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Emily Bronte<-novels<-chapter 7<-contents<-position

   This time, I remembered I was lying in the oak closet, and I heard distinctly the gusty wind, and the driving of the snow; I heard, also, the fir bough repeat its teasing sound, and ascribed it to the right cause: but it annoyed me so much, that I resolved to--silence it, if possible; and, I thought, I rose and endeavored to unhasp the casement. The hook was soldered into the staple: a circumstance observed by me when awake, but forgotten. `I must stop it, nevertheless!' I muttered, knocking my knuckles through the glass, and stretching an arm out to seize the importunate branch; instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand! The intense horror of nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, `Let me in--let me in!' `Who are you?' I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself. `Catherine Linton,' it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of Linton? I had read Earnshaw twenty times for Linton); `I'm come home: I'd lost my way on the moor!' As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child's face looking through the window. Terror made me cruel; and, finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes: still it wailed, `Let me in!' and maintained its tenacious grip, almost maddening me with fear. `How can I?' I said at length. `Let me go, if you want me to let you in!' The fingers relaxed, I snatched mine through the hole, hurriedly piled the books up in a pyramid against it, and stopped my ears to exclude the lamentable prayer. I seemed to keep them closed above a quarter of an hour; yet, the instant I listened again, there was the doleful cry moaning on! `Begone!' I shouted, `I'll never let you in, not if you beg for twenty years.' `It is twenty years,' mourned the voice: `twenty years. I've been a waif for twenty years!' Thereat began a feeble scratching outside, and the pile of books moved as if thrust forward. I tried to jump up; but could not stir a limb; and so yelled aloud, in a frenzy of fright.

   The supernatural scenes show Emily’s typical and unique imagination, which divert her novel greatly from the main literary trend of Victorian age represented by Charles Dickens.
   Emily employed many images in this novel, such as wind which is present during many of the significant events in the lives of the characters. When Mr. Earnshaw dies there is a 'high wind,' and the weather is described as 'wild and stormy.' On the night that Heathcliff leaves Wuthering Heights there is a great storm with wind and rain. And on the morning that Ellen finds Heathcliff dead, the rain and wind are coming in through his window and beating his lattice back and forth. Other two important images are locked or open windows and doors that symbolize imprisonment or freedom.
    Apart from the employment of Gothic romance and images, the author begins the story near the end and traces back to the former events with two narrators. Emily skillfully combined realism and romantic fancy in this novel. Though Wuthering Heights was criticized for its unorthodox at the beginning of its publication, it survives and still keeps vigorous nowadays.

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