“Nor Was it Natural That it Should Be Otherwise”

Setting and Human Nature in Wuthering Heights

By Charlotte Becker

 

“There are scenes of savage wildness in nature which, though they inspire no pleasurable sensation, we are yet well satisfied to have seen…there is a primeval rudeness which has much to fascinate, though nothing to charm, the mind” (“Humanity” 282).  One month after the publication of Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights in 1847, a reviewer writing for the Britannia literary magazine tried to describe the mesmerizing power of the novel, especially the fascination that results from encountering an unfamiliar, isolated place filled with inexplicable people.  The reader can gain much insight into Wuthering Heights by examining the setting as an individual element, but even more is gained by examining certain characters and how they relate to their setting, particularly Heathcliff, Catherine, Hareton, and the younger Catherine. It is important to realize that there are two layers of setting: the general setting of the Yorkshire moors, and the specific setting of the two houses, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange.  The moors provide a place for Brontë to isolate and magnify the characters as a small community, and then she uses the houses to explain each character individually.  The primary function of the houses is to stand as symbols for conflicts that the characters experience with one another, and, even more interestingly, the conflicts they experience within themselves. Therefore, the relationships that the characters have with the houses throughout the novel reveal just as much about them as do their interactions with other humans. 

Of all writers, none would be more qualified than Emily Brontë to set a novel in the Yorkshire moors, since she lived there all her life.  As her sister, Charlotte Brontë, writes in the Editor’s Preface to the 1850 edition of Wuthering Heights, “Nor was it natural that it [the setting] should be otherwise; the author being herself a native and nursling of the moors” (10). The intense seclusion of the novel’s setting mirrors the setting for Emily Brontë’s own life, as Charlotte notes later in the preface:

Had Ellis Bell [Emily Brontë] been a lady or a gentleman accustomed to what is called ‘the world,’ her view of a remote and unreclaimed region, as well as of the dwellers therein, would have differed greatly from that actually taken by the homebred country girl.  Doubtless it would have been wider—more comprehensive; whether it would have been more original or more truthful is not so certain. (10)

Given the extraordinary personalities in Wuthering Heights, Charlotte’s claim that her sister’s view of the “dwellers therein” is “original” and “truthful” may present a problem to the reader.  Are we to believe that an eccentric, forbidding man like Heathcliff and a blindly passionate woman like Catherine are “original” and “truthful” representations of humanity?  The answer is yes.  Catherine, Heathcliff, and all the other characters are “original” and “truthful”—seen through Emily Brontë’s unbiased eye and placed in a setting that is as uncontrived as they are.  Echoing Charlotte Brontë’s observation, David Cecil notes the fitting match between the characters and the moors, as they lead “a life as rugged and unchanging as the fells and storm-scarred moors and lonely valleys which were its setting: a primitive life of confined interests and unbridled passions, of simple earthly activities and complex demon-haunted imaginings…” (Lettis 145).

It may be tempting to believe that Emily Brontë set Wuthering Heights in the Yorkshire moors simply because she did not know how to describe any other place.  However, the setting of any good work of fiction has meaning, and Wuthering Heights is no exception.  The deeper purpose of the moors as the general setting is unwittingly discovered by the character Mr. Lockwood in the third sentence of the book: “In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society” (Brontë 13).  This is a seemingly obvious, trivial observation on Mr. Lockwood’s part—of course the Yorkshire moors are “removed from the stir of society.” Yet, his statement becomes significant in retrospect, since the dramatic extent to which the characters in the book are removed from the context of Victorian English society allows Brontë’s fundamental goal to be accomplished.  On the moors, she can portray people as they really are, with none of the societal pressures or contortions of character that may be found among people living in closer proximity to one another.  She aims to portray people in their natural state, and to show that human nature can only be tamed to a certain extent.  The moors provide seclusion that could not be equaled by any other setting, and allow the reader to scrutinize the characters with minimal distractions.

Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, as the second layer of setting, are components as purposeful as the moors.  Beginning with their material descriptions, the houses are almost polar opposites.  On his first visit to Wuthering Heights, Mr. Lockwood is strongly impressed by its rusticity.  Mr. Lockwood first explains the meaning of the house’s name, “‘Wuthering’ being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather” (Brontë 14).   His impression of the house’s interior feeds the reader’s feeling that the Heights is not a place concerned with impressing visitors: “Above the Chimney were sundry villainous old guns, and a couple of horse-pistols, and, by way of ornament, three gaudily painted canisters disposed along its ledge.  The floor was of smooth, white stone: the chairs, high-backed, primitive structures, painted green…” (Brontë 14). Young Heathcliff gives Nelly Dean a detailed description of the drawing-room at Thrushcross Grange that speaks of the rich, cultured life enjoyed there by the Linton family. “Ah! It was beautiful—a splendid place carpeted with crimson, and crimson-covered chairs and tables, and a pure white ceiling bordered by gold, a shower of glass-drops hanging in silver chains from the centre, and shimmering with little soft tapers”  (Brontë 47).

No doubt Brontë meant these opposing descriptions to impress on the reader the differences between the two houses, since they become more and more significant as the symbolic role of the houses unfolds.

Critics of Wuthering Heights have offered different views on the significance of the contrast between Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange.  While all recognize that the contrast is noteworthy, they disagree on whether Brontë intended it merely to reinforce the external, socially based conflict between members of the two households, or whether the contrast represents an internal struggle within each character to reconcile the contrasting components of their being.

The simpler explanation is that Emily Brontë only meant to show the incompatibility of “civilized” and “uncivilized” people through the conflict that arises between the two houses.  It is indeed plausible to argue that Heathcliff and the Earnshaw family could never belong anywhere but the Heights, and the cultured Lintons could not survive in any home but Thrushcross Grange.  The text contains evidence for such an argument very early on.  The first time that Catherine and Heathcliff ever appear at the Grange, Heathcliff is ostracized by Mrs. Linton primarily because he appears in an inappropriate setting.  She calls him “A wicked boy …and quite unfit for a decent house!” (Brontë 49). David Cecil’s critical essay offers this same suggestion, that the essential conflict is a result of the external differences between the houses.

On the one hand, we have Wuthering Heights, the land of storm; high on the barren moorland, naked to the shock of the elements, the natural home of the Earnshaw family, fiery, untamed children of the storm.  On the other, sheltered in the leafy valley below, stands Thrushcross Grange, the appropriate home of the children of calm, the gentle, passive, timid Lintons. (Lettis 30)

Cecil further suggests that the worlds of calm and storm could have continued to coexist without conflict, had not Heathcliff intruded into the delicate balance, and caused some of the other characters to question which house they belonged to.

 This argument is satisfying to an extent, but the houses must also be meant to fulfill a deeper purpose.  It seems illogical that Emily Brontë should choose a setting where the characters can be “removed from the stir of society,” as Mr. Lockwood observes, if she only intends to explore the issues of class snobbery and exclusivity, which could be done more effectively in a social setting.  Or, if the houses are only meant to show the incompatibility between “civilized” and “uncivilized” people (Edgar and Catherine, for example), then there would be no reason to continue the story past the point of Catherine’s death at the Grange.  Nor would there be any hope for a happy marriage between the younger Catherine Linton and Hareton Earnshaw, or a peaceful residence for them together at Thrushcross Grange. 

In his analysis, Melvin Watson offers an explanation that gives the Heights/Grange conflict that deeper purpose, by exploring it not as a delicate balance between societal distinctions that Heathcliff upsets, but as a conflict that is within Heathcliff himself: 

Wuthering Heights is not, I believe, a metaphysical dissertation in which the Heights and Thrushcross Grange are a microcosm and their inhabitants only allegorical puppets whose wooden actions serve to envision a Brontëan universe…surely she was attempting something more concrete, more closely related to human experience than this…Wuthering Heights, then, is a psychological study of an elemental man whose soul is torn between love and hate. (Winnifrith 152)

Watson’s insightful argument gives Brontë’s use of the houses even more depth and enduring meaning, but does not necessarily have to be applied to Heathcliff alone.  Catherine, Hareton, and the younger Catherine also struggle to reconcile the elements within themselves, and their struggles are shown by their acceptance or rejection of their setting.  For each character, the houses represent opposing sides of a unique inner conflict.

For Catherine Earnshaw, Wuthering Heights represents self-acceptance, and Thrushcross Grange means disguise and self-rejection.  She is a native of Wuthering Heights, and her childhood character reflects the untamed personality of the house.  Nelly Dean reminisces about Catherine’s childhood behavior: “…we had not a minute’s security that she wouldn’t be in mischief.  Her spirits were always at high-water mark, her tongue always going—singing, laughing and plaguing everybody who would not do the same” (Brontë 42).  Nelly Dean also speaks of Catherine and Heathcliff as children together: “They both promised fair to grow up as rude as savages…it was one of their chief amusements to run away to the moors and remain there all day” (Brontë 46).  Catherine fits perfectly at Wuthering Heights, and seemingly has no reason to change, but her chameleon-like transformation into “a very dignified person, with brown ringlets falling from the cover of a feathered beaver” after several weeks at Thrushcross Grange is the beginning of her and Heathcliff’s destruction (Brontë 50).   

Another critic, Terry Eagleton, writes that Wuthering Heights “confronts the tragic truth that the passion and society it presents are not fundamentally reconcilable—that there remains at the deepest level an ineradicable contradiction between them which refuses to be unlocked” (Winnifrith 223). Eagleton argues that this contradiction is proven through the results of Catherine’s choice between Edgar and Heathcliff, which is, in terms of setting, a choice between Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights.  Eagleton calls Catherine’s decision an “act of self-betrayal and bad faith” (Winnifrith 223-224). Catherine’s primary mistake is not her betrayal of Heathcliff, but her betrayal of herself.  She tries to justify her decision to Nelly Dean, saying, “I am Heathcliff—he’s always, always in my mind—not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself—but as my own being—so, don’t talk of our separation again—it is impracticable” (Brontë 74).  Yet she does become separated from Heathcliff, herself, and her beloved Wuthering Heights.  She will discover too late that she cannot live in two houses at once.

Catherine’s transition to life at the Grange is superficial, even though it seems successful.  Nelly Dean describes Catherine’s relationship to her husband and sister-in-law as “not the thorn bending to the honeysuckles, but the honeysuckles embracing the thorn” (Brontë 81).  The fundamental differences between Catherine and the Lintons cannot be camouflaged by outward change of dress or behavior, nor by a change of residence, and when Heathcliff reappears, the illusion of assimilation is completely destroyed.  He knows that Catherine cannot be transplanted to the Grange.  He rants to Nelly Dean, “You talk of her mind being unsettled.  How the devil could it be otherwise in her frightful isolation? …He might as well plant an oak in a flower pot, and expect it to thrive…” (Brontë 129). Heathcliff’s use of the word “isolation” seems strange in this statement, since the Grange is no less isolated than the Heights.    It makes no sense at all unless we consider that Heathcliff is referring to the internal isolation from an essential part of herself that Catherine experiences as long as she remains at Thrushcross Grange. 

The internal tragedy of Catherine’s separation from the Heights, and also from Heathcliff, is proven nowhere better than in the troubling scene when her ghost meets Mr. Lockwood at her old bedroom window at Wuthering Heights.  She calls herself “Catherine Linton,” her married name, connected to her residence at the Grange, yet also says, “I’m come home, I’d lost my way on the moor!” (Brontë 30).  Even after her marriage and her death, Catherine cannot detach herself from the place that represents who and what she is—in nature, she is Wuthering Heights, and her attempt to cover her identity with the culture of Thrushcross Grange are disastrous.  She is unsuccessful, both literally and symbolically, in moving from the Heights to the Grange.

Heathcliff is a character who is always at odds with his setting.  He is a paradox, demonstrated by the fact that he is rejected by both the Grange and the Heights, yet his great desire is to own them both.  Terry Eagleton writes, “Heathcliff is subjectively a Heights figure opposing the Grange, and objectively a Grange figure undermining the Heights; he focuses acutely the contradictions between the two worlds” (Winnifrith 232). Heathcliff serves as a foil to highlight the differences and incompatibilities between the Heights and the Grange, especially when it becomes apparent that those incompatibilities are present within him as well. 

As a child, Heathcliff is as much a natural product of the moors and the Heights as Catherine is; though he suffers abuse from Catherine’s brother Hindley and the servant Joseph, he is firmly attached to the Heights.  From the way Heathcliff describes the Grange as a child, he seems to admire the finery and richness of the setting, but he is repulsed by the lifestyle that accompanies it.  After describing the fine room that he and Catherine look in on, he describes the fight between the Linton children over their dog, and, disgusted by their pettiness, he says, “I’d not exchange, for a thousand lives, my condition here, for Edgar Linton’s at Thrushcross Grange—not if I might have the privilege of flinging Joseph off the highest gable, and painting the house-front with Hindley’s blood!” (Brontë 48).  Ironically, he returns from his three years of absence appearing to be a gentleman worthy of residence at the Grange, and in character, a seemingly perfect blend of the traits of each house:  “A half-civilized ferocity lurked yet in the depressed brows, and eyes full of black fire, but it was subdued; and his manner was even dignified, quite divested of roughness though too stern for grace”  (Brontë 84).  The mixture does not produce a good balance, however, and plagues Heathcliff for the rest of his life. This is shown by Heathcliff’s incongruity with his own house, Wuthering Heights, which is quickly noticed by Mr. Lockwood at the time of their first meeting.

The apartment and furniture would have been nothing extraordinary as belonging to a homely, northern farmer with a stubborn countenance, and stalwart limbs…But, Mr. Heathcliff forms a singular contrast to his abode and style of living.  He is a dark-skinned gypsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman—that is, as much a gentleman as many a country squire: rather slovenly, perhaps, yet not looking amiss…. (Brontë 15)

Mr. Lockwood cannot categorize Heathcliff easily without almost contradicting himself: “slovenly,” yet “not amiss.”  Heathcliff is a perplexing, unhappy intermediate—too civilized for Wuthering Heights, yet too untamed for Thrushcross Grange. 

Melvin Watson’s view of Heathcliff as “an elemental man, whose soul is torn between love and hate” becomes clearly justified throughout the rest of the story (Winnifrith 152).  Now having elements of both the Grange and the Heights within him, Heathcliff begins on a complex, obsessive quest to dominate and destroy both the Heights and the Grange.  It is an outward manifestation of his attempt to dominate the forces of calm and storm, civility and incivility, and, most importantly, love and hate, within himself.  He orchestrates the marriage of Catherine and Edgar’s daughter to his own son, removing the younger Catherine from the Grange which is her natural home, and imprisoning her at the Heights, where she is equally as unhappy as her mother was at the Grange.  Heathcliff’s struggle only ends when he relinquishes his desire to control and destroy the houses, and destroys himself instead, indicating that his internal tempest was the source of his trouble all along. 

The novel seems to close neatly with the prospect of marriage between Hareton Earnshaw and Catherine Linton and their residence together at the Grange.  Ruth M. Adams writes of Hareton and Catherine’s union, “After temporary corruption, they choose the conventional home.  The Heights will be possessed by the spirits of its proper residents, Heathcliff and Catherine” (Lettis180).  Though the Grange is indeed the proper residence for Hareton and his bride, it is not simply a matter of their choosing, as Adams writes.  If it were merely a matter of choice, their residence at the “conventional home” of Thrushcross Grange could prove to be as disastrous as Catherine Earnshaw’s.  It is the settlement of their internal conflicts that decides their proper place of residence for them. 

For Hareton, the difference between the Heights and the Grange is the difference between ignorance and enlightenment.  Heathcliff purposefully keeps Hareton at the Heights in a coarse, ignorant state as a sort of twisted retribution for the abuse he suffered at the hands of Hindley, Hareton’s father.  Heathcliff thinks that Hareton will never be able to change, for, as Heathcliff says, “he takes pride in his brutishness.  I’ve taught him to scorn everything extra-animal as silly and weak…” (Brontë 178).  But when young Catherine comes to the Heights to be Linton Heathcliff’s bride, Hareton is motivated to better himself. He begins by teaching himself to read and write as best he can. After Catherine is widowed, she becomes willing to teach him herself.  Once Hareton has been lifted out of the wasteland of ignorance by cultivating his mind, it is only appropriate that he literally leave Wuthering Heights behind him, since he is now incompatible with the environment.

For Catherine, Wuthering Heights means imprisonment and Thrushcross Grange means freedom.  At first, Catherine is seductively drawn to the Heights by her misguided romance with her cousin Linton, according to Heathcliff’s plan.  She, like her mother, believes in her ability to conform herself to the setting that she chooses, and will also be unsuccessful in it.  After marrying Linton, she is literally kept prisoner at the Heights—Heathcliff denies her request to return to the Grange even to see her dying father—so she resorts to escape from the window.  Heathcliff promptly comes to the Grange to take her back.  After both her father and her husband are dead, she has no legal claim to Thrushcross Grange, and she remains captive at the Heights until Heathcliff’s death and her betrothal to Hareton.  Her impending return to her native Grange at the end of the novel symbolizes her return to freedom and happiness.

The scene that precipitates the final resolution takes place near the novel’s conclusion, when Catherine has Hareton plant a garden, a symbol of the Grange lifestyle, at the Heights.  Nelly notices that Hareton has cleared away some of the original bushes, and “they were busy planning together an importation of plants from the Grange” (Brontë 230). Nelly’s use of the word “importation” connotes the foreignness and alienation between the two houses, which is still as decisive as ever.  Catherine and Hareton’s attempt to blend the houses induces Heathcliff’s final rage, because he still has not been able to blend the corresponding forces within himself. Yet after he orders the original bushes to be re-planted, he becomes suddenly calm. At this moment, he realizes that he can mix his internal Grange and Heights only through death. He explains to Nelly, “I get levers and mattocks to demolish the two houses, and train myself to be capable of working like Hercules, and when everything is ready, and in my power, I find the will to lift a slate off either roof has vanished!”  (Brontë 254-255). He seems to hope that in death he will be reunited with Catherine, a union that will bring balance to the elements of his soul.

  The palpable isolation of the moors and the dramatic partition between the Grange and the Heights are a great part of the uniqueness of Wuthering Heights.  The setting is intriguing not only because it is unusual, but because it creates the backbone for Emily Brontë’s message that human nature is composed of elements which can never be completely controlled by humans themselves.  By placing the characters on the harsh though natural moors, she emphasizes the true nature of the characters.  She furthers her message successfully by using the houses to represent opposing sides of the characters’ struggles to attain inner equilibrium.  Wuthering Heights begins with Mr. Lockwood making an observation about the setting, and it fittingly concludes in a similar manner. The stillness and seclusion are not so foreign to him now.  He finds himself under a “benign sky” on the moors, which he now calls “that quiet earth” (Brontë 266). The Grange and the Heights are properly inhabited, symbolic of the resolution of the characters’ inward struggles.  And the moors have peace in all their wildness, which, echoing the Britannia reviewer, we can be “well satisfied to have seen.” 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Adams, Ruth.  “Wuthering Heights: the Land East of Eden.”    Lettis and Morris 177-181.

Brontë, Charlotte.  Editor’s Preface to the New [1850] Edition of Wuthering Heights.  By

Emily Brontë.  New York: W.W. Norton, 1963.  9-12.

Brontë, Emily.  Wuthering Heights: An Authoritative Text with Essays in Criticism.   Ed.

William M. Sale, Jr.  New York: W.W. Norton, 1963.

Cecil, David.  “Emily Brontë and Wuthering Heights.”  Lettis and Morris 30-49.

Cecil, David.  “Emily Brontë and Wuthering Heights.”  Winnifrith 144-150.

Eagleton, Terry.  “Wuthering Heights.”  Winnifrith 223-239.

“Humanity in its Wild State.”  Brittania 15 January 1848.   Ed. William M. Sale, Jr.  New

York: W.W. Norton, 1963.   282-283.

Lettis, Richard, and William E. Morris, ed. A Wuthering Heights Handbook.  New York:

Odyssey Press, 1961.

Watson, Melvin.  “Tempest in the Soul: The Theme and Structure of Wuthering Heights.” 

Winnifrith 151-160.

Winnifrith, Thomas John.  Critical Essays on Emily Brontë.  New York: G.K. Hall, 1997. 

 

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