The Themes of Wuthering Heights

The theme of revenge has been shaped into a finely ornamented arabesque in Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights”. The subsidiary themes of possession, social status incest, adultery, child abuse and treachery and violence have been curiously intertwined with the main theme of revenge to foreground it. The central motif in this exquisitely crafted arabesque is Heathcliff and his unquenchable thirst for revenge. Master and Servant The elder Earnshaw adopts Heathcliff and is partial to him. …

…But at the penultimate moment the deconstructive aporia undoes the arabesque: Hareton Earnshaw and the younger Cathy fall romantically in love and the novel ends with the future hope of conjugal bliss: “the crown of all my wishes will be the union of those two. I shall envy no one on their wedding – day: there won’t be a happier woman than myself in England!” (Ch.32). The central logic of the text thus undoes itself.