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

Step 1: Analyze the question The question asks which literary classification fits a novel whose dominant features are mystery and terror.

Step 2: Explain the concept Gothic fiction is a genre that combines mystery, horror, the supernatural, brooding atmosphere, and intense emotion. Typical features include:

• Wild, remote, or gloomy settings (old houses, moors, castles)
• Ghosts, haunting, and eerie happenings
• Dark, tormented characters
• Revenge, cruelty, and obsession

Step 3: Apply it to Wuthering Heights

• Setting: The isolated, stormy Yorkshire moors and the grim, forbidding house of Wuthering Heights.
• Supernatural elements: Lockwood's nightmare in which Catherine's ghost taps at the window. There are also later reports of Heathcliff and Catherine haunting the moors.
• Characters: Heathcliff is a dark, brooding, vengeful figure with a mysterious origin.
• Themes: Obsessive love, revenge, cruelty, and death.

Step 4: Eliminate the other options

• A. Neo-classical novel: Neo-classicism stresses order, reason, restraint, and balance. Wuthering Heights is wild and passionate, so this does not fit.
• C. Satiric fiction: Satire mocks and criticizes society through humour or irony. That is not the book's main purpose.
• D. Science fiction: This deals with science and technology, often set in the future. The novel has none of that.

Step 5: Answer The mystery and terror in the novel make it a gothic novel.

Exam tip: Link keywords to genres. "Mystery, terror, haunting, supernatural" points to Gothic. "Reason, order, restraint" points to Neo-classical. "Ridicule, mockery of society" points to Satire. Other gothic classics to remember are Frankenstein and Dracula.