Various glass objects, usually mirrors and windows, play a seemingly ubiquitous role in the construction of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights; Rarely does a chapter go by where the reader isn't given a description of a character walking past a window, looking in a mirror, or some other similar activity. However, we should not find these persistent images too peculiar; the natural properties of glass 'impermeability, lucidity, fragility' make it an excellent symbolic correlative for many of the characters in the novel. More specifically, Catherine and Heathcliff are fully reflected (both literally and figuratively), and thus expanded as characters, in the various glass images that abound in Wuthering Heights. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Catherine, like all great tragic characters, ultimately fails (at least in life) because of her tragic flaw, namely the insistent error of purpose with which she makes important decisions. Her decision to marry Edgar Linton, for example, is based on her desire to help Heathcliff by becoming rich, and while the sentiment is sincere, it is equally misplaced; we know that it is her marriage to Linton that ultimately leads to Catherine's death and Heathcliff's lifelong torment. Catherine's self-destructive nature is symbolically embedded in the harmful glass images that continually surround her. This system of glass-images is present from the first chapters of the book, as when Catherine's ghost infiltrates Mr. Lockwood's dream and tries to enter through his window: 'Who are you?' I asked, all the while struggling to free myself. "Catherine Linton," she answered trembling (why did I think of Linton? I had read Earnshaw twenty times for Linton), "I came home, I had lost my way." on the moor!''As he spoke, I dimly discerned the face of a child looking through the window: terror made me cruel; and, finding it useless to attempt to shake the creature off, I placed his wrist on the broken glass, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the covers: still he groaned, "Let me in!" and he maintained his tenacious grip, almost driving me mad with fear. (III, 18)This passage, one of the most vivid and gruesome in all of Bronte, presents itself as a proleptic scene of violence and carnage. Because it takes place within the framework of Lockwood's dream, Bronte is able to introduce his symbolic imagery without restriction; the limitless possibilities of dreams allow the narrator to introduce his stark themes of broken glass (anticipating Catherine's fragility) and blood (representing Catherine's anemic descent into life) without having to maintain any kind of faithful realism. the destruction, introduced so hyperbolically in this initial passage, reasserts itself in Chapter XII at a crucial moment in Catherine's life. Having already made the fateful choice to marry Linton, and now barely tethered to her own sanity, Catherine looks in the mirror and is confused, mistaking her form for some more insidious creature: "It's still back there!" he continued, anxiously. «And things got agitated. Who is? I hope it doesn't come out when you're gone! OH! Nelly, the room is haunted! I'm afraid of being alone! I took her hand in mine and told her to calm down; because a succession of shivers shook her body, and she continued to look towards the glass. "There's no one here!" I insisted. "It was you, Mrs Linton: you knew it a long time ago." (XII, 91) Once again the glass proved to be a symbol of Catherine's death, sincethe earlier devastation of slashed wrists and bloody glass is here reframed as a destruction of identity, sanity, and self. Catherine's inability to recognize her own figure reveals the extent of her self-destructive impulse, her propensity to see herself as something monstrous, something deserving of pain and ruin. When Nelly dismisses Catherine for her stupidity, stating "Why, what's the matter?" "Who's the coward now" Wake up! That's the glass - the mirror, Mrs Linton; and you see within yourself, and I am there at your side too'' (XII, 91), the reader recognizes that it is precisely the 'coward[ice]' cited by Nelly that allows Catherine to be so easily represented and repressed by the image of glass. Just as Catherine was too cowardly to marry Heathcliff rather than Edgar, so her cowardice now prevents her from literally seeing herself or the gravity of her actions. The glass, then, is a bodily realization and reflection of Catherine's repressed guilt; denying the reality of her actions to the point that she can no longer recognize herself, Catherine allows herself to be hurt, forces herself to be hurt, right on the fragments of her own fractured conscience. Bronte employs a curious linguistic device in that above section by repeatedly using the word "mirror", a word that appears in no other section of the novel. For all the other characters in the play, such as Heathcliff, the mirrors are called "the glass": Oh, Heathcliff, you are showing a poor spirit! Come to the glass and I'll show you what you should want. Mark those two lines between your eyes; and those thick eyebrows, which instead of rising arched, sink in the middle; and that pair of black fiends, so deeply buried, that never boldly open the windows, but hide glittering beneath them, like the devil's spies' (VII, 41) This scene is quite indicative of Heathcliff's character, and perhaps helps to explain precisely why only Catherine looks into "mirrors", while Heathcliff looks into "glass"; Besides the obvious implications of the Latin and Anglo-Saxon connotations of the two words, this bifurcation in naming highlights the important fact that mirror glass represents different traits in different characters. While for Catherine the glass reflects internal currents of self-destructive behavior, Heathcliff's relationship appears to be one of captivity and domination. The passage above, for example, enumerates a number of Heathcliff's flaws, inherent physical characteristics that eternally prevent Heathcliff from assuming a position equal to that of Edgar Linton. This failure to measure up to society, to fail in one's outward appearance, is echoed again towards the end of the book, shortly before Heathcliff's death, when Nelly tells Heathcliff that he "only needs to look in a mirror to see ". as [he] require[s] both [food and sleep]' (XXXIV, 244). For Heathcliff, therefore, the glass images represent something quite opposite to what they represent for Catherine; while the glass presents Catherine with a reality she cannot accept, it presents Heathcliff with a vision of self-limitation that he must accept, a vision that is all too real. For Heathcliff, glass reconstructs his socially provoked impotence; indeed, even when one does not look into it, the glass still represents Heathcliff's exclusion from society, as in Chapter VI when Heathcliff observes Catherine and the Lintons from the opposite side of a windowpane. This exclusive property of glass resurfaces throughout Wuthering Heights, as when Heathcliff first returns from his long journey and observes a window at Thrushcross Grange that gives no hint of access or penetrability: "[he looked up],.