The
impassioned happenings of Emily Bronte’s classic novel fittingly take place in
the desolate and miserable landscape of the Yorkshire Moors. Emily Bronte’s
surroundings clearly had a gravitational effect on her literature; she grew up
in the small and somewhat isolated village of Thornton, West Riding of
Yorkshire, and later moved to Haworth, a village surrounded by moorlands far
and wide. In fact, she is supposed to have based the locations of her renowned
novel on landmarks in the local area; Ponden Hall is reputedly Thrushcross
Grange, and Top Withens is alledgedly the setting for Wuthering Heights.
“Fiction
depends for its life on place.” American author Eudora Welty said, “Place is
the crossroads of circumstance;” Bronte would almost certainly have agreed. The
setting for her book Wuthering Heights plays a vital role in
the progression of the novel; typical of Gothic literature, the isolation and
harshness of the landscape adds to the foreboding and ominous atmosphere
prominent in the book. The wild and primitive backdrop to the tale can be not
only pitiless (“I had half a mind to spend it by my study fire,
instead of wading through heath and mud to Wuthering Heights”), but it can also
act as a sanctuary. Heathcliff and Catherine retreat to the rugged moors to
escape Hindley’s cruelty, and in this way the two grow close.
