Ilie Andreea

Anul II, seria 2 ,grupa 7

C+S Alina Bottez

Wild vs. Tame Humanity in Emilys Bronte Wuthering Heights

This essay proposes to show how Emily Bronte, throughout the novel, illustrates two
incompatible ways of life: passion and convention, barbarity and refinement, defiance and
conformity, degradation and social status, danger and security and ultimately nature and culture.
There are opposite relations in this book that start from the binary terms of wild vs. tame,
respectively safety vs. peril and those mentioned before such as: the representation of
Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights, The Earnshaw family and the Lintons, the two
relationships of Catherine I and natural law vs. laws of social order.
Wuthering Heights is a symbol of nature, chaos, and violence. The moors, which
surrounds The Heights is place of freedom, wild. Place where their relationship feels safe, where
they are in unison.
The weather at Wuthering heights household is characterized by exposure to the natural elements
(north wind, storm) and is a symbol of its inhabitants dispositions: violence, passion,
impulsiveness. The geographical isolation is seen as Heathcliffs human incarnation, severe,
brutal, and gloomy in aspect and atmosphere. And therefore is an appropriate background for the
life of bare and primitive passions. Because of this They both promised fair to grow up as rude
as savages Nelly reports. While savage means rough and wild it can also mean being in a state
of natural impulse, being in an unspoiled wholesome frame of mind.

Catherine defines her home as a perfect misanthropists Heaven, a place that is so

completely removed from the stir of society. Nelly also says that: The inhabitants of the Heights
have degenerated into absolute heathenism, and hence they are the symbol of uncultured society.
For Nelly Wuthering Heights is in an out-of-the-way place. Not only Catherine and Heathcliff
fall under this misconduct but Isabella and Hindley, Little Linton too: gambling, elopement,
forced marriages, violence, and exploitation of the ill, bribery.

However Catherine then she visits the Grange and the balance is gone. She meets another
world, one of enclosure and cultural refinement. The Grange stands for culture, order, and
domesticity, world of politeness, etiquette, and actions that are not filled with passion and
 Ilie Andreea
Anul II, seria 2 ,grupa 7
C+S Alina Bottez

impulsiveness. Even if it is more agreeable, human existence, refinement, kindness, amiability,

more tolerable life it shows signs of decadence: pampered indulgence, excessive sweetness,
luxury. When they look through the window and see Isabella and Edgar fighting over the dog
Heathcliff choses to see the worst in it, while Catherine embraces the wealth and refinement.
When Catherine rejects her respective world, she, who is reared in absolute heathenism,
becomes the lady of Thrushcross Grange, and the wife of a stranger; an exile and outcast from
what had been her world. Their mortal efforts to break free from the natural mould and embrace
culture have disastrous effects on the Perfect Love. It is therefore Catherines step toward culture
that seals the fate of both. Her transition from a wild hatless little savage to a very dignified
person is a rejection of her natural life. Her decision to marry into society shatters the illusion of
their perfectly amoral love.
Heathcliff originally chooses nature in that he is true to his natural love for his Other Self,
but Catherines rejection of this love forces him to choose culture. He becomes a gentleman, he
betrays himself and the result is tragedy and destruction.

The intermarriage between the two households has catastrophic effects. And this has
repercussions that penetrate through to the following generation. It may even be said that Bront
uses the second generation so as to revise and resolve the imperfections of the past.

And the fact that Heathcliff having acquired both nature (the Heights) and culture (the
Grange) the consequence is tragic as well: [His] cheeks are hollow, and [his] eyes blood-shot,
like a person starving with hunger, and going blind with loss of sleep.
The Earnshaw family and the Lintons oppose because they stand one for perverse, Gothic
fatherhood and one for ideal fatherhood, but because Edgar is seen as a representative of gentry
masculinity and Heathcliff as natural masculinity.

At Wuthering Heights, masculinity is defined by the physicality of gentry masculinity

and often expresses itself through violence, vices (drinking and gambling) while at the
Thrushcross Grange is rooted in domestic ideology (emasculating and effeminate characters).

Though Catherine Earnshaw is not a male character, she, too, is infected by the
oppression and need to oppress found at Wuthering Heights. As a girl child, she has little power,
 Ilie Andreea
Anul II, seria 2 ,grupa 7
C+S Alina Bottez

in the home or otherwise. That is why her desire to escape from domestic powerlessness drives
her into a marriage with Edgar Linton. Catherine deliberately separates herself from Heathcliff
because marriage to Linton will allow her the social power she cannot wield at home, while
marriage to Heathcliff would reduce them both to beggars. This rupture between Catherine and
Heathcliff causes severe self-alienation in Catherine, which she ultimately cannot survive.

Mr. Earnshaw is the first of many perverse patriarchs, introducing a mysterious child into
his home and favoring him above his own children. When Old Earnshaw dies, Hindley becomes
the new patriarch of Wuthering Heights and uses his authority to strip Heathcliff of his family
privileges and education and sets about degrading him into a brute. Of course, Heathcliff will
continue the tradition by mistreating his child. He sees him as a tool in fulfilling his agenda and
he never feels love or any empathy towards him even though Little Linton is sick.

Being an illustration of a patriarchal society where the serious issues of oppression,social

inequality, education and morality as well as the mistreatment of women are dealt with,
Wuthering Heights is a revolutionary novel.

Catherine describes hers relationship with the two men: I am Heathcliff, I love him:
and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever
our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam
from lightning, or frost from fire. She compares her love to them as Foliage vs. eternal rock.
She loves Heathcliff who is the archetypal outsider in the story, who is as dark as the devil.
Their love is Perfect Love: it is not earthly, for it is far greater than anything mortal. It is never
consummated its famous deferral contributes toward its ultimate superiority: it is given an idol
status above mortality.

We differentiate between an agreeable and a necessary love. A tame love and a

passionate, consuming, love. It has its roots in the deep level of the mind and its emotions of the
dark and the light, of the positive and negative, of the good and evil.
That is why there is a conflict between Edgar (culture) and Heathcliff (nature), heart
and head, feeling vs. reason (however here reason is not the opposite of feeling, but the
 Ilie Andreea
Anul II, seria 2 ,grupa 7
C+S Alina Bottez

realization of your true feelings and acting according to them). Her choice is the Victorian
Choice and the repercussions of it haunt the remaining characters.
And the main theme: destructive love versus dangerous representation of culture. And the
answer is ambiguous because there is no winner.
Heathcliff and Catherine are driven by their violent impulses through life: the former is
outwardly directed and sadistic, while the latter is inward-turning and masochistic. Catherine's
longing for a whip mirrors the girl's yearning for power and control. In place of the whip, or
perhaps figuratively as the whip, Catherine's sadistic nature is presented with the opportunity to
manifest itself with her dominance over him

Even the love between Catherine and Heathcliff is an opposition of tame and wild: The
love that was nothing but an innocent union at the beginning, pure and immaculate that kind of
love, now transforms into an experience of limitation, into consuming intensity, into passion
rather than tender and committed love.
For Emily Bronte the good and the bad were a mixture much like nature which comprises rain
and sunshine, day and night, winter (coldness) and summer (heat). Catherine and Heathcliff and
their love represent exactly this point.
 Ilie Andreea
Anul II, seria 2 ,grupa 7
C+S Alina Bottez

Bibliography
Brantlinger, P., & Thesing, W. (2002). A Companion to the Victorian Novel. Blackwell Publishing.

Homans, M. (1980). Woman Writers and Poetic Identity. Princeton University Press.