In your opinion, how does this quotation represent Bronte's exploration of the Gothic Tradition through the central characters Heathcliff and Catherine, and their struggle to adapt to conventional society in her novel Wuthering Heights?

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Wuthering Heights Essay

In chapter Twenty nine of Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff informs Nelly Dean:-

 ‘I got the sexton who was digging Linton’s grave, to remove the earth off her coffin-lid, and I opened it.’

In your opinion, how does this quotation represent Bronte’s exploration of the Gothic Tradition through the central characters Heathcliff and Catherine, and their struggle to adapt to conventional society in her novel Wuthering Heights?

Wuthering Heights is a classic example of the Gothic romance, a type of novel that flourished in the later 18th and 19th century. Gothic romances were traditionally mysteries, often involving the supernatural and heavily tinged with horror. They were usually set against dark backgrounds such as haunted buildings and barren, threatening, country sides.

Gothic romance dealt with cultural and social issues in conventional society.

The gothic setting in Wuthering Heights suggests a wild and primitive landscape unconstrained by conventional ideas. We are first introduced to Wuthering Heights as it appears to the middle class Mr Lockward. Wild stormy and primitive, the house represents everything unacceptable, unconventional and unorthodox. The stormy weather is a fore shadow of the dark and bleak events that are to come. By contrast Thrushcross Grange symbolises conventional, refined, acceptable society. Thus, the two houses represent opposite morals and values in Victorian society. When Heathcliff and Catherine first see Thrushcross Grange they say “Ah, it was beautiful, a splendid place…we should have thought ourselves in heaven”. This contrasts sharply with the appearance of Wuthering Heights on it’s bleak hilltop. Lockward says: “The earth hard with a black frost and the air made me shiver through every limb”.  

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Bronte’s hero/villan, Heathcliff, is clearly as much a product of the storm, as the house he occupies. Lockward says of him: “He is a dark skinned gypsy”. His childhood experiences have turned him into the monster he becomes as an adult. Unlike conventional Victorians, his origins are unknown, other than that he was a parentless gypsy boy found wandering in the streets by Mr Earnshaw, who adopts him and takes him to Wuthering Heights where he grows up with Mr Earnshaw’s children Catherine and Hindley. However, Heathcliff’s happiness, and therefore goodness, are destroyed by his cruel treatment at the ...

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