Rhetorical Devices In Wuthering Heights

Who better would reveal what happens in closed doors of families in 1800’s United Kingdom with great practice of language than one who had the skills and the experience to? As she, according to bio., Emily Bronte, lived from 1818 to 1848, in Yorkshire, United Kingdom, she wrote poems and novels under her and her sisters: Charlotte and Anne Bronte’s pseudonym “Ellis Bell”. In her only published novel, Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte authored the narration of two families: Earnshaws and Linton to cognizance their decisions and their motives at Thrushcross Grange. Through Mr. Lockwood and Nelly Dean’s narration, as well as Catherine Earnshaw’s diary entries, she composed a plot of two falling deeply in love but never marrying. Although the novel

Emily Bronte used various figures of speech to relate commonly known ideas to less known concepts. Catherine, alike to other family members, had rage and had it shown through the parallelism, “... though possessed of keen wit, keen feelings, and a keen temper, too, if irritated” (Bronte 99). The parallelism and repetition is effective in listing Catherine’s characteristics, all the while connecting it to the theme. In the simile, “ I’ll crush his ribs in like a rotten hazel-nut before I cross the threshold!” (Bronte 114), is said by Mr. Linton to Catherin to explain his jealousy and motive to kill Heathcliff. The amount of anger and frustration expressed to keep their marriage together is emphasized by the rhetorical device. It also shows that hatred is expressed in a family when one is lost for patience, becoming a problem and resolution. In the metaphor, “He’s not a rough diamond-a pearl-containing oyster of rustic: he’s a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man”(Bronte 101), Heathcliff is described by Nelly Dean to be powerful and potentially hurtful to Isabella. Dean protects Isabella by warning her at the cost of dehumanizing Heathcliff. The metaphor is used to describe and illustrate an image for readers and Isabella. The condescending tone and choice of words translates into