Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights -1

This essay discusses how characters in novels can often move through physical landscapes as well as moral landscapes. It basically discusses how the setting in the novel relates to the temperaments of the characters.
The temperaments of the characters in a novel can sometimes be skillfully portrayed and enhanced through their physical surroundings. Their morals and values are constructed to reflect the surroundings they are placed in, which helps the reader uderstand them and their situation more. This use of setting is clearly demonstrated in Emily Brontes novel Wuthering Heights, a story of love and hate between two families, which is emphasised by the houses in which these families live. The story takes place in two main settings, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, both situated on the harsh and desolate moors of Yorkshire. Emily Bronte actually grew up and lived in this place, and so her depiction of it is very accurate, and she uses her knowledge to emphasise the moods and attitudes of the characters. The people from Wuthering Heights such as Heathcliff, are generally angry, ill tempered, vengeful, and often immoral. These attitudes are clearly reflected through the large, cold and dark house, situated on top of a ruthless hill on the moors. Thrushcross Grange is a more cultivated, calm house, situated in a valley of the moors. Its inhabitants, including Edgar Linton, are generally more refined, with more morals and calmer attitudes than those of Wuthering Heights. Catherine Earnshaw is a character who creates the conflict throughout the whole book and between the two characters, Edgar and Heathcliff. Her attitudes are also reflected through the setting in which she grew up, in between the two contrasting houses. It is not only the contrasting attitudes, values, and morals of the characters that make the novel so arresting, but also the physical contrasts between the landscapes in the novel, the two houses.
One of the main characters in Wuthering Heights is the fiendish Heathcliff. An orphan despised since his birth, Heathcliff grows up to become a sadistic, cruel, vengeful and immoral man. He is often reffered to as “like the devil” or as “evil”, and this is certainly the way he acts. His intense yet destroyed passion towards Catherine Earnshaw causes him to despise all members of the Linton family of Thrushcross Grange, and he schemes to destroy them in numerous ways. A horrible person, Heathcliff abuses Isabelle, Edgar Lintons sister, by using her infatuation as a tool of revenge towards the Lintons, he constantly and savagly attacks Linton, his own dying son, and even his tenant, Mr. Lockwood, cannot escape his cruelty. The way Bronte writes the novel, many comparisons can be seen between Heathcliffs character and the actual house in which he grew up, Wuthering Heights. This house is a dark, “bleak”, unpleasant place situated on a high, windy crest on the moors. Yet not only is the atmosphere of Wuthering Heights similar to that of Heathcliff, but both are also physically described in a similar way. The house is


Sources: essayinfo.com › Free Sample Essays › European Literature-02.04.2011