WUTHERING HEIGHTS

Wuthering Heights, beyond being the physical setting experienced throughout much of the text, acts as a character and literary device in its own right. Initially, Bronte breezes through the complex familial structure of the text, including and alluding to multiple Catharines, Heathcliffs, Lintons, and Earnshaws, while the text itself is far too much in its infancy for most readers to grasp the dynamic connecting them all. The one constant is the setting of Wuthering Heights, and the atmosphere surrounding the contents we are about to dive much deeper into. The first dozen chapters describe cold, unruly blizzards, warm hearths, and dark and sleepless nights. The Gothic atmosphere surrounding Wuthering Heights complements the role the Heights serves as a character throughout the text. Wuthering Heights is a symbol for the trauma that surrounds the characters residing in it, only amplified by the “gusts of wind” or “billows of snow” that are often referenced hand-in-hand with the dismal environment of the Heights. Just as the past of the families we are about to delve deeper into looms over Wuthering Heights, Wuthering Heights looms over theirs. Lockwood’s detachment from the main pro/antagonists of the story equally adds to the disorientation, with each new character, snowy night, and nightmare feeling as melancholic to the reader as they do to Lockwood himself. 

Lockwood's tenure at Wuthering Heights revolves largely around this feeling of somberness, but equally an uneasy feeling regarding his own safety in the Heights. His initial perceptions of the characters he meets are frequently betrayed, keeping him on his toes for most of his stay there. By the time he spends his first full night there, it seems unsurprising that it is met with an apparition of the lives lived within the Heights. This ghost, or in some interpretations, vision of Catherine seems objective enough, and keeping in tune with the Gothic elements previously presented, that it may be taken at face value; a ghost presenting itself to an unwelcome or unknown guest. However, as the text goes on, looking back at this moment allows for deeper context, and perhaps a more explainable cause than a singular supernatural moment in a text based more heavily on the drama encountered in real-life interactions. The ghost of Catherine appears quite notably as Catherine in her younger years, suggesting that the apparition is not meant to invoke the ghost of the person who passed, but rather a memory of someone who once lived, kept alive but Heathcliff and Wuthering Heights' inability to let her go. These scenes embody not the existence of ghosts, but the overall text's themes of memory and “the past” as devices prominent in the text and narrative found within it. 

Heathcliff and Catherine’s relationship especially invokes troubled and often painful emotions within the characters as Nelly recalls them to Lockwood. The struggle they endure is one often shared within dramatic love stories found within the centuries when Wuthering Heights was written, as class and social hierarchy play a particularly important role in their ability to express such feelings toward one another. As Heathcliff struggles to express his desire for Catherine's denial of such pointless worries, Catherine struggles to seem like an outcast in a society that would treat her as such for marrying him. Catherine’s encounter with a vision of heaven explains this explicitly, as Heaven is utilized as a metaphor for the life Edgar would provide her, only to be met with sorrow and remorse, whereas Heathcliff, and consequently Wuthering Heights, bring her joy. However, she finds herself caught in a lifestyle and time in which “joy” and “sorrow” are not emotions people, let alone women (especially those in high societal standing), may act on. 

These societal expectations are made further evident in Catherine's return to Wuthering Heights after her tenure at Thrushcross Grange, in which both she and Heathcliff struggle to communicate the inevitable differences in expectations placed upon both of their shoulders. She has changed from a girl willing to be caught in trouble with Heathcliff to a woman almost unwilling to interact with him at all due to his current standing as a worker within Wuthering Heights. Whereas he, due to his position, cannot express grief in this situation and is thus forced to live with the memory of the Catherine he once knew and could have ended up with, only visible in apparitions lingering throughout the memory of Wuthering Heights.

Throughout Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”, nature is the most consistent overarching theme, encapsulating both Frankenstein’s and the Creature's place in the world of the text. The introduction of each narrative-giving character in the first two volumes utilizes nature and their relationship to it to set the theme of the text overall. Initially, we are introduced to Robert Walton, as he describes the frozen and nearly unbearable climate of the ship he is on. Using objects like snow, ice, and mist, he describes the feeling of loneliness and comradery, a repetitive symbol throughout the text, especially when comparing the two titular characters; Frankenstein, and the Creature. Frankenstein is introduced by detailing the love, joy, and happiness that encapsulated his youth and early adulthood. He is well-educated, well-respected, and well-loved, and as described by Walton, possesses an observable love for the natural world, as seen in his occupation. However, it's this very love that manifests the tensive relationship between himself and the creature he creates; Frankenstein views nature as a beautiful, raw object, and the Creature is the very antithesis of such definition if nothing else but in appearance alone. 

Whereas Frankenstein’s introduction is surrounded by an arid light feeling, the Creature is brought to in a cold, unfeeling environment, shunned by not only nature itself but the very man who brought him to life. This feeling of otherness seeps throughout the Creature's narration, as he details his attempts to fit into the world he had no choice but to be brought into, surrounded by an environment that resents his mere existence. Not only is the Creature’s introduction ridden with natural objects that give the feeling of desolation, loneliness, and melancholy (cold, night, etc) as he attempts to shroud himself in the unfeeling apartment, and soon-to-find-out, the world he was brought into, but also his initial introduction from Frankenstein’s perspective places him in an unhuman, othering place. From the Creature’s conception, he was not meant to be an equal. Frankenstein’s attempt at creating life is a betrayal of the natural world itself, not only because of the laws of life and death but because of his attempt to go above and beyond nature’s natural perfection. The Creature is taller, stronger, and meant to be more beautiful than any Earth-born being, and from the moment he opens his eyes, Frankenstein realizes that he has been betrayed by the creature, but also that Frankenstein had betrayed nature itself. 

The Creature’s only resolution to this is to be as kind, and giving, and loving as he can manage, all things that Frankenstein had been born into, which the Creature had to learn to understand and attempt to learn to give. The Creature learning to read, speak, build, and love are all ways he was attempting to close the gap between him and everything else, to make him seem less different in the ways that he can so that maybe his appearance would not seem as unnatural as it was. As he does this, the Creature is inadvertently mimicking all the things Frankenstein had taken for granted; his education, his love for nature, the food and warmth he had been born into, were all things the Creature had to learn slowly to appreciate and attempt to recreate; art imitating life.