THE ROLE OF NATURE IN WUTHERING HEIGHTS

Abstract

In this novel nature seems to be a complex of spiritual forces embodying all that are comprehended of fate and supernatural. Its workings are beyond good and evil in social and moral senses. Instead of offering any exclusive moral judgement, Emily Bronte presents transcendental ethic. This novel is full of life's intensity, and defiance against misery and death. There are so many questions and no consistant philosophy of life. But every event is inevitable and its subjective heavens and hells are raised to the level of universality because of the perfection of the form in this novel. Everywhere the conflicting heavens and hells are confronting, and the incompatible ways of life coupled with grotesque ways which lead sometimes to violence and hysteria, sometimes to lifeless neutrality and sometimes to new and fuller forms of life. In Wuthering Heights. human passions seem to be co-existing with their opposites. Love causes hatred and cruelty at the same time. Good is co-existing with evil. Evil, personified in Satan, stems solely from the separation -- from the denial of sympathy and love. Otherwise, love is the primary law of human nature and the supreme principle in the cosmic scheme. If adhered to, this becomes a source of joy and harmony: if rejected or destroyed, this turns to be a spring of enmity and strife. Emily Bronte interprets human nature neither from itself nor from anything less than ALL NATURE. As a man is a part of nature, human passions and sufferings are part of an everlasting process of nature, nature must work itself out. One generation of tragic suffering does not suffice. In order to enter into the glorious world, or in order to gain complete oneness, harmony, the people and every creature struggle and suffer the destruction. Everything is an agent of destruction or death. Through the struggle and suffering, they are able to enjoy the joy in the glorious world in the end. This glorious world belongs to the world of nature. Everything is absorbed to this heaven in the middle of the moors. This novel is neither a fairy tale nor a myth, but a true novel born in Emily Bronte's pure imagination.