Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights can be viewed as a struggle between civilised, conventional human behaviour and its wild, anarchistic side. To what extent do you agree with this statement?
Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights explores the tension between the ideas of culture and nature. It can be viewed as a story of human behaviour and the way in which people struggle to be either civilised and conventional, or wild and anarchistic. Though it explores both elements of good, civilised behaviour and natural, untamed behaviour, Bronte does not allow one to triumph over the other, allowing both forces to interact with each other without one emerging victorious. Many different aspects of the novel help create this underlying allegory, such as the two main settings in which the story takes place, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, and our two central male characters, Heathcliff and Edgar Linton. These aspects of the novel are used to explore the struggle between good, conventional human behaviour, and its wild, evil side, allowing the reader to gain a greater understanding of these two forces and the tension between them.
Emily Bronte uses the two settings of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange to establish the ideas of culture and nature and to begin to add tones of darkness and light to the novel. The name given to the first dwelling, ‘Wuthering’, meaning extremely windy and turbulent, emphasises the chaos and turmoil that takes place within the walls of the crumbling old manor. ‘The few stunted firs’ and the ‘range of gaunt thorns’ that surround the house give the impression that Wuthering Heights is wild and rough, and unforgiving. The trees seem to be ‘stretching their arms one way, as If craving alms of the sun’, suggesting that Wuthering Heights is a place lacking sunlight and yearning for warmth and love. The ‘narrow windows’ are ‘deeply set’, and ‘large jutting stones’ guard the corners. The house appears defensive, closed