Tame vs. Wild Humanity in Wuthering Heights

Badea Ioana Mihaela Group 1, Year 2, Victorian Literature Seminar Seminar Instructor Alina Bottez 19.12.2014

Wild vs. Tame Humanity in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights The main internal and external conflicts in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights are: nature vs. civilization, deep and elemental vs the superficial and impermanent, natural impulses vs. artificial restraint and also the conflict between the wild and tame aspects of the characters’ personalities.( Agatucci) This essay concentrates on the wild vs. tame humanity of Bronte’s protagonists taking into consideration the close relation between nature and wild, and civilization and the tame humanity. The whole Earnshaw family is presented as being somehow against civilization, but the most representative characters for the wild humanity are Catherine and Heathcliff, they are the definition on a free spirit not altered by the social and cultural influences, they are controlled by their passions and untamable selves. Catherine is a beautiful and sweet girl, always pretending to be more educated than she actually is, hoping to impress the Linton family. Because of the early death of her parents, Cathy is bound to lack a proper education and protection and this makes her rebellious, leading to her attraction for Heathcliff, and making her approachable for him as they both were not that cultivated. Heathcliff is also a member of the Earnshaw family, even though he is adopted, and his natural family is totally unknown. Heathcliff is a wild spirit, his passions are extremely powerful compared to Catherine’s. He represents the unstoppable power of nature, his strong devotion for Catherine is almost hard to understand. He becomes destructive and cruel, giving the impression that he has lost all of his humanity, but his core is still described as the one of the orphan child found on the streets of Liverpool, seeking only the love that he has never had. The Lintons are the representative family for the tame category. Mrs. and Mr. Linton are the parents of Edgar and Isabella. Mr. Linton raises his children in a very intellectual atmosphere; Mrs. Linton despises young Heathcliff doing anything to keep his bad influence away from her precious children. Isabella and Edgar are raised in a very educated and cultural environment; they are well brought up and mannered. Isabella is the same age as Catherine, she is a character that shows culture and delicateness and Edgar is the exact opposite to Heathcliff,

extremely tempered and rational, but still very loving towards Catherine. When making a parallel between the two couples of children it can be seen that at very similar ages Catherine and Heathcliff are the exact opposite to Isabella and her brother. When they first arrived at Thrushcross Grange, Cathy is bit by the house’s dog and taken into the house to be taken care of, that is the first moment when Catherine decides that she wants to become of a higher class, and this idea is planted into her mind by Mrs. Linton. However after a while, even if Catherine was influenced by the Lintons into becoming more elevate and mannered, the passionate and powerful nature of the Wuthering Heights proved to be even more influential dragging the Thrushcroos Grange family into the Earnshaw conflicts. This can be interpreted by saying that nature is always more powerful than culture, so the wild will always triumph over the tame. The places where the characters live also show strong features of their human nature. Thrushcroos Grange is a very organized and harmonious place, with a huge collection of books and cultural activities available, this emphasizes the inclinations that its inhabitants have, they are refined and cultivated. Whereas Wuthering Heights is a space of freedom and wilderness, the most powerful force there is nature, and so is for its inhabitants, they are all very passionate. Throughout the novel Emily Bronte mocks both tendencies of her protagonists, the wild are displayed as being irrational, absent minded and occasionally even violent, whereas the tame are presented as very weak and exaggeratedly fragile, this the best seen in Linton Heathcliff’s behavior, he is almost always sick, constantly complaining about something, and this drives crazy the other occupants of the Wuthering heights. The whole Linton family acts like a group of spoiled kids, but this is more prominent when it comes to young Linton,he is absorbed in his own selfishness. Heathcliff is the representative character for the wild comportment, he is the victim of his own passions, he is very constant in his decisions, his main goal being to get revenge over the Earnshaw and Linton family. In my opinion Wuthering Heights is a novel about the constant fight between nature and culture. Modernity imposes a kind of corruption of the natural by the cultural, even though nature has always been more powerful it starts losing ground and the cultural elements start to take over, but if a balance is not present the natural starts to fight back in order to regain what was lost. In Wuthering Heights, the Lintons have an advantage at the beginning, Catherine joins their universe, but this does nothing else but unleash the greater power of the natural, who wants

to take back what was taken, this is Heathcliff, he is the natural force that wants to equilibrate and even take over the other group in a violent manner. In conclusion Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is a novel of doubles and mirrors, but not mirrors that shows reality, mirrors that show exact opposites. The people from Wuthering Heights are by definition wild, powerful and mostly irrational, but the inhabitants of Thrushcroos Grange are completely rational, refined but very weak. Each one of them tries to take over the other creating a chaotic situation that leads to immoral actions and exaggerated decisions, and this disrupture in nature is created only by Catherine, who decides to leave her roots behind only to achieve a higher social status. Because of her betrayal, the plot takes a violent turn forcing its characters to regain what was lost, and this is attained with much difficulty only in a second generation of the family.

Works Cited 1.Agatucci, C. "Romanticism & Realism in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights."Romanticism & Realism in Wuthering Heights. ENG 109, 1 Apr. 2007. Web. 16 Dec. 2014. . . Ian, Jack, Emily Bront , and Helen mall. Wuthering Heights. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2009. Print. 3. parkNotes Editors. “ parkNote on Wuthering Heights.” parkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2002. Web. 17 Dec. 2014.