Comment on the importance of the setting in Wuthering Heights.

Comment on the importance of the setting in Wuthering Heights.

The impassioned happenings of Emily Bronte’s classic novel fittingly take place in the desolate and miserable landscape of the Yorkshire Moors. Emily Bronte’s surroundings clearly had a gravitational effect on her literature; she grew up in the small and somewhat isolated village of Thornton, West Riding of Yorkshire, and later moved to Haworth, a village surrounded by moorlands far and wide. In fact, she is supposed to have based the locations of her renowned novel on landmarks in the local area; Ponden Hall is reputedly Thrushcross Grange, and Top Withens is alledgedly the setting for Wuthering Heights.

“Fiction depends for its life on place.” American author Eudora Welty said, “Place is the crossroads of circumstance;” Bronte would almost certainly have agreed. The setting for her book Wuthering Heights plays a vital role in the progression of the novel; typical of Gothic literature, the isolation and harshness of the landscape adds to the foreboding and ominous atmosphere prominent in the book. The wild and primitive backdrop to the tale can be not only pitiless  (“I had half a mind to spend it by my study fire, instead of wading through heath and mud to Wuthering Heights”), but it can also act as a sanctuary. Heathcliff and Catherine retreat to the rugged moors to escape Hindley’s cruelty, and in this way the two grow close.

The idea of isolation is vital in a Gothic novel; the second half of Austen’s Northanger Abbey takes place in an old and secluded abbey; Thornfield Hall (of Jane Eyre) is all the more ominous because of its solitude and emptiness – not only does this accentuate Jane’s sense of entrapment, but it also reflects Rochester’s mood upon her arrival; many readers claim that the scariest parts of Frankenstein are those set in the French Alps – the landscape only serves to emphasize Frankenstein’s helplessness. Another example is found in Bram Stoker’s Dracula; Count Dracula traps Jonathan Harker in his gloomy castle, and he is unable to leave, not only due to his fear of Dracula, but also because of his fear of the wilderness of Transylvania. This is a key theme in all Gothic literature: the sense of isolation and helplessness, and this mood is created not only by the story, but also by the setting. Nelly and Cathy fall victim to this sense of helplessness when Heathcliff, Bronte’s Byronic hero, keeps them captive at Wuthering Heights. Thus, Bronte is clearly making use of the desolate landscape...................................................................................

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