this thesis aims to adduce an unmitigated and comprehensive explication concerning the relationship of three significant elements of fiction: setting, chracter and theme. my research is basically placed on two outstanding novels of the 19th century: emily brontes wuthering heights and thomas hardys return of the native. my endeavour lies in studying the correlation among the three above-mentioned elements as well as providing a detailed analysis of the term "setting". to put it in a simple way, my argument will play round a detailed scrutiny regarding rhe contribution of setting to the study of characters as well as its strong impact on the full percption of the theme or the main ideas of the two works.