Wuthering Heights

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1961

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

Written in unrhymed verse, the lyrical poem comprises of five nine-line stanzas with varying line lengths. The lines are often enjambed, clauses running on, as in the case of

Touched by a match, they might warm me,

And their fine lines singe

The air to orange

Before the distances they pin evaporate (Lines 3-6).

The regular stanzaic structure can be seen as a deliberate poetic device; a way for its speaker to attempt order in an unstable world. The structural soundness of the poem is a foil for its themes of instability and impermanence.

The enjambment amplifies the poem’s mood of uncertainty and bleakness, the lines breaking right after verbs and nouns, leaving the reader in suspense about the subject’s fate. Such instances of enjambment can be seen here:

There is no life higher than the grasstops

Or the hearts of sheep, and the wind

Pours by like destiny, bending

Everything in one direction (Lines 10-13).

The run-on sentences undercut the regular stanza structure, lending the poem an edge. Plath uses little alliteration in the poem but achieves a musical, haunting quality akin to echoes through repetition, such as in “they only dissolve and dissolve” (Line 8). Another instance of repetition is “It rehearses them moaningly: / Black stone, black stone” (Lines 35-36). This particular repetition is part of an internal rhyme, with “moaningly” rhyming with “stone.” The repeated long o sound here enhances the dolorousness of the imagery.

Metaphor, Simile, and Personification

The poem begins with a simile, with the speaker comparing the horizons to a row of sticks. The horizons can potentially warm the speaker or provide them with hope, but in another simile, they dissolve “like a series of promises” (Line 9). The comparison to the kindling suggests the horizons are unstable and temporary, while unkept promises implies they are empty and unsatisfactory. The similes continue, with the wind being compared to destiny in the second stanza and water being compared to solitude in Line 29. While similes contain explicit comparisons, metaphors are implicit. In Line 20, the sheep are described as “browsing in their dirty wool-clouds.” The sheep’s wool is not compared outright to clouds; the comparison is assumed. Similarly, in Line 22, “the black slots of their pupils take me in,” the sheep’s pupils become a metaphor for the slots of mailboxes. This metaphor is clarified by the subsequent simile: “it is like being mailed into space” (Line 23). Another metaphor occurs when the sheep are compared to grandmothers: “All wig curls and yellow teeth / And hard, marbly baas” (Lines 26-27). The poet implicitly compares the wool of sheep to the wigs worn by elderly grandmothers, and their large teeth to dentures.

Because the poem sets the speaker’s embattled “me” against powerful forces, natural elements are deliberately personified, as if conspiring against the speaker. Personification first occurs in Stanza 1, where the horizons “ring” (Line 1) or encircle the speaker, crowding them, while in Lines 32-33, the personified “lintel and sill” unhinge themselves of people. In Line 35, the air talks “moaningly”; later, the personified sky “leans on me, me” (Line 37).

Imagery

Plath utilizes spatial imagery to mirror her speaker’s relationship with the world. Often, the speaker insists they are the only vertical in the landscape, showing the speaker feels the weight of the world. In Stanza 2, the speaker makes the striking statement that “there is no life higher than the grasstops” (Line 10), deliberately overlooking the fact that they too are alive and much taller than the grass and sheep. This indicates the speaker sees themselves as separate from the natural, living world and more like a structure holding everything in place. The wind is described as bending everything in one direction, creating the visual of a windswept space, and a speaker doubles over as they walk. While distances (horizons) and heights (sky) represent oppression, the speaker finds solace in the ground. Looking downward thus becomes a metaphor for looking inward, withdrawing into oneself. So alluring is this withdrawing from the world that the speaker is aware of its dangers: “If I pay the roots of the heather / Too close attention, they will invite me / To whiten my bones among them” (Lines 16-18).

The spatial imagery continues with mentions of space in Stanza 2: Again, unlimited space and vast distances create an atmosphere of terror. The speaker feels like they are being mailed into space. In Stanza 2, the ruins (real or imagined) conjure the image of haunting, empty spaces, mirroring the speaker’s mental state of abandonment and despair. The last stanza sees the sky leaning on the speaker, crushing them with weight. The speaker notes they are the “one upright / among all horizontals” (Lines 37-38), evoking the image of a solitary person struggling under the heft of the sky. Again, respite is found in the grass, with which the speaker identifies, “beating its head distractedly” (Line 39). The grass is horizontal, and it invites the speaker to be horizontal as well. This suggests the speaker is struggling to find peace in life and may want to be horizontal (asleep, resting, or dead) for a reprieve.

Apart from spatial imagery, the poem also uses color imagery and the imagery of sensation to convey the speaker’s internal landscape. The world the speaker sees is described primarily in monochrome (black, white) or through faded and dirty colors, such as the yellow of the sheep’s teeth and the gray of their coats. “Black” recurs through the poem, adding to the atmospherics of uncertainty and bleakness, as in the case of “black stone” (Line 36), where the phrase evokes a black tombstone. Imagery of sensation includes mentions of warmth and cold. The speaker seeks warmth, as is indicated through their desire to see the horizons lit up. However, the sunset does not provide warmth or “singe / the air to orange” (Lines 4-5). The briefly evoked warm fire imagery dies out, replaced by the cold wind imagery of Stanza 2. Here the wind is “trying / To funnel my heat away” (Lines 12-13). The reader can almost feel the speaker struggling against the wind’s chill. The cold the speaker experiences is a metaphor for their feelings of alienation and sadness.