Nature in Wuthering Heights is usually presented as a feature that is compatible with the characteristics of one of the two properties. The moors begin and end the novel and keep an ever-present place, and Brontë uses the landscape to mold her characters and to show their personalities and true feelings. Landscape is really incorporated into the lives of the characters and the actions and choices they make. The moors specifically generate these kinds of changes. The moors are linked anywhere from dark oppression to liberating freedom. It really depends on the character that it is accompanying.
To Lockwood, the moors serve as a foreshadowing event to the introduction of Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff, and its other depressing and snappy inhabitants. The moors confuse him, especially when it snows. He sees them as "one billowy white, ocean" (Brontë 31), and, as a moor is a marshland, a tract of open uncultivated upland, was stumbling against many swells, depressions, pits, and mounds on the dark, snowy night, and Lockwood has traveled there alone. When Lockwood tries to enter Wuthering Heights he describes the landscape. "On that bleak hill top the earth was hard with a black frost, and the air made me shiver through every limb". (9) A few moments later, and he is treated with scorn and "a cool, regardless manner, exceedingly embarrassing and disagreeable." (10) The way Lockwood describes the land around him is exactly the way he describes the mannerism and air in Wuthering Heights. Lockwood then hears the tale from Nelly Dean, and the history story starts.
The moors allude to Catherine more than any other character in the novel. Catherine exclaims, "I'm tired of being enclosed here [Thrushcross Grange]. I'm wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there: not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart: but really with it, and in it." (158) Catherine, although being delirious and more dramatic than usual, is speaking her heart and mind openly. She wishes to be at Wuthering Heights, but also yearns to be free in the "glorious world", and the only other setting she knows and shows her love for is the moors.
The darker sides of the moors represent Heathcliff. The moors that Lockwood gets lost in are Heathcliff's moors. The moors, especially after Catherine's death, are correlating and corresponding to Heathcliff emotions: bleak, enraged, uncaring, and dangerous. The weather and nature of and around Wuthering Heights closely resemble Heathcliff. Wuthering Heights is described to be battered with strong winds, enveloped by the dangerous, unruly moors, and is structured accordingly. Wuthering Heights looms, strong and defensive. Heathcliff looms over everyone's thoughts, strong and defensive. He has been battered around by Hindley and is unruly and dangerous.
The moors are also a source of relief to those who are 'imprisoned' in Wuthering Heights. To Catherine and Heathcliff, the moors exist as a liberating and free region. For them, the moors serve as a place to escape from restraints and a place to find happiness. They often describe their love and their own individuality through and in the moors. Catherine is able to combine love, freedom, thrill, and adventure in the moors. She says, "But, Heathcliff, if I dare you now, will you venture? If you do, I'll keep you. I'll not lie there by myself: they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me, but I won't rest till you are with me. I never will!' ... 'He's considering - he'd rather I'd come to him! Find a way, then! not through that kirkyard. You are slow! Be content, you always followed me!'" (125)
Moors are open areas, wet, wild, and infertile. They are dominated nor owned by anyone. Catherine, and later Heathcliff, is buried close enough to be in the moors. Catherine's "ghost" represents her connection with the moors, by "haunting" not the houses but the moors itself. When Lockwood dreams of Catherine he sees her and tries to reach her "through the glass, and stretching an arm out to seize the importunate branch: instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand. The intense horror of nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, 'Let me in—let me in!'" (25) The "ghost" of Catherine is never seen in either house. Lockwood sees her just outside Wuthering Heights, but cannot pull her inside. This representation is describing how Catherine was a free spirit at heart and didn't want to be owned, however still desired to be with her loved one. Catherine boldly states, "Well, if I cannot keep Heathcliff for my friend - if Edgar will be mean and jealous, I'll try to break their hearts by breaking my own." (116) flaunting her recklessness and her true personality that Heathcliff coaxes back out. At the end of Wuthering Heights, a little boy who is 'crying terribly'(325) tells Nelly that he has seen the dead Heathcliff and Cathy walking on the moors. It shows that they identify with the land and the independence and ominous qualities it contains and symbolizes. Heathcliff and Catherine ultimately end up in the moors together.
YOU ARE READING
The Essays I wrote
De TodoThis is not an actual Story. These are literally Just Essays I wrote- all about different things.
