This question is based on Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. The overriding depiction of mystery and terror in the novel accounts for its classification as a

Answer Details

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte is classified as a gothic novel. The gothic genre is characterised by an atmosphere of mystery, darkness, and terror, often set in isolated or eerie locations with elements of the supernatural, intense emotions, and brooding characters.

Wuthering Heights exhibits all the hallmarks of gothic fiction:

• The isolated, windswept moor setting and the dark, forbidding house of Wuthering Heights itself.
• Supernatural elements, including the ghost of Catherine Earnshaw appearing at the window to Lockwood.
• Intense, obsessive passions, particularly the destructive love between Heathcliff and Catherine.
• An atmosphere of mystery, violence, cruelty, and psychological torment throughout the narrative.

The other classifications do not fit:

• A neo-classical novel emphasises reason, order, and social decorum, which contrasts sharply with the wild emotion and chaos in this novel.
• Satiric fiction uses humour, irony, and exaggeration to criticise society, which is not the primary mode of this novel.
• Science fiction deals with futuristic or speculative scientific concepts, which are entirely absent here.

The correct answer is gothic novel.