Wuthering Heights

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1961

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

The Sheep

Sheep are first mentioned when the speaker notes there is “no life higher than […] the hearts of sheep” (Lines 10-11). The conjunction of sheep with life and a vital organ implies that the sheep symbolize a robust life force, unlike the speaker’s life force. This idea of the sheep as a vital, solid force is reinforced in Stanza 3 when the speaker notes the “sheep know where they are” (Line 19). Though made up of “dirty wool-clouds” (Line 20), the sheep are hardly cloudy; instead, they are associated with sureness, judgement, and hardness. Plath uses the sheep as symbols for people who know their place in the world, in opposition to the alienated speaker-persona. The poet also plays on popular metaphors around sheep to create new associations. The sheep’s grandmotherly disguises are a reference to the idiom “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” as well as the wolf in the fairy tale of Red Riding Hood. In both cases, the sheep stand for deception and trickery, all the more dangerous because of their benign, absurd appearance.

The poet also riffs on the notion of sheep being unthinking followers. The sheep in the poem are a collective, implying a closed society that obeys its internal rules. To them, the outsider presence of the speaker is a “thin, silly message” (Line 24). The speaker does not fit in and is therefore dismissed by the quotidian sheep. The “hard, marbly baas” (Line 27) of the sheep signify their hardened opinions and judgmental stance. Ironically, the coarse sheep thrive while the speaker—associated with delicate grass—withers in a skewed world order.

Lintel and Sill

In the fourth stanza, the speaker comes across abandoned ruins on the highland. To the speaker, it seems “lintel and sill have unhinged themselves / of people” (Line 32). Lintel and sill refer to vertical beam and horizontal base, respectively. Since these are usually the most durable parts of a house, they persist long after walls have crumbled. In the poem, these structures represent something uncontrolled and odd because they have “unhinged” (Line 32) themselves of human presence and rationality. Without human inhabitants, the structures have gained a life of their own and become terrifying. The air passing through them echoes as if with forgotten words; the ruins are thus ghosts of people, ideas, words, and hopes.

In this haunting landscape, “hollow doorsteps go from grass to grass” (Line 31). The lintel and sill and the abandoned doorsteps also symbolize the emptiness the speaker feels within. Additionally, they simultaneously represent the contradictory ideas of stability and impermanence. They are stable in the way non-living things can be, continuing to live long after their inhabitants have moved out or perished. Thus, the speaker suggests there is permanence only in nonbeing or extinction. At the same time, the lintel and sill, being ruins, are at least as unstable as the vanishing horizon.

Wuthering Heights

The poem draws its power from its accurate description of the moors of north England, immortalized in Wuthering Heights, the 19th-century novel by Emily Brontë. The bundles of sticks mentioned in Stanza 1, for instance, were regular sources of fuel in the moorlands (along with peat). When the poet compares the horizons to the kindling, she is also factually describing the bundles of sticks kept in a line in the distance. The “black stone” (Line 36) echo is also a reference to the peat found in the moors; a black soil-like material so dense it can be cut into pieces. The conjunction between reality and figurative language in the poem is a symbol of the speaker’s altered mental state. The landscape is as it has always been, but it is the speaker’s somber mood that imbues the landscape with particular meaning.

While the poem does not draw from the novel itself, the fact that its title echoes that of Emily Brontë implies an engagement with the larger world. “Wuthering” is an archaic English word, which means wind-struck or wind-blown, a reference to the brisk winds that sweep uninterrupted through the flat but high moors. “Heights” refers to the fact that the moors are a highland plateau. Wuthering Heights is also the name of the hilltop house in which Heathcliff lives. In Brontë’s novel, the moors are a symbol of the wild temperaments of its leads, Cathy and Heathcliff, and their strong, destructive love. Though Cathy and Heathcliff do not have a happy ending in life, they believe in their eternal union and an everlasting union with the moors. The speaker of “Wuthering Heights” lacks any such sureness, believing that the horizon itself is “always unstable” (Line 2). Unlike the timeless love between Cathy and Heathcliff, promises to the speaker “dissolve and dissolve” (Line 8). The wuthering heights of the novel symbolize terror and uncertainty in the poem.