Wuthering Heights As a Gothic Novel

Wuthering Heights is kind of a gothic novel especially since the gothic genre is about extreme things and has extreme elements, extreme feelings, passions, violence, actions and all the rest of it.

We can say that Wuthering Heights is full of passions and extremity— which we don’t expect from Victorian Literature.

Another important thing that makes it gothic is the setting. There are two places in the story; Wuthering Heights, and Thrushcross Grange. The story mainly takes place in Wuthering Heights—which is a remote, isolated place, a kind of farm house— and it fits in with the gothic setting since gothic settings are either wild or isolated; often places which seem to be outside of normal culture of society.

Wuthering Heights symbolizes the wildness of nature, and the wildness of its two main protagonists, Heathcliff and Catherine. The extremity mostly comes from these two characters since we see the extremity of their emotions and love. The love between them is extreme and obsessive.

Another important thing to mention is that Heathcliff’s sense of revenge is as extreme as his love. For example, when Catherine marries Edgar, he marries Edgar’s sister Isabelle in revenge, when he comes back— he’s anything but good towards Isabelle.

Later, we see that Catherine stops eating, and she tears her pillow with her teeth— which is another example of an extreme action.

Heathcliff loves Catherine so much that he cries “You said I killed you— haunt me, then!” when he learns that the love of his life is dead. These unforgettable lines makes us feel how deep his love for Catherine is, and makes us just cry with this man, even. Before that, we see him banging his head on a tree. These are all signs of the extremity of the gothic form; people behaving in extreme ways.

Heathcliff comes off as a gothic villain in the second half; he's mainly driven by his revenge and grief. We see that Heathcliff forces Linton to marry Catherine Jr., but Linton dies. Also, the way he treats badly to Hareton is out of revenge as well since Hareton’s father, Hindley had turned Heathcliff’s life into living hell when he was alive.

In gothic literature, there's often a young, innocent woman who doesn't understand the evil villain— who mistakes him for somebody that's good and we have that in Wuthering Heights. We see that Cathy doesn't know the background story of her mother and Heathcliff, doesn't know how horrible he is.

Gothic novels have supernatural elements which we don't get in Victorian novels normally, but even though Wuthering Heights is not full of supernatural elements and it’s kind of a realist story, in this novel we have supernatural elements. For example, Lockwood hears the ghost of Catherine knocking on the window, saying “Let me in!”

Another thing we can connect to the gothic style in Wuthering Heights is the mystery is has. Throughout the novel, we have the mystery.