RainyDay Relationships Use of Weather in Wuthering Heights
In Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, numerous references are made to different conditions of weather. Even the title of the novel suggests the storminess present in nearly the entire book. The often-changing weather serves to signify the characters’ personalities, as well as the changes that they go through during the course of their lives.
In fact, the first incidence of a reference being made to the weather occurs with a thought of Mr. Lockwood. “Wuthering being a significant provincial adjective,” he says, “descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather” (46). Because Wuthering Heights has been built on the moors, wind blows fiercely during storms. At this point, Lockwood knows little about Heathcliff, but the significance of the house’s name will become more apparent to him later in the novel.
After getting settled into his new house at Thrushcross Grange, Lockwood decides to pay a visit to Heathcliff. He arrives at the house just as snow is starting to fall and observes the yard. “On that bleak hilltop,” he notes, “the earth was hard with a black frost, and the air made me shiver through every limb” (51). While it was cold at his own house, it seems even colder here, and the weather is beginning to get worse. It isn’t even until he is at the gate of Wuthering Heights that the snow starts to fall.
As will later be shown, the earth at Wuthering Heights is as cold and hard as Heathcliff’s heart. He provides Lockwood with little food or comforts at his arrival and does not attempt to be a gracious host. It is only with a great deal of gruffness that he decides to allow Lockwood to spend the night at his house until he can go home the next morning. This is one of the first indications of Heathcliff’s lack of compassion for the rest of humanity.
The next day, Heathcliff offers to accompany Lockwood on his way back home, explaining that he will not be able to find the way on his own. While Lockwood thought he would be able to find his way home based on rocks sticking up along the path, he finds the hills to be “one billowy, white ocean; the swells and falls...blotted out from the chart which my yesterday’s walk left pictured in my mind” (72-3).
The long, winding path nearest to Wuthering Heights is much harder...
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...ld not make him a better person than he always had been. He died that night with a “frightful, life-like gaze of exultation...and his parted lips, and sharp white teeth sneered too” (365). It is difficult to know what Heathcliff was thinking in his final moments. While her death was surrounded by sunshine, he died during a night of merciless rain. Despite her fits of temper and selfishness, Catherine was always a warm-hearted person deep down, as shown by the way she would stay to console people after hurting their feelings when she was a child. But Heathcliff’s only expression of any compassion was toward Catherine; otherwise, he was as cold as the rain that soaked his lifeless corpse. The weather present at his death served as a fitting end to his tortured life.
Emily Bronte makes good use of the weather in important parts of Wuthering Heights. The climates allow the reader insight into the minds, personalities, and situations of the characters, who are as complex as the settings in which they find themselves. Snow in the beginning of autumn is not surprising in a book where love is found, lost, and found again, sometimes in another person and sometimes in death.
Wuthering Heights was written by Emily Bronte. The story is centered on hatred, jealousy, and revenge that spans two generations. Social class plays a significant role in the story, as it the factor that ultimately divides two loves from being together. The futures of Cathy, Hareton, and Linton are shaped by the vengeful decisions made by Heathcliff. Each character chooses to use Heathcliff’s manipulation in a different way.
...he Heights begins to change. The roughness and violence of the property begins to fade after Heathcliff and Hindley die. Katherine and Hareton take the initiative to have more flowers planted in the garden. They talk to their servants with respect and help to make the place more warming. It is almost as if Wuthering Heights had brightened. Wuthering Heights went through its own transformation throughout the novel.
Lockwood, a newly arrived tenant of one of the outer homesteads belonging to Mr. Heathcliff’s estate. In this entry Mr. Lockwood relates how he visited Mr. Heathcliff to introduce himself, and proceeds to describe the demeanor of his new landlord. Mr. Heathcliff and Mr. Lockton are the only two characters of consequence who are developed in this short chapter, though a third, Joseph, is introduced as Mr. Heathcliff’s “elderly, nay . . . very old” servant, and utters only a short statement to express his ornery nature and displeasure at having to look after an unexpected and unwanted guest (E. Brontë
The initial downward spiral of Heathcliff’s life was predominantly caused by harsh influences in the environment in which he was raised. Heathcliff, an adopted child, grew up in Wuthering Heights, a desolate and dystopian estate when compared to the beauty of the neighboring Thrushcross Grange. In childhood, Heathcliff displayed evidence of a sympathetic personality through his emotional attachment to Catherine and kind attitude towards Nelly. At the time of Mr. Earnshaw’s death, Nelly describes a scene where, “Miss Cathy had been sick, and that made her still; she
The setting used throughout the novel Wuthering Heights, helps to set the mood to describe the characters. We find two households separated by the cold, muddy, and barren moors, one by the name of Wuthering Heights, and the other Thrushcross Grange. Each house stands alone, in the mist of the dreary land, and the atmosphere creates a mood of isolation. These two places, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange differ greatly in appearance and mood. These differences reflect the universal conflict between storm and calm that Emily Bronte develops as the theme.
From the beginning of the novel and most likely from the beginning of Heathcliff's life, he has suffered pain and rejection. When Mr. Earnshaw brings him to Wuthering Heights, he is viewed as a thing rather than a child. Mrs. Earnshaw was ready to fling it out the doors, while Nelly put it on the landing of the stairs hoping that it would be gone the next day. Without having done anything to deserve rejection, Heathcliff is made to feel like an outsider. Following the death of Mr. Earnshaw, Heathcliff suffers cruel mistreatment at the hands of Hindley. In these tender years, he is deprived of love, friendship, and education, while the treatment from jealous Hindley is barbaric and disrupts his mental balance. He is separated from the family, reduced to the status of a servant, undergoes regular beatings and forcibly separated from his soul mate, Catherine. The personality that Heathcliff develops in his adulthood has been formed in response to these hardships of his childhood.
Heathcliff’s arrival at Wuthering Heights impacted him both positively and negatively. Catherine Earnshaw was highly welcoming of him, but her brother Hindley
(4) Wuthering Heights’s mood is melancholy and tumultuous. As a result, the book gives off a feeling of sorrow and chaos. For example, Catherine’s marriage with Edgar Linton made Heathcliff jealous and angry. In retaliation, Heathcliff married Edgar’s sister, Isabella, to provoke Catherine and Edgar. Heathcliff and Isabella’s marriage ignited a chaotic uproar with Edgar and Catherine because Linton disapproved of Heathcliff’s character, and Catherine loved Heathcliff in spite of being married to Edgar. Inside, Catherine wanted to selfishly keep Heathcliff to herself. Their relationships all had tragic endings because Catherine died giving birth to Edgar’s child. Isabella also died, leaving behind her young son. Heathcliff and Edgar resented each other because of misery they experienced together. The transition of the mood in the story is from chaotic to somber.
First, Wuthering Heights is a contribution to the theme of the novel because it sets the mood for the scenes taken place inside the house. The house is first introduced to the reader during a storm. The house stands alone and the land around it is described as dreary and foreboding, which creates a mood of isolation. “On the bleak Yorkshire moors” describes the Yorkshire moors physical appearance. The estate has little vegetation and is more weathered, which moors are, as they are jutting, bare rocks towards the ocean. Wuthering Heights is an old stone house with gothic architecture and bleak interior. The people that live in Wuthering Heights are bitter and act violent. The characters of the story act wild when they are at Wuthering Heights, compared to other places in the novel. The setting of the house enforces the actions of the Earnshaws’, and Heathcliff. The name of the estate even sets a theme of gloom in the novel. Lockwood says Wuthering is, “a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather” (12).
...e. On a very simplistic level, it is attractive, the name ‘Wuthering Heights’ sounds to the ear a more mysterious and enigmatic choice than Thrushcross Grange. But it can be assumed that the author had made the choice of naming the novel based on reasons that run deeper than mere attractiveness. The setting is vital to the plot, and as Wuthering Heights and its presence directly or indirectly precipitates a major part of the action, the choice is an apt one. In conclusion,the characters’ relation with Nature runs deep, and this too has been highlighted forcefully by the title, that keeps reminding the reader that in ‘Wuthering Heights’, the setting is the thread that runs through the entire narrative holding it together, and halfway through the novel, we can almost perceptibly feel the throb of Nature that is alive, that is at work, and that has a will of its own.
“’Wuthering’ is a Yorkshire term for roaring of the wind” which is constantly seen in the weather of Wuthering Heights (Wuthering Heights 316). The weather in Wuthering Heights changes with the mood of the characters or with the mood of the place. The novel begins with a snowstorm that almost kills Lockwood, establishing the dreary setting of the story. When Mr. Earnshaw passes away a raging storm appears signifying his death. A downpour of rain frequently emerges when the plot of the story has taken a sad turn. When Heathcliff runs away from Wuthering Heights to London, rain symbolizes his departure. Rain also arose on the night of Heathcliff’s death (Wuthering Heights 317).
The setting used throughout the novel Wuthering Heights helps to set the mood to describe the characters. We find two households separated by the cold, muddy, and barren moors, one by the name of Wuthering Heights, and the other by the name of Thrushcross Grange. Each house stands alone, in the mist of the dreary land, and the atmosphere creates a mood of isolation. In the novel, there are two places where virtually all of the action takes place. These two places, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, differ greatly from each other in appearance and mood. These differences reflect the universal conflict between storm and calm that Emily Bronte develops as the theme in her novel Wuthering Heights.
... As time passes and relationship changes, her love for Linton will change but her love for Heathcliff will be as sturdy and eternal as a rock. This quote explains Heathcliff’s long-lasting struggles after Catherine’s death. He ends this obsession and brings himself to tranquility in Chapter 29 by bribing the sexton so that he can look at Catherine’s corpse and arranges to have his own coffin placed next to Catherine’s when he dies.
Heathcliff's character parallels with the qualities possessed by The Heights; he is depicted as a member of lower class and does not have the qualities necessary to live at Thrushcross Grange. Cold, dark, and...
In the novel Wuthering Heights, the dark and mysterious Heathcliff once began his life with an open heart, but after mistreatment from Edgar and Hindley he turns to revenge. Heathcliff's actions are reasonable; he has been hurt from the unfair reason of discrimination. Heathcliff slowly becomes sickly obsessed with planning an elaborate revenge after eavesdropping a conversation between his beloved Catherine to Nelly. He hears his young beautiful and idolized Catherine say, “It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff” (77). Heathcliff, heartbroken and hopeless, abruptly leaves Wuthering Height for two years. Catherine is left wondering where he is. Heathcliff leaves in search of revenge.