Wuthering Heights

Symbols & Motifs · Wuthering Heights

Recurring objects and images — and what they carry.

1. 01

   The moors

   Freedom, danger, and the only place in the novel where love is allowed to exist without consequence. When characters leave the moors for houses, things start going wrong.

2. 02

   Windows

   Heathcliff sees Catherine through a window at Thrushcross Grange as a child. Catherine's ghost scratches at a window to be let in. Characters look out of windows at a world they can't reach. The window is the space between wanting and having.

3. 03

   Weather

   The novel opens in winter. The storms are never decorative. When the weather is violent, someone is about to be.

4. 04

   Heights and lowness

   Wuthering Heights sits high on the moors, exposed and harsh. Thrushcross Grange sits lower, sheltered and soft. The contrast is not subtle. Brontë means it literally and figuratively at once.