Prompt 3

Many plays and novels use contrasting places to represent opposed forces or ideas that are central to the meaning of the work. Choose a novel or play that contrasts two such places. Write an essay explaining how the places differ, what each place represents, and how their contrast contributes to the meaning of the work.

Overcoming Diversity

Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights revolves around two houses – Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange – and all of the conflict that develops between the pair. Strikingly different, the inhabitants of both houses inspire hatred, jealously, and dangerous passions within one another.

Thrushcross Grange and its inhabitants are the ideal, poised members of the English gentry. In this society, where wealth and status are equivalent to power and respect, the inhabitants of Thrushcross Grange look down upon anyone who is beneath their social class and refuse to associate with them (with the exception of their servants). The members of the Thrushcross Grange household pride themselves on their well mannered ways and modest behavior. Oppositely, Wuthering Heights is riddled with dysfunction. Although the families of Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights are of relatively the same class, the members of Wuthering Heights remain beneath the status of Thrushcross Grange and they are faced with much more adversity. Over the course of the novel, control over Wuthering Heights changes hands numerous times as its inhabitants cannot seem to maintain a stable patriarch as the head of their household. This instability is in large due to the central character, Heathcliff, and his destructive deeds.

Thrushcross Grange is representative of the traditional upper class, gentry that lives in the calm moors of England. In contrast, Wuthering Heights is a house that is continually experiencing change and being increasingly affected by the industrialization that is happening in the more urban areas of England. Heathcliff is a prime example of the way in which industrialization is affecting Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff was originally adopted into the household after he was found abandoned in the industrialized streets of Liverpool. Despite being taken into an upper class family, Heathcliff was not accepted because of his low birth until he went away and amassed a fortune most likely through industrial efforts. Ultimately, Thrushcross Grange is representative of tradition and lineage while Wuthering Heights is representative of progress and the self-made man.

Throughout the course of the novel, the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange find themselves entangled in complicated love triangles and convoluted alliances. However, in the end, a marriage (of choice) between descendents of inhabitants of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange merges the two households and pushes the remaining inhabitants of both houses to overcome their marked differences. Through this union, both houses contribute to Bronte’s message that love blossoms in unlikely situations and has the power to overcome diversity.