Wuthering Heights

One major conflict in the novel is the class one, with Heathcliff experiencing resentment against the people born into wealth. Heathcliff directly comes into conflict with Hindley and as a result...

Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights is frequently used as a standard example of Romantic and Gothic literature. This is because one of the defining features of Romantic and Gothic...

Heathcliff is a character who is tormented by his love for Catherine and by his bitterness over his ill treatment by Hindley. Heathcliff has been treated as a favored son by Mr. Earnshaw, and...

Catherine loves Heathcliff, but feels like he could never provide for her socially and financially the way that she feels she deserves. She proclaims that she would be nothing but a beggar if she...

When it comes to physical appearance, Edgar Linton and Heathcliff could not have been more different. Heathcliff is dark, brooding and often unkempt-looking, whereas Edgar Linton is fair, blue-eyed...

Heathcliff outlives his beloved Catherine by several decades. Throughout that time he is angry and tortured by the loss. He is determined to destroy the families he feels have destroyed Catherine...

One of Bronte's many writing talents was her particular use of language. The tone is a description of the speaker's attitude towards his subject, and is best described by an adjective. The tone in...

Heathcliff tells Nelly that Isabella had the delusion that he was a chivalrous man, and he can hardly consider her rational for doing that. When she thought he was in love with her, nothing could...

This incident can be found in Chapter Fourteen of this great novel, and is actually narrated to Nelly Dean by Heathcliff when he describes how Isabella foolishly decided to elope with him....

Heathcliff is undoubtedly one of the most complex characters in English literature, and that is that makes him so singularly unforgettable. A powerful force of nature, a dark brooding presence who...

The nature of texts like Wuthering Heights is that "modern" critical perspectives can help us make new and valuable interpretations. When you ask whether such approaches can "confuse" readers, you...

The houses to which you refer are Wuthering Heights, home of the Earnshaw family, and Thrushcross Grange, home of the Linton family. Both houses are family estates located in the Yorkshire moors...

There are many Gothic elements to Wuthering Heights. These include the following: Setting: the Gothic genre is known for settings that are wild, forbiddingly beautiful, and isolated. Wuthering...

There is certainly lots of truth in this statement. Love and revenge are two of the key themes in this novel that result in its plot and the way in which Heathcliff sets out to seemingly take over...

Although Isabella casts Heathcliff as a romantic, Byronic hero whose hard exterior masks a tender heart that loves her, Heathcliff marries her to get revenge on the Lintons. He especially wants...

In the conclusion of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, the tragedies, the wrong-headed decisions, the remorseless cruelties, the cowardice and judgmental rejection of past life at Wuthering Heights...

Heathcliff succeeds in avenging himself against Hindley, who degraded him so much that Catherine could not think of marrying him. Hindley, an alcoholic, is addicted to gambling by the time...

Lockwood is a tenant of Heathcliff's, renting Thrushcross Grange. As a conventional and outgoing person, he acts as a foil to the strange, fierce landlord he has unwittingly fallen in with....

For such a passionate and intense story of love and revenge, Wuthering Heights has a happy and peaceful ending. That is the purpose of the closing scene. Mr. Lockwood has just finished learning...

In Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, Lockwood experiences two nightmares while he spends the night at Wuthering Heights because of a bad weather. In the first nightmare, when he falls asleep at a...

This is an interesting question, especially as it is complicated by the fact that most of our information about the older Catherine Linton comes from Nelly Dean, a classic unreliable source. If we...

Isabella writes a letter to Nelly after she has eloped with Heathcliff and gone with him to Wuthering Heights. She is appalled by the conditions she finds there, and horrified at the diabolic...

The sociable Mr. Lockwood, isolated on the moors, wants to think well of his landlord, Mr. Heathcliff. Therefore, contrary to all the evidence before him, he decides at first that Heathcliff is...

Heathcliff is both a hero and a villain. At different times in the book and with various characters, he has the potential to be a hero. At other times and with other characters, he is a villain. He...

The title Wuthering Heights symbolizes contrasting themes of freedom and nature versus darkness and gloom. Initially, it symbolizes joy in the beauty of the outdoors and nature unfettered from...

Heathcliff elopes with Isabella to hurt Edgar and to avenge himself against Catherine's marrying Edgar Linton, whom he detests. By marrying Isabella, Heathcliff also gains power over her and...

The two characters Heathcliff and Lockwood are definitely set against each other in Wuthering Heights, and, at first glance, do have some compelling comparisons. Both are outsiders to the bleak...

Wuthering Heights shows that, in the days of its writing, education is tantamount to opportunity. Each of the characters receives different opportunities, all of them stemming from their level of...

In the final three chapters of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, readers find out the resolution to the story. Lockwood returns to Thrushcross Grange later in the year after Linton's death and...

In Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë uses extreme settings to establish a dark, foreboding atmosphere which quickly makes the reader suspect that the novel will not end happily. By using a new...

Wuthering Heights is a love story. In it, Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff grow up together in a dysfunctional household marked by physical abuse and alcoholism. They often escape together to...

Marriage in Wuthering Heights separates people who are in love and causes misery to others. Bronte uses marriage to condemn patriarchal oppression. The great tragedy of the novel is that its two...

In Wuthering Heights, Cathy and Heathcliff pine for each other. Heathcliff is a total contradiction and continues to mistreat everyone around him, using them only to further his aims of ruining the...

Hindley is insanely jealous of Heathcliff. He resents the fact that his father treats this dark, brooding creature, this "imp of Satan," like he's the Prodigal Son. Hindley has some major hang-ups;...

Let us remember the strong role that family and bloodlines play in this novel. A key aspect of Gothic literature is the way in which family curses or evils are passed down through the generations,...

Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" ranks high on the list of major works of English literature for its powerful imagery, complex structure, and even itss ambiguity. This novel deals with the...

The careful, exacting scrutiny of the text characteristic of New Criticism, which was popular in the conservative era of the mid-twentieth century, certainly mitigates readers' emotional responses...

Though commonly characterized as a romance, Wuthering Heights is largely about revenge, though the desire for vengeance always comes from hurt feelings related to love. When Mr. Earnshaw openly...

From chapter 11 until Catherine's death, Nelly and Catherine have a strained relationship, characterized by Nelly turning against Catherine. Nelly, by her own testimony, has been alarmed by...

In her critical essay, "The Waif at the Window: Emily Brontë's Feminine 'Bildungsroman,'" Annette R. Federico writes, ...in terms of the first generation, Wuthering Heights is not a Bildungsroman...

The Romantics loved nature and thought it could uplift and redeem people. The Romantics also wished to convey strong emotions in their writing. They elevated true love above considerations of money...

Mary Louise Pratt defines contact zones as spaces where people of different cultures come into contact, most often in ways that clash. In Wuthering Heights, two examples of people in contact zones...

Joseph imposes on Catherine and Heathcliff a particularly fire and brimstone version of Christianity in which the two are constantly threatened with hell. Joseph seems to take a grim pleasure in...

In the novel 'Wuthering Heights' by Emily Bronte, the character called Lockwood to whom the story is narrated by the housekeeper, has to spend the night in the creepy gothic house. Whether it is...

It is indeed ironic that Heathcliff should be regarded as the epitome of barbarism—of all that is wild, impulsive, and savage—when it is the supposedly respectable Hindley Earnshaw who behaves...

Catherine and Heathcliff grow up as neglected and, in Heathcliff's case, abused children. They are left orphaned when their father (Heathcliff's stepfather) dies. Their guardian, Catherine's older...

Mrs. Ellen Dean, called Nelly, feels a certain amount of guilt regarding Heathcliff because she did not like Heathcliff when they were young (she is only about three years older than him), and she...

Nelly is certainly not reliable. She makes her dislike of Catherine quite clear and even when Catherine does deserve some sympathy (such as when she's worried about her decision to marry Edgar...

Wuthering Heights is both of its time and sui generis—one of a kind. It is quite different in tone from the novels of Dickens, for instance, and of most Victorians, including other women authors...

The Earnshaws, who live at Wuthering Heights, are a dysfunctional family. Mr. Earnshaw picks up Heathcliff, an orphan waif, on the streets of Liverpool and adopts him. Mr. Earnsahw ends up favoring...