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Essay on Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights

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Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights

Often in literature, the fictional written word mimics or mirrors the non-fictional actions of the time. These reflections may be social, historical, biographical, or a combination of these. Through setting, characters, and story line, an author can recreate in linear form on paper some of the abstract concepts and ideas from the world s/he is living in. In the case of Emily Bronte, her novel Wuthering Heights very closely mirrors her own life and the lives of her family members. Bronte's own life emerges on the pages of this novel through the setting, characters, and story line of Wuthering Heights.

This novel is set in the open moors of England, where Bronte grew up. Nelly Dean, …show more content…

She found in the bleak solitude many and dear delights; and not the least and best loved was-liberty" (WH 268). Bronte lost herself in the hollows of the moors, and young Cathy disappeared from Nelly Dean in the same manner. The character, young Cathy, seemed to love the moors as Bronte did.

Many of the characters in Wuthering Heights have things in common with Bronte and her family members. Chemical addiction, need for solitude and the loss of loved ones are common ground the characters in the novel share with the characters in Bronte's own family.

Bronte's brother, Branwell, had a, "pathetic addiction to alcohol and opium" according to Hawes'. In the novel, when Hindley comes back to the Heights for his sister's funeral, Nelly Dean recalls, "...Mr. Earnshaw should have been at the funeral. He kept himself sober for the purpose-tolerably sober; not going to bed mad at six o'clock and getting up drunk at twelve. Consequently, he rose, in suicidal low spirits, as fit for the church as for a dance; and instead, he sat down by the fire and swallowed gin or brandy by the tumblerfuls" (WH 133). Hindley was a fictional drunk and her brother Branwell was a real life drunk. Both men died from their addiction.

Bronte shared a need for solitude with the character of Heathcliff. In fact, some may see this as an addiction. According to G-- J--, a

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