Setting in Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Wuthering Heights

Locations in ‘Tess’ - Marlott

Marlott - “fertile and sheltered tract of country”

“lanes are white”

“for the most part untrodden as yet” - represents Tess in Phase the First - “The Maiden”, still pure and unviolated

“Marlott is Marlott still” - but Tess is a changed woman entirely

Locations in ‘Tess’ - Trantridge

The Chase (Trantridge) - “a more troublesome walk than she had anticipated”

“crimson brick lodge”, “rich red colour that formed such a contrast with the evergreens of the lodge”

“Everything on this snug property was bright and thriving and well-kept”

“Everything looked like money - like the last coin issued from the Mint.”

Associated with promiscuity (red) - red is also a colour of warning, modernised in contrast with the nature around it

Talbothays

“air was clear, bracing and ethereal”

“juicy grass that sent of mists of pollen”

“red and yellow and purple hues” - more optimistic, like paradise

Wellbridge vs The Herons (both wedding lodgings)

Wellbridge - “mouldy old habitation”

“Welcome to one of your ancestral mansions!”

Portraits of the ladies of the D’Urberville family - “her fine features were unquestionably traceable in these exaggerated forms”

“Fire in the grate looked impish”, “fender grinned idly”

The Herons -

Kingsbere

D’Urberville church - “their [tombs] carvings being defaced and broken” - oh how the mighty have fallen - reminder that her people are “socially extinct”

“the door of her ancestral sepulchre, and that the tall knights of whom her father had chanted in his. cups lay inside”

“Why am I on the wrong side of this door!” (tomb}

Flintcombe Ash

“starve-acred place”

“sublime in its dreariness”

'The stubborn soil around her showed plainly enough that the kind of labour in demand here was of the roughest kind.'

“air was dry and cold” - juxtaposes Talbothays - separation from Angel

Bramshurst Manor-house and Stonehenge

B.M house - “A shaft of dazzling sunlight”, “crimson dmask hangings”, “along the head of which were carved running figures, apparently Atalanta’s race”

“they were enveloped in the shades of the night which they had no candle to disperse” - consummated their marriage

Stonehenge - “It hums!”

“like the note of some gigantic one-stringed harp”

“the heathen temple”

“I think you are lying on an altar”

Sacrificed “to the sun”

All symbolic of Tess being sacrificed at the altar - By sleeping on the altar of the pagan temple, Tess is set free from the sinful and painful world

W.H. - Wuthering Heights (the house) C1 + Heathcliff

“A perfect misanthropist’s heaven”

“narrow windows”, “grotesque carving”

“I observed no signs of roasting, boiling, or baking, about the huge fire-place”

“sundry villainous old guns, and a couple of horse-pistols”

“heap of dead rabbits”

“How powerful I should be possessing such an instrument!” - corrupting violence of W.H. - mirrors Heathcliff (“moral poison”)

Liminality - nature breaking boundaries (e.g. tree breaking window in chap. 3), C1 abd C2 as liminal characters, letters travelling between

W.H. - Wuthering Heights (the house) C2 + Hareton

Gates are unlocked

“fragrance of stocks and wall flowers”, “homely fruit trees”

“a fine, red fire illuminated the chimney” “comfort which the eye derives from it”

“busy planning together an importantion of plants from the Grange”

“sticking primroses in his plate of porridge”

Thrushcross Grange

“it was beautiful - a splendid place”, “carpeted with crimson, and crimson-covered chairs and tables”

“pure white ceiling bordered with gold”

“cheerful fire”

“shower of glass-drops hanging in silver chains”

“shimmering with little soft tapers”

“We should have thought ourselves in heaven!”

The Moors

“have a scamper in the moors… we cannot be damper, or colder, in the rain than we are here” - moors as a place of escapism

“I’m come home, I’d lost my way on the moor!” - ghost of C1

Liminal space - purgatory

“it was one of their chief amusements to run away to the moors in the morning and remain there all day”- escapism

“they flung me out, into the middle of the heath”

“wheeling over our heads in the middle of the moors” (lapwing) - freedom, escapism

C1 buried “where the wall is so low that heath and bilberry plants have climbed over it from the moor” - buried overlooking the moors

“the three head-stones on the slope next the moor - the middle one, grey, and half buried in the heath“

CONTEXT - Bronte grew up in Yorkshire surrounded by the moors, personal connection from experience