In Emily Brontë’s Gothic world of romance and isolation, the lives of her characters, Catherine and Heathcliff, revolve around one focal point: Wuthering Heights. Every experience in this book leads back to the Earnshaw estate. In the beginning of the novel, Brontë commits a paragraph to the definition of the word “wuthering”, foreshadowing the future significance of the symbolism of this building. After Nelly Dean introduces the backstory of Heathcliff and Catherine, distinct parallels between the two individuals and the building appear. Through the estate of Wuthering Heights, Brontë provides a physical manifestation of not only of Heathcliff and Catherine as individuals, but also as a couple.
From the introduction of Wuthering Heights, isolation defines the estate, just as separateness …show more content…
Just as “the architect had foresight to build it [Wuthering Heights] strong”, (Brontë, 4), Heathcliff expresses, “misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or satan could inflict would have parted us,” (Brontë, 162-163) when confronted with a dying Catherine. Despite their failings and their ultimate separation on earth through Catherine’s marriage to Edgar, Heathcliff and Catherine always bear one another in their hearts, and the strength and passion of their love mirrors the unyielding solidity of Wuthering Heights. According to Nelly, their love truly transcends human understanding, as their ghosts supposedly haunt the countryside of the moors. Subsequent inhabitants of Wuthering Heights, Hareton Earnshaw and Catherine Linton, carry the same fierce love for one another. In the hearts Hareton and young Catherine, the love between Heathcliff and Catherine that never bloomed because of their environment, takes root and grows, producing a new era of prosperity and life for Wuthering
From the introduction of Wuthering Heights, isolation defines the estate, just as separateness …show more content…
Just as “the architect had foresight to build it [Wuthering Heights] strong”, (Brontë, 4), Heathcliff expresses, “misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or satan could inflict would have parted us,” (Brontë, 162-163) when confronted with a dying Catherine. Despite their failings and their ultimate separation on earth through Catherine’s marriage to Edgar, Heathcliff and Catherine always bear one another in their hearts, and the strength and passion of their love mirrors the unyielding solidity of Wuthering Heights. According to Nelly, their love truly transcends human understanding, as their ghosts supposedly haunt the countryside of the moors. Subsequent inhabitants of Wuthering Heights, Hareton Earnshaw and Catherine Linton, carry the same fierce love for one another. In the hearts Hareton and young Catherine, the love between Heathcliff and Catherine that never bloomed because of their environment, takes root and grows, producing a new era of prosperity and life for Wuthering