Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there at all times.’Īs he approaches Wuthering Heights on his first visit to his landlord, Lockwood notices ‘the excessive slant of a few stunted firs at the end of the house and a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way as if craving the alms of the sun.’ ‘Wuthering’, Lockwood tells us, ‘is a provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather. Used to a kinder landscape and gentler social codes, the soon-shaken Lockwood struggles to comprehend Wuthering Heights and its inhabitants. Stronghold-like, it repels outsiders and traps its inmates in a prison of intense passions, deadly jealousies and murderous resentments.Įmily Brontë first shows us the house through the eyes of Heathcliff’s southern tenant Lockwood. Yes, we have the strong-willed Cathy, the callously passionate Heathcliff, the robust yet sullen Hareton, but the house looms over the novel in a way perhaps no human character can.Ĭovered with gothic carvings isolated high on a gloomy moor lashed by wind, snow, sleet and rain the house of Wuthering Heights sets the harsh, claustrophobic tone that permeates the book. In Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights, one of the most important characters is the house of Wuthering Heights itself.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |