The tragic use of landscape in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5433/1678-2054.2023vol43n2p130Keywords:
Wuthering Heights, English novel, landscape, tragicAbstract
This article discusses the tragic utilization of the natural landscape in Wuthering Heights. The primary setting of the narrative is an isolated farm in Northern England, situated atop a hill, surrounded by aridness, stones, and heather, where the climate is harsh, and the wind is constant. Emily Brontë employs elements of this landscape, such as heath, wind, and stone, to characterize the identities of her main characters, Catherine and Heathcliff, using it as a metaphor for their affinity and mutual need. This imagery contributes to the composition of the tragic events in the narrative, particularly the alienation between Catherine and Heathcliff, symbolized by their distancing from these elements. The culmination of the tragedy, brought about by the impossibility of a reunion between Catherine and Heathcliff, is also depicted through this imagery. In the novel’s conclusion, heather grows over the tombstones of Catherine and Heathcliff, signifying their final integration, in death, into the landscape with which they identified.
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