Earth, Wind, Water and Fire Imagery in Wuthering Heights



Discuss the significance of the mystical qualities in the novel, 'Wuthering Heights'.

Bronte makes use of mystical qualities in order to bring out the very poignant motivations behind many of the characters’ actions. Mystical refers to the quality of ‘other-worldly quality and the supernatural atmosphere that pervades the landscape of the novel. The mystical qualities also serve to illustrate how the past manifests itself in the present. The past is seen through the lens of tombstones, mirrors, and windows that allow creatures of mystery and ‘other-worldly quality’ to affect people in the present. Heathcliff is not willing to let go of his love for Catherine, and continually tries to gain possession of her after her death by acquiring and destroying the people and possessions associated with Catherine.

One of the most poignant mystical qualities that exist in the novel is the emotional symbolism of tombstones and graveyards. Apart from giving the novel its essentially Gothic landscape, the appearance of tombstones serves to illustrate how the dead manifests itself to the people of the present, haunting them and affecting the future of the second generation. These ghosts prevent the future generations of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange from easily escaping their tumultuous past. When Heathcliff reopens Catherine's grave, he says 'If she be cold, I’ll think it is this North wind that chills me; and if she be motionless, it is sleep'. His statement tells us that he denies Catherine's death, as he opens up the only remaining reminder of her presence. Her tombstone is a reminder to Heathcliff of her existence. Heathcliff's opening of Catherine's grave is symbolic of his attempt to get through to his old love. However, after gazing upon his lover's face in death, he finally realises that he can never get through to the real Catherine by acquiring and ruining the people and possessions associated with her. Heathcliff's opening of Catherine's grave serves as a turning point in the novel; from then on, Heathcliff starts to lose interest in revenge, and instead starts to anticipate his life after death; a shared life with his lost love, Catherine. Therefore, this tombstone shows the motivations behind Heathcliff's emotionally bankrupt state, putting an end to the vicious cycle that has engulfed Wuthering Heights for years. The mystical quality comes about through Bronte’s use of tombstones as concrete representation of revenge and fulfilment.

Another mystical quality constantly sustained in the novel is the appearance of ghosts. These ghosts, whether real or not, attest to how the past manifests itself in the present, even affecting outsiders, such as Lockwood. Ghosts show the enduring strength of Catherine and Heathcliff's love, as indestructible as 'the eternal rocks beneath'. Even in death their mystical presence remains to haunt their lovers. The appearance of Catherine Earnshaw's ghost early in the novel, 'it’s twenty years...twenty years, and I’ve been a waif for twenty years!’ illustrating the idea that love never dies and may exist in the mystical atmosphere of time. However, this particular encounter of Lockwood remains ambiguous, as the reader is not told if Lockwood really saw the ghost of Catherine Earnshaw, or if he was just dreaming. Bronte creates this ambiguity on purpose, in order to illustrate the anguish and pain that Catherine has experienced in her short life. Bronte wants us to reflect on the intensity of the atmosphere, which evokes the depth of Catherine and Heathcliff's love, which yet again reasserts Catherine's claim that her love for Heathcliff is like 'the eternal rocks beneath'. Windows act as doorways for creatures of the night like ghosts to come in and haunt the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights.

The image of Catherine's half-buried tombstone is also significant. At the end of the novel, Lockwood encounters the three graves of Edgar Linton, Catherine Earnshaw, and Heathcliff. The grave of Catherine Earnshaw is described as 'grey, and half buried in heath'. This image of being half-buried gives an almost vampiric, horrific element to the novel. It connotes the idea of unfinished business; as if the spirit of Catherine Earnshaw is not at rest. This point is especially poignant because of the villagers' claims of seeing the spirits of Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw wandering about on the moors; in a way, Heathcliff's dream of being with Catherine in death has come true, as they are now reunited in the afterlife. However, their spirits remain on Earth, among the moors, their childhood playground. This image of nature that is used also attests to the nature of Catherine and Heathcliff's love affair. Their love for each other is not romantic, but more spiritual and religious, almost transcending the universe. The consumption of Catherine's tombstone by nature represents not only the end of the vicious cycle that has plagued the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange for years; but it also symbolises how nature reclaims the wild, passionate temperaments of Catherine and Heathcliff. This suggests a more positive representation in the future, as represented by the union of Catherine Linton, the daughter of Catherine Earnshaw, with Hareton Earnshaw. The three tombstones therefore marks the beginning of an end, hinting at a much happier future for the newly-married inhabitants of Thrushcross Grange, signalling an end to the tempestuous events that took place at Wuthering Heights for the previous decades.

The title of the novel itself, Wuthering Heights, is of a mystical quality as it reflects and foreshadows the multitude of negative events that takes place in the novel throughout. "Wuthering being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which it station is exposed in stormy weather." Readers from the very beginning, are introduced to the physical outlook of Wuthering Heights. This purposeful and mystical introduction of Wuthering Heights from the beginning by Bronte foreshadows how, just like the house, the characters residing in it will be endowed with unpleasant experiences. Additionally, Bronte makes effective use of the natural landscape of both houses as an attributing factor to the characteristics cultivated in the characters and it is these characteristics, which causes the downfall of many of the characters in the novel. The natural landscape is of a mystical quality because it is as if the natural landscape of both houses, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, determines the happenings in the novel. Wuthering Heights, the dark and gloomy house, shapes Hindley and his aristocrat by marriage wife, Frances, as very demeaning characters, completely lacking of compassion. "Hindley calls him a vagabond, and won't let him sit with us, nor eat with us...." "Frances, darling, pull his hair as you go by, I heard him snap his fingers." Both husband and wife are hard-hearted creatures, just like the exterior of the house; they are black and evil within. Similarly, Heathcliff grows up to be a very revengeful man, employing the use of every possible tool to aid him in his revenge. "Meantime, thank you for telling me your sister-in-law's secret - I swear I'll make the most of it, and stand you aside." It is appalling for readers to realize that even Catherine, the person whom Health cliff devoted his entire heart to, is unable to rein the revengeful side of Heathcliff . Evidently, both houses are mystical qualities which foreshadows not only the multitude of negative events that takes place in the novel throughout but also cultivates the characteristics built within the characters, which strongly attributes to the plot in the novel.

Another mystical quality noted in the novel would be the three different surnames attached to Catherine – Catherine Earnshaw, Catherine Heathcliff, and Catherine Linton. “The air swarmed with Catherine’s,” reflects a mixture of gothic and realism, indicating that what is real can be supernatural too. Both the real and the supernatural co-exist in this novel, contributing to the mystical qualities seen in Wuthering Heights. Catherine first appears to Lockwood, as she does to readers, as a written word—her name, scratched into the paint. When Lockwood reads over the scraped letters, they seem to take on a ghostly power—the simile Bronte uses is that they are “as vivid as spectres.” Ghosts constitute a key image throughout the novel. In this instance, it is crucial to realise that what comes back, in this first dream, is not a dead person but a name, and that what brings the name back is the act of reading it. Bronte, by using Lockwood as a stand-in for her readers, indicates how she wants her readers to react to her book; she wants her words to come vividly before them, to haunt them. In this context, one also can see an active example of Wuthering Heights’s ambiguous genre. The work is often compared to the Gothic novels popular in the late eighteenth century, which dealt in ghosts and gloom, demonic heroes with dark glints in their eyes, and so on. Wuthering Heights often seems to straddle the two genres, containing many Gothic elements but also obeying most of the conventions of Victorian realism. With that, Catherine’s different surnames accentuate the ambiguity of her state when she was alive. Thereby, the remnants of her death are the mystical quality of the area between the real and the supernatural.

In many ways, the mystical qualities that presented in the novel are extremely befitting to the Gothic atmosphere of the novel; set in the middle of the Yorkshire moors. As much as this atmosphere will seem almost haunting and horrific, it also reasserts the nature of Catherine and Heathcliff’s love; how it is inexplicably tied to nature and its associations. At the end of the novel, Wuthering Heights is described to be ‘shut up’. This is symbolic of the reclamation of Wuthering Heights by nature, and signals the end of the vicious cycle that has continuously haunted the inhabitants of the Yorkshire moors for generations.

Lee Rou Urn, Shawn Loo, Cheryl Lee and Mohd Izzudin of 09A3

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