Wuthering Heights Moors Essay

Kettle argues that “Wuthering Heights is about England in 1847,” because the setting, language, interests, and values depicted in the novel are accurate to the time and setting of the novel (161).He claims that the setting is distinctly Yorkshire and that “the language of Nelly, Joseph and Hareton is the language of Yorkshire people” (161).has a ghost, Catherine Earnshaw, who scares Lockwood when he is at Wuthering Heights (117). As a character who is from the lower class but is exposed to middle class ideas, Nellie is torn between the superstitious beliefs of her class and the rational thoughts of her employers.

Kettle argues that “Wuthering Heights is about England in 1847,” because the setting, language, interests, and values depicted in the novel are accurate to the time and setting of the novel (161).

What role do the moors play in the development of the story, and in the presentation of the characters?

What roles do the personalities of the narrators play in the way that the story is told? Think about the influence of the physical landscape in the novel.

Yet, she tells him that she is uncomfortable in the house or the dark and is impatient to move back to the Grange (430).

The lower class’ fear of ghosts is not just part of the ghost story; it demonstrates how the characters in the novel perceive reality, thus adding cultural detail to the story and enhancing the realism of the work.

As further evidence for the painstaking detail Emily Brontë put into her work, C. Sanger analysed the passage of time throughout the novel and found the ages of the characters and the years are accurate throughout the novel (134–136). Heathcliff desires to be haunted by Catherine, but she refuses to.

As a realist text, records as faithfully as possible the actual life stories of Catherine, Heathcliff, and their families. Additionally, there seem to be local folk tales that demonize Heathcliff and warn of evil ghosts, evidenced by the little boy Nellie meets and “the old man by the kitchen fire” who swears he sees ghosts (430).(This possibility is mentioned several times in Wuthering Heights.) Thus, the moors serve very well as symbols of the wild threat posed by nature.As the setting for the beginnings of Catherine and Heathcliff's bond since the two play on the moors during childhood, the moor land transfers its symbolic associations onto the love affair Ghosts appear throughout "Wuthering Heights", as they do in most other works of Gothic fiction, yet Bronte always presents them in such a way that whether they really exist remains ambiguous. Thought to be the inspiration for the Earnshaws home in Emily Brontes' novel 'Wuthering Heights'. Licensed under CC Attribution Share Alike 2.0 license" data-lightbox="media-gallery-1567848425" English: Emily Brontë's novel Wutherng Heights cast relationships.However, while Miller argues that the novel is “a masterwork of ‘realist’ fiction,” he retains that the novel is not purely a realistic novel: “…it obeys most of the conventions of Victorian realism, though no reader can miss the fact that it gives these conventions a twist” (362). Clearly, the ghost story plays a major role in the plotline of the novel and provides considerable insight into the setting and characters.This “twist” is the inclusion of a ghost story as part of the realism in the novel. In an age of realism, believing in ghosts was frowned upon by the educated upper classes; however, the supernatural was still widely believed in the lower class, especially by the lower class in .Ghosts, despite their incredulity in modern science, were an inexplicable, inextricable part of life, and as such, are a part of the realism depicted in .The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms defines realism as “recording or ‘reflecting’ faithfully an actual way of life … the problems of ordinary people in unremarkable circumstances …Two of the most powerful images in the novel include the moors and the supernatural.This landscape is comprised primarily of moors: wild expanses, high but somewhat soggy, and thus infertile.The novel presents ghosts as an aspect of reality for both the region and the characters, providing further detail into the events of the story and the social context of the novel.As a realist work, the novel’s detailed approach to the setting and characters correlates with the values of Victorian realist authors.