The Gothic Literary Complex in Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights"

Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, a novel written in the Victorian era, nowadays is considered a classic, though it was controversial when first published in 1847. In her writing, Brontë was influenced by the Gothic genre, expanding the Female Gothic and establishing the New Gothic genre. The use of gothic elements in Wuthering Heights is abundant, and although it evoked terror in the readership, it, nonetheless, conveyed a strong message. This paper places Brontë’s novel in the Victorian era and Female Gothic genre and discusses the use of gothic elements. Gloomy setting, old and frightening house, a hell, opposed to a high society mansion, a heaven, ghosts, haunting repetition of names and fates intermingled with a destructive romance and eternal conflict between the cultured and natural, are some of Brontë’s dark themes. Through the horror of Gothic fiction, Brontë also wrote of Catherine’s descent into madness because she was forced to abandon her wild nature to become a lady and Heathcliff’s revenge and monstrosity after the loss of his other half, situations that vividly expressed her opposition to the Victorian norm and society, in which women were oppressed, imprisoned in houses, and men had all the power in both public and domestic sphere as powerful patriarchs