thrushcross Grange is filled with civility and kindness, but is filled with snobbishness. The two are complete opposites of each other; they are foils for each other in the sense that the two heighten each

The novelists painting a realistic picture of life do not introduce the supernatural in their novels for the supernatural does not form part of real life, and so it is out of place. But with Bronte, the supernatural is an expression of her faith in the immortality of the soul. She believes in both the indestructibility of the soul as well as of love. Heathcliff and Catherine both die, but love, which is an active passion of their soul and dominated their life continued even after their death. That is why they are united after their death as ghosts. Wuthering Heights contains only a few actual supernatural events, but its characters frequently refer to ghosts and devils, either as a matter of genuine belief or in figurative speech. The first supernatural element we encounter appears early in the novel, when Mr. Lockwood stays overnight at Wuthering Heights during a snowstorm. After having a nightmare, he finds his hand gripped by the child ghost of Catherine Earnshaw, who asks him to let her in. Because she won 't let go, Mr. Lockwood angrily speculates to Heathcliff that she must have been a changeling in life. In Irish and British mythology, a changeling is a mischievous fairy disguised as an infant or child who switches places with a human child. Lockwood means that Catherine 's ghost is too capricious for her living self to have been human. After he leaves the room, however, he finds that Heathcliff is jealous of