Abstract

The history of the novel in the nineteenth century depended on a developmental narrative in which the domestic novel became the basic form of British fiction, taking over from earlier forms such as the picaresque or the gothic. By revealing that the efforts of the domestic to separate itself from the gothic result in a replication of gothic violence, Wuthering Heights attacked the fundamental premises of the narrative of the rise of the novel, disturbing the progressive logic of the history of the novel by demonstrating the interdependence, and ultimate indistinguishability, of gothic and domestic modes. In so doing, Wuthering Heights became a deeply uncomfortable text for nineteenth-century literary history, so uncomfortable that it remained marginal for nearly a century after its publication.

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