Dream World and Real World in Wuthering Heights Emma Kirkwood College

In her novel Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë interconnects the real world with the dream world, in a sense merging allegory with realism. This essay will explore how the dreams that Brontë’s characters experience give more meaning to the real world in her novel, and the effect it has on the narrative, and are hence connected.

The first dream that will be discussed is the one referenced in the excerpt given. In the excerpt given, Catherine Earnshaw is about to tell her servant Nelly Dean about a dream that she had. The dream Catherine Earnshaw had is one in which she was in heaven and ‘it did not seem to be [her] home’ (Brontë 85) so, heartbroken, she cried which enraged the angels in heaven. They threw her out of heaven. She landed on Wuthering Heights which made her very happy. She then says, “I have no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven’ (Brontë 85). This suggests that in Catherine’s dream, heaven symbolizes being married to Edgar Linton and living at Thrushcross Grange instead of Withering Heights. Her dream helps her realize that perhaps she would be much happier at Wuthering Heights which she recognizes as her home. This realization suggests that she understands her dreams to have meaning and...