Children's Web magazine...
Entertaining , Educational, Fun,Informative and MORE

In this essay, Bronte muses on the seeming callousness of the world, that ‘nature exists on a principle of destruction. Every being must be the tireless instrument of death to others, or itself must cease to live,’ and uses the image of a caterpillar eating a leaf as a metaphor for this. Only after she sees a butterfly, what the caterpillar transforms into, does her attitude take a more hopeful tone: ‘As the ugly caterpillar is the origin of the splendid butterfly, so this globe is the embryo of a new heaven.’ This essay shows strong parallels with the novel: the first volume draws our focus to the ‘principle of destruction’ with Catherine’s demise whereas the second embodies the beautiful metamorphosis, the ‘new heaven’. We get the sense of this change from Lockwood’s walk to the Heights in 1802, ‘with the glow of a sinking sun behind, and the mild glory of a rising moon in front – one fading, and the other brightening’. We also get the hint of a ‘new heaven’ through the Edenic imagery Bronte uses: Cathy and Hareton are arranging ‘their little garden’ and they have planted ‘two dwarf apple trees’, and ‘a fragrance of stocks and wall flowers, wafted on the air, from amongst fruit trees.’  These allusions to Eden, as well as having the novel start at the turn of the century, suggest a kind of renewing of the world; it is perhaps her hope and vision for her ‘new heaven’, where love is allowed to flourish organically; where women might take the role of ‘teacher’; where natural identity is not hindered by cruel patriarchal socialisation.