Thursday, December 12, 2013

Would anbody be able to give me some quotes from Wuthering Heights that relate to elemental imagery?

I think probably the most notable example of elemental imagery, as you describe it, comes in Chapter Nine after Heathcliff has overheard Catherine telling Nelly that it would degrade her to marry him. His subsequent disappearance from Wuthering Heights and the moors is accompanied by a storm that obviously symbolises his anger and desolation at what she has said and his position of outsider. Note how the storm functions as a pathetic fallacy:



About midnight, while we still sat up, the storm came rattling over the Heights in full fury. There was a violent wind, as well as thunder, and either one or the other split a tree off  at the corner of the building: a huge bough fell across the roof, and knocked down a portion of the east chimney-stack, sending a clatter of stones and soot into the kitchen-fire.



Note the way in which the violence that nature enacts against Wuthering Heights symbolises the anger and the violence of Heathcliff, which he is able to express and enact later on in the novel after his return. This is a violent novel of extreme passions which are symbolised through the elements and how they correspond to the emotions of the principal characters.

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