How Does Emily Bronte Use Repetition In Wuthering Heights

Long hailed as a classic gothic romance, Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights has stood the test of time. Known for it’s barren setting, brooding characters, and unyielding revenge, Wuthering Heights imparts on its readers ideas of life and love. Friends from childhood, characters Heathcliff and Catherine soon find themselves caught in a cataclysmic, tangled web of their own making. While both are in love with each other, Catherine ultimately chooses to marry another, leading to a plot of spiraling retribution and suffering. Though some moments of the novel are seemingly small, when analyzed in a deeper context, ubiquitous lessons rise to the surface. In one such moment, Bronte illustrates the destructive relationship of Heathcliff and Catherine through use of repetition and juxtaposition to illuminate the universal truth of betrayal.
The use of repetition within this passage is representative of the latent tone of the Wuthering Heights as a whole. Characterized by many loose sentences and anaphoras, the repetition serves to emphasize the sting betrayal so pervasive throughout the novel. Heathcliff, noticing Catherine’s unhappiness, cries: “I have not broken your heart- you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.” Just like in Ancient Rome, although Caesar is hurt, Brutus suffers just as well.
The burn of such act is felt by both characters, as Heathcliff delves into a darker and darker character and Catherine is driven mad with internal conflict. Bronte also iterates the self-determination of such a betrayal and impresses upon the reader the weight of its consequences. Though from the dust cover Wuthering Heights might seem like a typical classic English love story of romance and revenge, the novel conveys on its readers the searing truth of betrayal relevant to all people throughout the world and throughout