Passion and Repression in Wuthering Heights and Rebecca: Exterior and Interior Spaces in the Gothic Tradition

Abstract

This essay examines the role of exterior and interior spaces in shaping emotional experience in Wuthering Heights (1847) by Emily Brontë and Rebecca (1938) by Daphne du Maurier, focusing on how Gothic environments articulate passion and repression. In Wuthering Heights, the wild moors and violent weather express the intensity of Catherine and Heathcliff’s bond, while the oppressive domestic interiors of Wuthering Heights itself reinforce the characters’ emotional entrapment and psychological conflict. Exterior and interior spaces together construct a world in which passion appears uncontrollable and destructive, reflecting tensions between individual desire and Victorian social expectations. In contrast, Rebecca presents environments shaped by secrecy, memory and repression. The sea surrounding Manderley suggests uncertainty and instability, while the interior spaces of the house—particularly those associated with the first Mrs. de Winter—are saturated with absence and lingering presence. These spaces function as psychological environments in which the narrator’s anxieties and insecurities are continually reinforced. By comparing these spatial dynamics, this analysis argues that Gothic settings in both novels do more than mirror emotion: they actively structure the characters’ psychological experiences and intensify the central conflicts of each narrative.