Wuthering Heights

“Wuthering Heights” was written in 1961, during or after Plath’s stay with her in-laws in Yorkshire. Plath’s biographers note that the poet had been visiting Yorkshire since 1956, the year she married fellow-poet and Yorkshire-native Ted Hughes. Plath was fascinated by what is known as “Brontë Country,” or the English moors. In a 1956 letter to her mother, Plath wrote, “I never thought I could like any country as well as the ocean, but these moors are really even better, with the great luminous emerald lights changing always” (Plath, Sylvia. Letters Home, 1976). The poet often went for walks around the moors during her Yorkshire trips and at one point visited Top Withens, an old, abandoned building said to have inspired the house in Emily Brontë’s novel. The poem shows the poet’s familiarity with the landscape of the moors, with each metaphor corresponding to fact, such as the ubiquity of sheep in the moors in Plath’s day. Plath also wrote other poems about the moors, including “Hardcastle Crags” (1958) and “The Great Carbuncle” (1957). Additionally, Plath often compared herself and Hughes to Cathy and Heathcliff, the romantic protagonists of Wuthering Heights.

Given these facts, the ambiguous terms in which the poet describes the moors in “Wuthering Heights” may seem strange to the reader.