Wuthering Heights Conflict Between Savage and Civilised

The conflict between nature and civilization in Wuthering Heights As Charlotte Bronte mentioned on sister Emily’s Wuthering Heights: †Ã¢â‚¬ ¦She did not know what she had done;† creative artists â€Å"work passively under dictates [they] neither delivered nor could question.† I can say that Emily Bronte knew what she was doing when approaching the issues of the Wuthering Heights. The antagonic play between nature and culture in Bronte’s vision were of great impact at the time and I could say that this is a reason why Wuthering Heights is a literary masterpiece. The Romantic elements come together and offer us beautiful and intense images. First, the â€Å"strange† story: non-normative, original, powerful, imaginative. Then the characters, intense,†¦show more content†¦Catherines decision to marry Edgar so that she will be the greatest woman of the neighborhood is only the most obvious example. The Lintons are relatively firm in their gentry status but nonetheless take great pains to prove this status through their behaviors. The Earnshaws, on the other hand, rest on much shakier ground socially. They do not have a carriage, they have less land, and their house, as Lockwood remarks, resembles that of a homely, northern farmer and not that of a gentleman. The shifting nature of social status is demonstrated most strikingly in Heathcliffs trajectory from homeless waif to young gentleman-by-adoption to common laborer to gentleman again (although the status-conscious Lockwood remarks that Heathcliff is only a gentleman in dress a nd manners). The environment the characters live in is another way to understand the conflict between the nature and the civilization in the writing. First, we must note that Wuthering Heights is a place of wildness, passion and life while the Thrushcross Grange is a place of convention and culture and stands up for a refined way of life. The constant emphasis on landscape within the text of Wuthering Heights endows the setting with symbolic importance. This landscape is comprised primarily of moors: wide, wild expanses, high, and thus infertile. Moorland cannot be cultivated, and its uniformity makes navigation difficult. It features particularly waterlogged patches inShow MoreRelatedThe Conflict Between Nature and Culture in Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontà « and a Room with a View by E.M.Forster1649 Words   |  7 Pagesreaders enjoy ‘Wuthering Heights’ as a form of escapism, a flight from reality into the seclusion and eerie mists of the Yorkshire moors, where the supernatural seems commonplace and the searing passion between Catherine and Heathcliff absolute. Yet Wuthering Heights reaches much further than its atmospheric setting, exploring the complexities of family relationships and Victorian society’s restrictions; similarly, in ‘A Room with a View’, E.M. Forster expands the relationship between Lucy and George