The Setting in Wuthering Heights Ryan Frishberg

Wuthering Heights is a timeless classic in which Emily Brontë presents two opposite settings. Wuthering Heights and its occupants are wild, passionate, and strong while Thrushcross Grange and its inhabitants are calm and refined, and these two opposing forces struggle throughout the novel.

Wuthering Heights is out on the moors in a barren landscape. Originally a farming household, it sits "[o]n that bleak hilltop [where] the earth was hard with a black frost" (14). Because winds constantly buffet the house, "the architect?[built] it strong; the narrow windows are deeply set in the wall, and the corners defend with large jutting stones" (10). Even the name suggests its wildness: " 'Wuthering' being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed to" (10). The innards of Wuthering Heights "lay bare to the inquiring eye?Above the chimney were sundry villainous old guns, and a couple of horse-pistols: and by way of ornament, three gaudily painted canisters disposed along its ledge?the chairs, high-backed, primitive structures, painted green; one or two heavy black ones lurking in the shade" (11). Both the outside and inside of...