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Compare and contrast the architecture and buildings of Wuthering Heights and

Thrushcross Grange.1. The buildings are very dierent.

2. These dierences reect the dierences of the people who live in each house.

3. But it is not as simple as this. Dierent characters live at dierent mes in each house. Lockwood travels to

Wuthering Heights and in one of the earliest scenes provokes violence and fury from Juno. On his second visit

in his dream we hear he has scraped a girls wrist across the broken glass in the window frame.

Later when Cathy and Heathcli visit Thrushcross Grange as children they (and we) see from the outside what

life on the inside is like. It appears to be homely and welcoming.. but in fact Isabella and Linton are ghng

violently over the ownership of a puppy.

4. The obvious contrasts between the two houses become more complex as the novel progresses.

There is a sense in the novel that the environment of each condions how the characters think, feel and

behave, and that as characters move between the houses Bronte details shis in their state of mind. There are

elements common to both houses. The queson of property and ownership becomes more important.

5. Emily Bronte is exploring a debate about the impact of nature on human character that had started,

perhaps, with Rousseaus idea of the noble savage and was being explored throughout what we now call the

Romanc period (1770 c1840).

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6. The landscape and architecture of the novel become a reecon of the characters state of mind. Each

building is at dierent mes a projecon of the mood, disposions and temperament of those that live in it. In

her use of landscape and environment Bronte is developing ideas widely discussed in the Romanc period. The

painngs of Caspar David Friedrich, for example, touch very clearly on the idea of the landscape of the mind.

7. However, simple disncons are too easily made. It is clear from the beginning that Heathcli is the owner

of both properes. To some extent therefore we might say the two houses reect the two aspects of

Heathclis mind.. We also hear in the second half of the novel that the younger generaon tame Wuthering

Heights and transform it into what seems to be a very dierent place.

8. Or perhaps Emily Bronte is suggesng the two buildings reect the inner tensions and complexies of

anyones mind, of the human mind or the human condion. How do we resolve the tension within us of

passion, desire, jealousy and raw emoon on the one hand, and polite, calm, sociability on the other. The

tension within us between our social obligaons and our natural insncts is always present The two buildings

(or sets of buildings) are reecons of the tensions within Lockwood and perhaps within ourselves.

9. More interesngly perhaps both Cathy and Heathcli ulmately crave to escape from all buildings. The

happiness of a number of characters is felt out on the moors away from the buildings, at Penistone Crags or

in the hollows on the moorland watching bueries.

Crical ViewsContemporary reviews (1847/1848):www.wuthering-heights.co.uk/reviews.php

Gilbert S, and Gubar, S: The Madwoman in the Ac especially Chapter 8

Wheelan, P: Crossing the Boundaries in Wuthering Heights a response to Gilbert and Gubar.

hp://www2.unca.edu/postscript/postscript9/ps9.2a.pdf

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