To compare with Wuthering Heights it is important to note the duration of the action of each. They are vastly different- “A Doll’s House” is set over a period of a few days during Christmas, whereas in “Wuthering Heights” the story lasts for almost 50 years. Ibsen’s use of the Classical Unities allows him to create an isolated and insular space that in turn provides the necessary sense of confinement that we come to associate with Nora’s predicament. Limiting the play to one room enhances the image of Nora being trapped and unable to break free from the restrictions of her marriage and the narrow life that she lives. She is at the centre of a microcosm of conflicts that are revealed fully in such a restricted environment. Clearly then it is a different kind of masterpiece to Wuthering Heights, one that presents the struggle of the Victorian woman and the pressures of Victorian society through a clear and single plot and a single place.

Wuthering Heights is in direct opposition to the classical unities, it covers a huge time span, has more than one plot with several sub plots, prefab house and is not confined to a certain place or space. However it was still just as groundbreaking as “A Doll’s House”. It explores ideas about gender and class that would have been just as shocking to a Victorian audience so used to the relatively gentile novels of Austen or Gaskell. It is perhaps the immediacy of theatre that creates a “shock factor”, as opposed to a difference in the structure of setting within the two pieces.

Another clear comparison can be drawn between the physical setting within both pieces of prose. In “Wuthering Heights” there is movable house a clear opposition between the civilized world of Thrushcross Grange and the desolation and savagery represented by “The Heights”. “The Grange” is described as somewhere that is “beautiful” and “civilized”, whereas “The Heights” are described as having “large jutting stones”. This can be represented by the kitchen, which seems to be a symbol of the blurring of social boundaries, with everyone from the lowest servants to Heathcliff himself living out their lives there.