2。 Literature Review

When Wuthering Heights was published, it sparked many concerns all over the world。 Many famous scholars have been taking deep researches into this masterpiece, analyzing this book from various aspects to give readers who are very interested in this work some useful information and to help them fully understand what the author wanted to tell us。

Although most of Wuthering Heights takes place indoors, readers sense that nature is a major element in the novel。 Nature is present in figurative language, which accounts for the impression of realism, but why does Bronte choose an indirect mode of presentation over a direct one? The figurative uses of nature form a highly abstract symbolic system, distinct from real nature, while real nature is unrepresentative。 Psychoanalytic theory may account for this discrepancy, if the text is treated as if it were a psyche。 Nature, or the destructive reality it represents, is so threatening that it must be repressed, while the figurative use of nature is a sublimation, redirecting the dangerous force into a safe and constructive channel。 Analysis of the heroine, Cathy, helps to confirm this reading。 Similar forces are at work in her psyche, but unlike the author she cannot sublimate and succumbs to nature's power。 Repression and Sublimation in Wuthering Heights。 Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 1978, 93(1):9-19。