Introduction
Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is a gothic novel based around intense emotions, destructive love and general conflict. The main textual element of the novel is the effect of unreliable narrators, which creates layers of subjective events.The novel explains how love, revenge and identity, are shaped by social constraints. From a postmodern perspective, Wuthering Heights becomes a fragmented, self-questioning narrative where truth is unstable, love is obsession, and meaning is constantly shifting through unreliable perspectives and ambiguous symbols. This is interesting, don't you think? But the only thing that worries me are these narrators, like how reliable are they?
Summary of Element One - Gothicism
A Haunted Setting:
Wuthering Heights is portrayed as a dark, storm-beaten, and emotionally charged place—a classic Gothic environment. Lockwood describes the house as “completely removed from the stir of society”, and the setting often mirrors the characters’ inner turmoil. The house feels alive with its violent weather, coldness, and isolation. Its Gothic mood is heightened during Lockwood’s terrifying experience when he sees the ghost of Catherine. In a postmodern view, The eerie, isolated house symbolizes emotional fragmentation and subjective reality, showing how setting reflects inner chaos rather than objective truth.
Supernatural Elements: The novel uses ghosts and spiritual presences to explore the boundary between life and death. Catherine’s ghost appears to Lockwood, and Heathcliff later claims to feel her presence. “I believe—I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!” This quote shows Heathcliff’s obsession and suggests that Catherine’s spirit transcends death, reinforcing the Gothic theme of the supernatural haunting the living. Ghosts and visions reveal a collapse of reality and fantasy, blurring the line between memory, desire, and delusion, rather than affirming spiritual truth.
Links to Postmodern Media Source(s)
https://literariness.org/2018/09/02/postmodern-gothic/#google_vignette
My Take -This relates to my source one due to the grotesque and sad content within both stories. And that both made me sit down and rethink life.
Summary of Element Two -Symbolism
The Moors – Symbol of Wildness and Freedom:
The moors symbolize the wild, untamed nature of Catherine and Heathcliff’s bond. They represent a space beyond societal rules, where emotions run free. Catherine describes her connection with Heathcliff as elemental and natural:
“My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath—a source of little visible delight, but necessary.” The moors reflect this enduring, raw emotional force—vast, open, and resistant to control, symbolizing a love that defies norms but also leads to destruction. In a postmodernist view, the moors no longer symbolize romantic freedom—they represent a boundary-less, unstable space where identity and meaning dissolve. Their openness reflects emotional dislocation rather than liberation.
Wuthering Heights vs. Thrushcross Grange – Symbol of Conflict Between Nature and Civilization:
The two estates symbolize opposing forces: Wuthering Heights stands for wildness, chaos, and passion, while Thrushcross Grange represents order, culture, and repression. Their contrast highlights the central conflict between instinct and restraint. Lockwood describes the Grange as a “perfect misanthropist’s Heaven,” cold and removed, while Wuthering Heights is tied to storms and violence. The homes become symbols of the internal and external battles each character faces. In a postmodernist view, The contrast between the two houses doesn’t offer clear moral opposites; instead, it exposes how both chaos and order are flawed constructs, showing the collapse of binary thinking in defining people or places.
Links to Postmodern Media Source(s)
https://literariness.org/2016/03/31/postmodernism/
My Take - This links to my second source due to the symbolism both the novel holds within and the Lyrical symbols the songs hold as well.
Summary of Element Three -Allusion
Biblical Allusion – Catherine and Heathcliff’s Spiritual Connection
Catherine and Heathcliff’s bond is often described in spiritual or eternal terms, echoing Biblical ideas of soulmates or eternal union. Catherine famously says.“I am Heathcliff—he’s always, always in my mind… as my own being.” This alludes to the Biblical idea of two becoming one flesh, suggesting a transcendent, almost sacred connection. In a postmodernist view, rather than affirming a pure or divine union, this allusion is seen as obsessive and self-consuming. Postmodernism questions whether such total merging is healthy or even possible, exposing the danger in idealizing love as spiritual destiny.
Literary Allusion – Reference to The Arabian Nights
Lockwood compares his dreams and experiences in Wuthering Heights to the strange tales of The Arabian Nights, a famous collection of Middle Eastern folklore. “This is surely a dream... may she wake in torment!... If I were only sure it was a dream, I would not feel such horror.” This allusion draws attention to the dreamlike, surreal quality of the narrative.
Links to Postmodern Media Source(s)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40755039
My Take - My source and allousin relate due to them contrasting. Source tree is personal opinion and imagery while this takes points from allusion.
Conclusion
In Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë crafts a layered and emotionally charged narrative rooted in Gothic tradition, symbolic contrast, and powerful allusions. Through its haunting setting, supernatural elements, and turbulent relationships, the novel explores the darker sides of love, identity, and memory. When viewed through a postmodern lens, these traditional elements are not just tools of storytelling but become mechanisms that challenge the very nature of truth, reality, and meaning. Gothic horror becomes a reflection of fragmented selfhood; symbols lose their fixed meanings; and allusions no longer elevate but destabilize. Postmodernism reveals Wuthering Heights not as a tale of romantic destiny, but as a narrative full of instability, contradiction, and unresolved tension—forcing readers to question what is real, who can be trusted, and whether truth can ever be fully known. In the end, it’s not just a love story—it’s a story about how stories deceive, blur, and reshape the way we see the world.
Works Cited
Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights, 1847. Google Books, no date, www.google.com/books/edition/Wuthering_Heights/IPSJGlUEWPgC. Accessed 12 May 2025.
Blackmon, Robert E. Church Bible GIF. Giphy, 2017. giphy.com/gifs/reaction-church-bible-xThtak1Wp9nHLtmLrW. Accessed 14 May 2025.
Giphy, n.d. giphy.com/gifs/XTcVIdrTYauNZ7zJTS. Accessed 14 May 2025.
Giphy, 2015,. giphy.com/gifs/dITPWYh4HPJ1S. Accessed 14 May 2025.
Team Kennedy. Representation Metaphor GIF. Giphy, 2024. giphy.com/gifs/robertkennedyjr-metaphor-symbolism-allegory-JJxVpdIjboOLLts4Kq. Accessed 14 May 2025.
Tumblr User. Untitled GIF. Tumblr, n.d. 24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7dwpsywxu1r1eqz2o1_500.gif. Accessed 14 May 2025.
