Chapter 1: Wuthering Heights: Introduction: This chapter examines the two contrasting homes presented in the novel, their inhabitants and external landscapes with its domestic settings and provincial location.The supernatural occurrences in Wuthering Heights arguably align it more closely with the Gothic novel than the Romantic novel, since Bronte's use of grotesque imagery to describe how Lockwood pulled the wrist of Catherine's ghost 'on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down' generates an atmosphere of horror.Lockwood's account of the interior known as 'the house' at Wuthering Heights:

Lockwood's first impressions are of heat and light reflecting 'splendidly from ranks of immense pewter dishes, interspersed with silver jugs and tankards, towering row after row, in a vast oak dresser'.On Lockwood's second visit, as the snowstorm sets in, the 'bleak hill top ... hard with a black frost' and the locked gate over which he has to climb before 'running up the flagged causeway bordered with straggling gooseberry bushes' and knocking 'vainly for admittance' on the farmhouse door, is very obviously a reminder of the chilly reception he previously enjoyed and a premonition of turbulence to come.The Romantic poet Lord Byron is credited as having invented the Byronic hero in his poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage who has parallels with Heathcliff's dark, obsessive mentality, his strange mixture of attractive and repulsive qualities, and his capacity to inspire fear and wreak devastation on his enemies."With its 'Chinese boxes' effect of narratives within narratives, its constant regressions of perspectives and instabilities of viewpoint, it is a strangely 'decentred' fiction which subverts the dominance of the conventional authorial 'voice' as markedly as aspects of its subject-matter threaten to undermine the received forms of bourgeois society."?Isabella and the young Catherine's incarceration at Wuthering Heights is reminiscent of this aspect of the Gothic, and feminist criticism has firmly established modes of reading the genre as expressive of the physical and psychological oppression of women within patriarchal society.By the time Lockwood finds himself pinned down by Heathcliff's dogs in the snow outside, comedy has transmuted into something more brutal; this physical onslaught at the conclusion of Chapter II is followed in Chapter III by Lockwood's introduction to the more truly gloomy part of the Wuthering Heights' interior where he spends the night.Bronte's incorporation of the features of a variety of literary genres into her novel also contributes to the oppositional formal unity of the work, while simultaneously having decidedly disorientating effects on the reader.These responses are the Spectator's view of the novel is too 'extreme' and marred by detailed and protracted depictions of violence, but praise of the novel's originality and imaginative power often ran alongside criticism of the writer's evident inexperience.Our introduction to 'sinewy' old Joseph and his savage master Heathcliff has already prepared us to find a connection between the inhabitants of the Heights and 'the excessive slant of a few, stunted firs at the end of the house'; and the 'range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way.Home at Thrushcross Grange: "ah! it was beautiful - a splendid place carpeted with crimson, and crimson-covered chairs and tables, and a pure white ceiling bordered by gold, a shower of glass-drops hanging in silver chains from the centre, and shimmering with little soft tapers. Old Mr. and Mrs. Linton were not there. Edgar and his sister had it entirely to themselves; shouldn't they have been happy? We should have thought ourselves in heaven!"Charlotte Bronte identifies in her preface to the novel, where she stresses the 'alien and unfamiliar' nature of the inhabitants, customs and landscape of Yorkshire to those 'unacquainted with the locality where the scenes of the story are laid'.Bronte's introduction to her novel via Lockwood's encounter with Heathcliff and the second-generation characters has plunged us straight into a bewildering conjunction of everyday domesticity with ghosts and strange emotional excess.Also, the earliest reviewers of the novel tended to discuss the 'home' setting of Wuthering Heights more than the landscapes it evoked, such as a review for the Athenaeum by the critic Henry Chorley, describes the home at Wuthering Heights as 'a prison which might be pictured from life.Lockwood has just described the figure that we might normally expect to find seated in the comfortable kitchen at Wuthering Heights, 'a homely, northern farmer, with a stubborn countenance, and stalwart limbs set out to advantage in knee-breeches and gaiters'.In Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff is portrayed as proud, physically courageous, oppressive, revengeful, brooding, defiant of laws and conventions, given to violent utterance and action, with flashing 'basilisk eyes'.The Romantic literary hero and fairy-tale changeling, Heathcliff, whose foreignness also has historical origins within the contemporary context of the novel, providing an example of the interaction of romance and realism in the text.Nelly observes that after saving Hareton's life when Hindley dropped him over the bannister, Heathcliff's face betrayed his desire 'to remedy the mistake by smashing Hareton's skull onthe steps' - a violent image that highlights his brutality and makes us more likely to see him as a Gothic villain than a Romantic hero.The structure of Wuthering Heights in relation to the idea of 'home', the narrators and narrative frames through which the novel's story is told, the patterns of repetition and variation between events and characters, and the novel's carefully presented chronology.The mid-twentieth-century critic Queenie Leavis saw Wuthering Heights as home to a 'wholesome', 'primitive' and 'natural' society pitted against the overdeveloped, artificial culture of the Grange.Heathcliff as a recognisable Byronic or Gothic hero-villain might be manageable was the way in which the novel represented all the occupants of his house in their 'wild state'.Heathcliff's origin a mystery in a novel where genealogy is vital.Bronte uses a tree metaphor to indicate Heathcliff's determination to reduce Hareton to the same lowly state to which Hindley reduced him: 'we'll see if one tree won't grow as crooked as another, with the same wind to twist it!'.This untempered mixing of the prosaic and the fantastic is particularly a feature of Bronte's fiction, a sense that ordinary domesticity is a fit subject for the novel is something that Wuthering Heights shares with a great number of Victorian novels.However, after her death, a cutting was found in her desk of a perceptive which identifies the contrast between the two houses as fundamental to the novel: 'An antiquated farm-house, a neighbouring residence of somewhat more pretending description with their respective inmates'.The multiple narrative viewpoints in Wuthering Heights mean that readers tend to experience a lack of authoritative stance about the events and, most notably, the violence depicted in the novel.Alongside its tight chronological organisation, the opposing locations and voices in the novel help to structure the narrative, as do the genealogical ties that are of such thematic importance to the story.Lockwood's eye is drawn to the tea canisters on the mantelpiece (tea being a relatively expensive commodity at the time of the novel's setting, and an implicit sign of connections between the domestic world of the novel and the world of imperial trade 'abroad').Such contrasts are fundamental to the opposing thematic and metaphorical patterns, the careful balance of locations (and characters), that help to structure the novel, even if some of these oppositions break down on closer inspection.Nelly's description of the exterior of the Thrushcross Grange:

Nelly's account here includes one of many lyrical descriptions of the seasons, weather and landscape that appear throughout the novel.Nelly's account combines precise topographical features of the Grange's valley setting with a poetic evocation of its green softness, wrapped in a protective silver mist above which Wuthering Heights stands exposed.Heathcliff is marginalized on the basis of his orphan status, and he is only able to achieve ownership of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange by acts of cunning and manipulation.Feminist readings of the second-generation plot view it as either a retelling or a revision of the first- generation story, depending on whether they read the novel as voicing protest against the triumph of patriarchal power or as depicting its reform.Therefore early reviews offer a complex range of insights into Bronte's text and the contexts in which it was read, such as the now quaint vocabulary of 'coarseness' and 'moral taint' in The Spectator review.Lockwood reflects that 'the apartment and furniture would have been nothing extraordinary as belonging to a homely, northern farmer ... But Mr. Heathcliff forms a singular contrast to his abode and style of living'.The comedy plays over several pages where Lockwood's social platitudes come up against Catherine's overt hostility, Hareton's boorishness and Heathcliff's increasing savagery.The contrasting worlds of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange might represent a conflict between northern rural values and the more urban cultures of the south of England.The novel's ending cements the union between the Lintons and the Earnshaws and Heathcliff's role has been predominantly as an external catalyst for relationships, both harmonious and conflicted, between others.The notion of 'romance' came, during the Romantic period, to describe works of introspection and imagination generally denotes a mode of writing that engages with the desires and imaginative lives of its characters and readers.This accommodation of the domestic alongside the Romantic elements in the novel seems more akin to Bronte's aesthetic practice of mixing romance and realism.The themes of home and abroad have helped to frame an exploration of the novel's ideological and generic complexity from which readers can venture further abroad for themselves.The novel itself is structured along highly organised lines with a clearly indicated span of dates both for Lockwood's narrative and for the events that Nelly Dean narrates.Catherine's daughter goes to Wuthering Heights, echoing her mother's move to the Grange, Hareton's deprivations repeat those inflicted on Heathcliff, Catherine feels trapped at the Grange, and Isabella and the second Catherine are both incarcerated at Wuthering Heights.In the quotation below literary critic Eaglenton comments on the lack of a single authorial stance in Wuthering Heights.It can be tempting to dismiss early responses as narrowly moralistic 'Victorian' reactions to a challenging text.Thus the consumption of print within the home was linked explicitly to the consumption of food, and unwholesome reading considered as likely to have deleterious effects on its inhabitants as a surfeit of sweetmeats.As previously, there is an extreme - and comic - discrepancy between the expectations inspired by this interior and his rude reception by its inhabitants and most unconventional tea party that follows.Early reviews dwelt on the joint significance of Wuthering Heights as both a wild, abandoned landscape and a house, noting connections between events taking place inside and the exterior weather and landscape.Heathcliff, by contrast, with his 'gypsy'-like appearance, suggests a mysterious wealth of possible origins which, for Lockwood, would contradict a gentlemanly status.Additional support for viewing Heathcliff as a Gothic villain is provided by Bronte's use of a violent animal metaphor to convey his lack of compassion: 'I have no pity!In Wuthering Heights Bronte brings together the romance elements of genres such as the Gothic with realistic depictions of character, dialogue and behaviour.The brutal truths which Wuthering Heights presents include the realities of domestic life, social exclusion and economic dispossession.The prejudice to which orphans were subjected is reflected in Mrs Earnshaw's use of the derogatory term 'gipsy brat' to refer to Heathcliff.The Gothic is used from the start to show the shadow side of the Victorian domestic ideal, which can leave women the unequal partners under domestic tyranny, and it persists in the power of the ghosts of Cathy and Heathcliff to disturb us until the end.Wuthering Heights never allows us to arrive at the kind of harmonious and unexamined idea of the domestic encouraged by Ruskin, Patmore and others.The structure of Wuthering Heights: The family at Wuthering Heights that were at odds with the domestic ideals which contributed to the way in which the novel puts pressure on familiar literary classifications.Wuthering Heights demonstrates both Gothic and realist qualities, and can be classified as a 'hybrid'.She tells Lockwood that she was always predisposed to take Linton's side in any dispute, and does not readily accept Catherine's account of the severity of her collapse following the physical conflict between Heathcliff and Linton.She tells Lockwood that she was always predisposed to take Linton's side in any dispute, and does not readily accept Catherine's account of the severity of her collapse following the physical conflict between Heathcliff and Linton.Eagleton draws attention to the decentring effects created by the different narrative voices in this 'elusive, enigmatic text' and by the bizarre events it narrates.These bright, un-dismal objects suggest a life of prosperity and plenty, confirmed by the 'frame of wood laden with oatcakes, and clusters of legs of beef, mutton and ham'.The novelist Henry James conceived of 'the house of fiction' in order to represent the formal structures that writers build to frame their characters, a house whose many windows represent the multitudinous perspectives the novelist can evoke.It is also followed by his own physical cruelty to the waif-like would-be-inhabitant of the house 'looking through the window', whose grasp he escapes only by rubbing 'its wrist' across 'the broken pane'.Lockwood's description of the exterior setting for the house at Wuthering Heights:

In Wuthering Heights, the landscapes work as a spatial expression of the themes and emotions portrayed.The interior of this house is intensifying the contrast between the wild, exuberant race, in Catherine's case barefoot, and the glories and constraints of its domestic space.Heathcliff's account begins with the obvious contrast with the miseries of the house at Wuthering Heights, where he and Catherine spend their Sunday evenings 'standing shivering in corners'.This viewpoint from the Grange is paralleled by the way in which readers at home viewed the world of the novel from the comfort of their own domestic interiors.Lockwood's narrative shows him as entirely disconcerted by the inhabitants of the house - a feeling shared by many readers confronted by such wild behaviour while reading in the apparent safety of their own homes.Lockwood's initial stance as a man appreciative of isolated and unrefinedsociety is soon diminished by the rough reception accorded him.The Mysterious character 'Heathcliff':

"He is a dark-skinned gypsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman - that is, as much a gentleman as many a country squire ... he has an erect and handsome figure - and rather morose - possibly some people might suspect him of a degree of under- bred pride."Heathcliff is 'morose', suggest that he might share the characteristics of a hero, or indeed villain, from a genre which is in contrast to the polite domestic novel of manners.Nevertheless, the relentless patterns of repetition-withvariation constantly invite frustrating interpretation.she demanded'.