This document discusses key motifs and symbols in Emily Bronte's novel Wuthering Heights. The three main motifs are doubles, repetition, and the conflict between nature and culture. Doubles include Catherine and Heathcliff seeing themselves as identical, as well as opposing houses representing different worlds. Repetition includes the past repeating itself in the present. Nature is symbolized by the Earnshaw family and moors, while culture is represented by the Linton family and Thrushcross Grange. Ghosts in the novel also add an ambiguous, symbolic element.

1. Motifs And Symbols
Name: Jitendra Sumra
Roll No.- 17
Sem.: II
Paper : The Romantic
Literature
Submitted to : Dept of English

2. Introduction
• This Novel written in 1846-47 by Emily
Bronte and published in 1847. In this
novel most of the events are narrated in
Nelly’s point of view, focusing only on
what see and hear, or what she can find
out about indirectly.

3. Motifs of the novel
• There three motifs of this novel.
• 1] Doubles,
• 2]Repetition,
• 3]The conflict between Nature and Culture.

4. 1] Doubles:-
• Emily Bronte organizes her novel by arranging
its elements, Characters, Places and themes
into pairs.
• Catherine and Heathcliff are closely matched
in many ways, and see themselves as identical.
• Catherine’s character is divided into two
‘warring sides’ the side that wants Edgar and
and the side that wants Heathcliff.

5. • Catherine and young Catherine are both
remarkably similar and strikingly different.
• The two houses, Wuthering Heights and
Thrush cross Grange, represent opposing
worlds and values.
• The novel has two different narrators, Nelly’s
and Mr. Lockwood.

6. Repetition
• Repetition is another tactic Bronte employs in
organizing Wuthering Heights.
• It seems that nothing ever ends in the world of
this novel. Instead, time seems to run in cycles,
and the horrors of the past repeat themselves in
the presents.
• For instance, Heathcliff’s degradation of
Hareton repeats Hindey’s degradation of
Heathcliff. Also, the young Catherine ‘s
mockery of Joseph’s earnest evangelical
Zealousness repeats her mothers.

7. • 3] The conflict between Nature and Culture:-
• In this novel, Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
Constantly plays nature and culture against each
other.
• Nature is represented by Earnshaw family, and by
Catherine and Heathcliff in particular.
• These characters are governed by their reflection
or ideals of civility.
• Correspondingly, the house where they live
Wuthering heights comes to symbolize a similar
wildness.

8. • On the other hand ,Thrushcross Grange and the
Linton family represent culture, refinement,
convention, and cultivation.
• When Catherine is bitten by Linton’s dog and
brought into Thrushcross Grange, the two
sides are brought onto the collision course that
structures the majority of the novels' plot.

9. • Symbols:-
• (1)Moors:-
• In this novel the constant emphasis on
landscape within the text of Wuthering Heights
endows the setting with symbolic importance.
• This landscape is comprised primarily of
moors: wide, wild expanses, high but
somewhat soggy, and thus infertile.
• Moorland cannot be cultivated, and its
uniformity makes navigation difficult.

10. • [2] Ghosts:-
• In this novel ghosts appear throughout
Wuthering Heights, as they do in most other
works of gothic fiction, yet Bronte always
presents them in such a way that whether they
really exist remains ambiguous. Thus the
world of the novel can always be interpreted as
a realistic one.
• The villagers alleged sightings of Heathcliff’s
ghost in one chapter could be dismissed as
unverified superstition.