Wuthering Heights By Emily Bronte Essays (1431 words) -

Wuthering Heights By Emily Bronte In Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, numerous references are made to different conditions of weather. Even the title of the novel suggests the storminess present in nearly the entire book. The often-changing weather serves to signify the characters' personalities, as well as the changes that they go through during the course of their lives. In fact, the first incidence of a reference being made to the weather occurs with a thought of Mr. Lockwood. ?Wuthering being a significant provincial adjective,? he says, ?descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather? (46). Because Wuthering Heights has been built on the moors, wind blows fiercely during storms. At this point, Lockwood knows little about Heathcliff, but the significance of the house's name will become more apparent to him later in the novel. After getting settled into his new house at Thrushcross Grange, Lockwood decides to pay a visit to Heathcliff. He arrives at the house just as snow is starting to fall and observes the yard. ?On that bleak hilltop,? he notes, ?the earth was hard with a black frost, and the air made me shiver through every limb? (51). While it was cold at his own house, it seems even colder here, and the weather is beginning to get worse. It isn't even until he is at the gate of Wuthering Heights that the snow starts to fall. As will later be shown, the earth at Wuthering Heights is as cold and hard as Heathcliff's heart. He provides Lockwood with little food or comforts at his arrival and does not attempt to be a gracious host. It is only with a great deal of gruffness that he decides to allow Lockwood to spend the night at his house until he can go home the next morning. This is one of the first indications of Heathcliff's lack of compassion for the rest of humanity. The next day, Heathcliff offers to accompany Lockwood on his way back home, explaining that he will not be able to find the way on his own. While Lockwood thought he would be able to find his way home based on rocks sticking up along the path, he finds the hills to be ?one billowy, white ocean; the swells and falls...blotted out from the chart which my yesterday's walk left pictured in my mind? (72-3). The long, winding path nearest to Wuthering Heights is much harder to travel than the one that leads to Thrushcross Grange, and it is easy to get lost. The first path resembles Heathcliff's own path to the wild and contemptuous man he has become. If Wuthering Heights is hopelessness and desolation, Thrushcross Grange is peace and salvation. Heathcliff leaves Lockwood at this point, telling his tenant that he will be able to make it the rest of the way on his own. Heathcliff lives at Wuthering Heights because a desolate place is where he belongs, and his not walking the rest of the way to Thrushcross Grange is symbolic of his not being able, or even wanting, to travel toward happiness. Any happiness he had ended when Catherine died. One big turning point marked by stormy weather in the book is the day Heathcliff leaves Wuthering Heights for the first time. After hearing Catherine say that she could never marry him, Heathcliff's heart is broken and he creeps out of the house. When Catherine realizes his absence, she gets extremely agitated, pacing from the gate to the door of the house and wondering where he could be. The weather in this scene is very ominous. ?It was a very dark evening for summer: the clouds appeared inclined to thunder,? Nelly tells Lockwood (124). Not much later, a horrible storm begins. ?There was a violent wind,? Nelly says, ?and either one or the other split a tree off at the corner of the building...but the uproar passed away in twenty minutes, leaving us all unharmed, excepting Cathy, who got thoroughly drenched? (125). Although it is the middle of summer, one of the times a storm like this one is unlikely occur, Heathcliff's disappearance seems to bring it about. Catherine's relationship with Heathcliff is as mysterious and powerful as the storm,