The ghost of Catherine Earnshaw is a symbol of the past and, in particular, The Dark Side of Enduring Love. Catherine's ghost’s presence outside her bedroom window is evidence of how the past lingers; her ghost haunts the characters in much the same way that her ill-fated relationship with Heathcliff dominates the narrative action years after her death. Even an outsider like Lockwood experiences the chaos and pain that dominate Wuthering Heights, which stands as a monument to the abuses suffered by all who lived there. 

The ghost, in its disembodied form, also represents the futility of any effort to alter the past, especially as memory becomes less reliable as the years pass by. Heathcliff desperately wants Catherine to appear to him in ghost form, but she appears only to others (at least until the weeks prior to Heathcliff’s death). This is a painful reminder to Heathcliff that, even in death and despite their passionate attachment to each other, Catherine was never really his at any point.

The wildness and the potential danger of the moors as a setting parallel the wild, unchecked emotions of the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights. The rocky expanses of land are not suitable for agriculture, and the land can become marshy and wet, causing unfortunate souls who lose their way to drown in the confusing landscape. They embody Nature’s Resistance to Cultivation.

Nature in Romantic literature is rarely merely threatening, however. Rather, it is sublime, eliciting awe and even joy as well as fear. Even though the moors are dangerous and mysterious, they are therefore also a source of beauty and comfort. For example, when Heathcliff and Catherine are young, they escape Hindley’s anger and cruelty by spending most of their days exploring the moors. In this landscape, they find their connection, so the land cannot be as infertile as the desolate look of it suggests. Catherine is buried in the moors, a final resting place she herself has chosen, underscoring that the wildness of the landscape means something more to her than a polished family tomb. 

The weather is often extreme and unpredictable in this inhospitable terrain of northern England, furnishing additional parallels to the characters—for instance, the children who repeatedly defy their elders, generation after generation. Often, the novel shows the wind picking up when emotions begin to run high, as if external storms in nature are in tune with the internal tempests that characterize the interactions between the novel’s characters. Just as Catherine’s spirit cannot be contained by others’ demands on her, her soul cannot be housed in a locked building; her grave must be out in the elements, where she can spend eternity as free as the wind and the snow.

The two central households in the novel, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, symbolize the core conflict between nature and civilization. Wuthering Heights, the Earnshaw family home, embodies a world of primal passion, storminess, and untamed energy. Lockwood describes its name as a “significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather” (2). This description links the house to the raw, violent forces of the natural world, as well as to the untamed spirits of Catherine and Heathcliff, who find their truest selves on the moors. In contrast, Thrushcross Grange, the Linton estate, symbolizes refinement, social convention, and emotional restraint. When Heathcliff first sees it, he describes it as a “splendid place carpeted with crimson […] a pure white ceiling bordered by gold” (33). This vision of luxury represents the temptations of social elevation and civilized comfort that lure Catherine away from her essential nature.

The novel’s tragedy unfolds through the characters’ movements between these two symbolic spaces. When Catherine is injured and spends five weeks at the Grange, she returns transformed, her wildness (apparently) tamed by fine clothes and flattery. This instigates the central conflict between her innate bond with Heathcliff (the Heights) and her social ambition to marry Edgar (the Grange). Her inability to reconcile the different value systems the houses represent ultimately leads her to ruin. By contrast, Heathcliff’s eventual ownership of both properties symbolizes his triumph over the social structures that rejected him, twisting the purpose of each house into a tool for his revenge; that he finds this victory hollow speaks not only to his grief over Catherine’s death but also to his inherent alignment with the forces of nature rather than society. The final union of the second Catherine and Hareton promises a synthesis, a new order that might finally harmonize the passion of the Heights with the gentility of the Grange.