by Mel Mcintyre

Created on: February 09, 2009

On the face of it Wuthering Heights is an archetypal Gothic Horror story written some years after the gothic sub genre had fallen out of favor with the reading public. Its structure of a narrative within a narrative and its instructional nature are similar to Gothic stories like Frankenstein. In fact Wuthering Heights has a great deal in common with Shelley's novel. Lockwood, Wuthering Heights, is instructed by Nellie's story of great passion in the same way that Walton is instructed by Frankenstein's story.

Heathcliff's character can be read as the typical Gothic anti hero whose perverse desire for revenge transcends the rules and mores of civilized society. However the similarities end once we look at the character of Cathy Earnshaw. There is no point in the novel where she is presented as a Gothic heroine in the traditional sense. Her choices are her own; she is not a victim of Heathcliff's machinations and she is never imprisoned by him. She is, however, imprisoned by the rules of society and her gender. Maybe Emily Bronte's real anti hero is civilized society. The female character most resembling a gothic heroine is young Catherine. She is imprisoned by Heathcliff and forced into a marriage to Heathcliff's son, Linton. However the resolution is not brought about through flight or rescue but rather through Catherine's force of character and choices.

As with Shelley's novel, it is the symbolism in Wuthering Heights that lifts it from a tale of passionate love structured as a Gothic horror story. It becomes a lesson to us all about the fragility of the veneer of civilization. It can be compared neatly with Conrad's Heart of Darkness in many ways. Just as Conrad's central narrator travels into the heart of Africa in the Dutch Congo so Lockwood is taken on a journey of discovery of what real love is. Conrad's story reveals that civilized behavior covers rather than replaces the raging animal instinct that beats beneath the brocaded chests of European society. Lockwood enters the novel with a view of himself as misanthropic and heartless. He relishes the idea of being sequestered in the country and feels that he and Heathcliff have a great deal in common. Lockwood, like any anthropologist, overlays his own world views onto the domestic situation at Wuthering Heights. He is too insipid and prone to romanticizing his life to truly understand the nature of Heathcliff's passion. Lockwood is like Edgar Linton. Love for him is a matter of attraction not deeply embedded

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