“On an afternoon in October, or the beginning of November, a fresh watery afternoon, when the turf and paths were rustling with moist, withered leaves, and the cold, blue sky was half hidden by clouds, dark grey steamers, rapidly mounting from the west, and boding abundant rain”. (Page 209)
This is one of the many passages in Wuthering Heights that portray a very important tenet of the Gothic novel: the sublime. According to the Cambridge dictionary, the sublime refers to something “of overwhelming greatness, grandeur, beauty”. We can see a “tug-of-war” between two opposing forces: “overwhelming”, which represents a more negative feeling and “greatness, grandeur, beauty”, which are nouns that embody positivity or happiness.
The passage contains in itself clusters of antagonism. It’s a “fresh watery afternoon”, with “cold, blue sky”. However, this same sky is half hidden by “clouds, dark grey steamers”. The blue sky will be soon covered by them and greyness will prevail. The “watery” afternoon makes the reader sense the change in humidity and in the air pressure, or, in other words, the anticipation, the building up of tension. Another contrasting set is the moist present in the turf and paths and the dry, withered leaves. Lush life and decay side by side. Finally, the verb “rustle” is very sublime: hearing the sound of the leaves rustling in the wind is overwhelmingly beautiful. It is an eerie sound.
Why do the Gothic novel use the sublime as a background scenario to its plot? Because the Gothic fiction itself is antagonistic. Roger Luckhurst, in his article “Late Victorian Gothic Tales”, says that the Gothic is “disordered” and “dark” (page xi), as the clouds mounting in the passage and “labyrinthine”, as the moisty paths. It also mixes up categories of “life”, such as the turf, and “death”, such as the “withered leaves”. Luckhurst talks about the “… undamming of dark forces that rush into and insidiously undermine the order of everyday life”. It’s the rain which will transform the blue skies.
The sublime scenario ultimately highlights the Gothic plot. When the narrative leaves the suffocating houses of the novel, the readers find themselves in the moors, with its open spaces and its mystery. We want to explore this space and see what in the other side of the moor, but there are many obstacles. The moors, as the Gothic genre, “… inflicts exorbitant punishments” (page xii) on those who dare to walk on them, or better, those who “step outside the norm”. Cathy wants to have a wealthy life with Mr. Linton but finds misery. She finds true love in Heathcliff, but also death. Money and love are so enticing, but the Gothic genre imposes punishments for these earthly desires. Therefore, the sublime mirrors these dangerous desires, complementing and emphasising the eternal torn that the characters suffer.
I really like this analysis of Wuthering Heights and its sublime qualities. In many ways, I think all the reader truly needs to know about the themes of the book are hidden in the description, even from the start. The first true description of Wuthering Heights has this wonderful line describing how, aside from description of the “pure, bracing ventilation,” the Heights is surrounded by “gaunt thorns stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of the sun.” (Bronte 2). Like our main characters, there are living things that want and need light, but seem eternally reaching instead.