Theme Of Gothic In Wuthering Heights

“I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!” (194) Written by Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights was first published in 1847. The murky weather, the horrid nightmares, brooding and forlorn characters, and the torture and cruciation in the story shows all the essential features of a Gothic Fiction during the Romantic Era. There are romantic interests among the characters too, like with Catherine (junior) with Hareton, or with Catherine (senior) and Heathcliff, ergo, making the novel a Romance Novel, too. Set in the Victorian Era, the book is set in Yorkshire, Northern England, in 1801. Nonetheless, the story flashbacks into 1770, then gradually proceeds back to the present. In the harsh and secluded Yorkshire moors, two manor houses, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange are located. Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw Linton lived there respectively. Heathcliff is described to be a sinister, melancholy, and tyrannical man who loves Catherine obsessively. As a child, he was portrayed as dark-skinned, gypsy child, who nobody knows of his past as he was adopted into the Earnshaws when he was found on the streets, starving. However, as an adult, he is transformed into a “tall, athletic, well-formed man,” (110) and although he was a “dark-skinned gypsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman: that is, as much a gentleman as many a country squire.” (4) On the other hand, Catherine, or Cathy, is unruly, stubborn, mischievous, and rebellious, and she is