The Role of Religion in Wuthering Heights

Abstract

Among several scholarly studies concerned with the treatment of religion in Wuthering Heights one may find assertions to the effect that Emily’s novel is an anti-Christian book. This argument tends to be supported by reference to the glaring limitations of Joseph and Nelly Dean as Christians or, more particularly, by the perception that the ‘transcendental’ thinking of Heathcliff and Catherine is worthier than the Christian teachings on which they have been painfully brought up and which, as adults, they have come to repudiate. But a careful examination of the attitudes and behaviour of the main characters, especially in relation to the biblical quotations and allusions incorporated in the narrative, would suggest that, in Emily’s eyes, the Gospel is none the less relevant to modern man, and that any shortcomings within the Protestant Church in the late eighteenth century and beyond are due, not to Christianity but, rather, to Christians themselves.