...‘The Gothic elements of Wuthering Heights are made credible by the novel’s setting and narrators.’ How far would you agree with this view? Wuthering Heights is Emily Bronte’s only novel and was published in December 1847 under the androgynous pseudonym Ellis Bell, due to having a, “vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice”. This initial perception demonstrates the lack of gender equality within the Victorian era, with autocratic male dominance being commonly viewed as an ideal within the restrictive patriarchal society; such varying social conventions resonate throughout the novel, perhaps providing a sense of stability, reality and authenticity among the primal passions, savage cruelty, and supernatural entities present within the boundaries of Wuthering Heights and the Yorkshire Moors. The juxtaposition provided by the arguably civilised, ornate Thrushcross Grange provides a rational foundation where societal norms are upheld, with the domestic, cultural setting providing a balance to the unruly natural passions; it is suggested further that cogency is gained not only through the historical and geographic settings, but also through the dual narration of Nelly Dean and Lockwood. Contrastingly, a deeper reading suggests that the societal beliefs and conservative, obstinate nature of the narrators would cause them to condemn individuals and demonise events that threatened the social balance, meaning the creditability can certainly be disputed...
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...Exploring ways in which relationships are shown in “Romeo and Juliet” and in Wuthering Heights”? In this essay I am going to compare the relationships in Romeo and Juliet and wuthering heights by discussing their similarities and how love is portrayed in them. Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare and wuthering heights by Emily Bronte are considered to be two of the most famous love stories ever written in the English language. Both explore love from many different perspectives such as domestic, maternal, social,romantic,religious and transcendent. The main characters in these two novels are Romeo and Juliet and Cathy and Heathcliffe.Cathy and Juliet’s lives are similar by how their lives rely around their lovers. Both of which also have their own personal obstacles to overcome, for example Juliet does not want to jeopardise her reputation and Heathcliff has to put aside the hatred he has towards them. Both stories display forbidden love by how Romeo and Juliet’s families are involved in a family feud and they are betraying them by falling love with one another, how Cathy is married to Edgar and sneaks around to visit Heathcliff behind Edgar's back is also portraying this idea of forbidden love and secrecy. Cathy describes her love for Heathcliff like the “sea” and that her love for Edgar is like a “horse trough” this suggests her love for Heathcliff is ever going and dangerous/unpredictable whereas her love for Edgar is confined and motionless unless prompted. It is...
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...Religion in ‘Wuthering Heights’ & ‘The Color Purple’ March 30, 2012 Orthodoxy in ‘Wuthering Heights’ Wuthering Heights takes orthodox Victorian Christian religion and turns it on its head. The narrative is delivered to us by Lockwood, who gets his narrative from Nelly Dean. Nelly is an orthodox Christian and gives us a biased viewpoint, calling Heathcliff a ‘devil’ and associating him with the demonic. With his black hair and unbridled wrath, violence, greed and lust, Heathcliff is an embodiment of everything Victorians feared. His passion was completely unacceptable. Heathcliff lures Catherine from being an acceptable Victorian girl to being brutally passionate as well. Catherine’s big choice in the novel whether to marry Heathcliff or Edgar reflects society’s pressure. She chooses Edgar despite the fact that her sense of identity is bound up in Heathcliff. That’s why she suffers so much when she marries Edgar. One issue in the novel is discerning the author’s voice. Bronte’s voice is not the voice of Lockwood, who in many ways is a farcical character who doesn’t understand at all the relationships of Wuthering Heights he has stumbled upon. Nelly Dean’s voice doesn’t seem to be one that Bronte wants us to trust; there are several incidents where Nelly lies, or at least conceals the truth of Catherine’s real situation from Edgar. Nelly tells us that Catherine dies and rests in peace, but her words are contradicted by the reports of Catherine and Heathcliff being seen walking...
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..."The Victorian elements in Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontё" The Victorian Era, in which Brontё composed Wuthering Heights, receives its name from the reign of Queen Victoria of England. The era was a great age of the English novel, which was the ideal form to descibe contemporary life and to entertain the middle class. Emily, born in 1818, lived in a household in the countryside in Yorkshire, locates her fiction in the worlds she knows personally. In addition, she makes the novel even more personal by reflecting her own life and experiences in both characters and action of Wuthering Heights. In fact, many characters in the novel grow up motherless, reflecting Emily’s own childhood, as her mother died when Emily was three years old. Similarly, the vast majority of the novel takes place in two households, which probably is a reflection of author’s own comfort at home as whenever she was away from home she grew homesick. Emily Brontё’s single novel is a unique masterpiece propelled by a vision of elemental passions but controlled by an uncompromising artistic sense. However, despite the relative invisibility of Victorian influence in the plot and content, the attitudes of the Victorian Era make some impact on the story, and the novel is considered not only a form of entertainment but also a means of analyzing and offering solutions to social and political problems. Brontё may not highlight the social aspects in the novel, nevertheless the indications of Victorian society’s...
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...The opposing forces of Wuthering Heights. Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights can be seen as one of the most influential works of fiction produced during the Victorian age. In Brontë’s novel, the reader will encounter many oppositions across several elements of the story. These oppositions play a vital role in the development of both the characters and the plot and have been discussed by many critics. According to Melvin R. Watson, as he describes in his article “Tempest in the Soul: The Theme and Structure of “Wuthering Heights,”” a most influential theory is that of the opposing forces of calm and storm developed by Lord David Cecil (Watson, 88). This theory, however, does not completely encompass the multitude of opposites found in the novel. The oppositions found in Wuthering Heights all serve specific roles in the development of the characters and the plot of the novel. The universe of the opposing forces of the calm and the storm that can be found within Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is one that encompasses many elements of the story. At the very start of the novel, the narrator, in the form of Mr. Lockwood, gives the reader a detailed description of the house he is about to enter: Wuthering Heights is the name of Mr. Heathcliff’s dwelling. ‘Wuthering’ being a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather. Pure, bracing ventilation they must have up there at all times, indeed: one may guess...
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...Jade Li English Literature Childhood is Shown as to be a Bitter Experience in Wuthering Heights The experience of childhood is one that is extremely importantly in everyone’s lives. Childhood is generalised as the happiest and carefree times, however in Wuthering Heights childhood is not portrayed as that. In order to effectively judge childhood being a unpleasant experience in Wuthering Heights, various methods that Emily Bronte must be looked at, as well as characters such as Heathcliff, Edgar, Isabella and Catherine may be analysed as examples. In particular, Bronte’s use of setting, dialogue, narrative voice as well as her exceptional and imaginative language choices. In the same way an analysis of the bitter childhood experiences will be explored in The Colour Purple. The first significant portrayal of bitter childhood in Wuthering Heights is with Heathcliff. Upon entering the Earnshaw household as a child Heathcliff is immediately faced by questions of his parentage. Which ultimately leads to Heathcliff being characterised as devilish and is inhumanely referred to as “it”, his body language is “gibberish” and his dark features thus gives him the name calling of “gypsy”. Being a foundling and a resentful son Heathcliff had a tough childhood, always not having the feeling of being wanted. On top of being resented, Heathcliff was ultimately rejected by Catherine I which adds on to the bitterness of his childhood. Emily Bronte uses methods such as imagery and language...
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...Year | Doctor Faustus | Wuthering Heights | Frankenstein | Section B | June 2015 | | | | | June 2014 | “Faustus is a gothic victim, rather than a gothic villain.” To what extent do you agree with this view of Faustus’s role in the play? (40 marks) | “In Wuthering Heights love is presented as an emotion which provokes violence rather than tenderness.” To what extent do you agree with this view? [40 marks] | To what extent do you agree with the view that the novel is a total condemnation of transgression? [40 marks] | “Gothic writing is exciting because it allows us to think the unthinkable.” How far do you agree with this view? [40 marks] | | | | | To what extent do you think gothic writing is a disturbing exploration of the unknown? [40 marks | | | | | To what extent do you agree with the view that gothic writing shows that human beings are naturally inclined to be evil rather than good? [40 marks] | June 2013 | “Although Faustus is eventually punished, the play is essentially a celebration of sin rather than a morality tale.” How far do you agree with this view of the play? (40 marks) | How far do you agree with the view that, in Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte shows that more suffering is caused by a diseased mind than by a diseased body? (40 marks) | Explore some of the ways in which Mary Shelley uses different settings to contribute to the gothic effects of the novel. (40 marks) | To what extent do you agree that, in gothic writing, fear and pain...
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...Emily Bronte’s novel, Wuthering Heights, is a proverbial soap opera stew, filled with love, lies, and deceit intertwining two families that reside only four miles apart across the moors in ever-seemingly dreary northern England. The two main characters, Catherine and Heathcliff are born to be together, but destined to be apart. Although truly happy and hopelessly in love with Catherine during the bright times in his life, Heathcliff couldn’t withstand the cruel, evil grip of jealousy and revenge that consumed him, eventually dragging all of those individuals associated with him, as well as his own being, to a dark demise. Wuthering Heights is unlike any other story that I’ve come across, and it is difficult to put a specific category label on it. Thrilling, tragic, damp, and dark, filled with villains and heroines, Bronte never clarifies who said villain or heroin is, seemingly purposefully changing the proverbial mind with each turn of the page. From the moment young adopted Heathcliff becomes friends with Catherine, it’s apparent that he is sincerely happy as he and Catherine’s love grows with each innocent tryst among the moors, ever growing from friendship into love. Catherine gives us a glimpse of that love and adoration when she states, “My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath…He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being” (Bronte, 1847, p. 64). The...
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...12/7/2015 Wuthering Heights - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Wuthering Heights From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Wuthering Heights is Emily Brontë's only novel. Written between October 1845 and June 1846,[1] Wuthering Heights was published in 1847 under the pseudonym "Ellis Bell"; Brontë died the following year, aged 30. Wuthering Heights and Anne Brontë's Agnes Grey were accepted by publisher Thomas Newby before the success of their sister Charlotte's novel, Jane Eyre. After Emily's death, Charlotte edited the manuscript of Wuthering Heights, and arranged for the edited version to be published as a posthumous second edition in 1850.[2] Although Wuthering Heights is now widely regarded as a classic of English literature, contemporary reviews for the novel were deeply polarised; it was considered controversial because its depiction of mental and physical cruelty was unusually stark, and it challenged strict Victorian ideals of the day, including religious hypocrisy, morality, social classes and gender inequality.[3][4] The English poet and painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti referred to it as "A fiend of a book – an incredible monster ... The action is laid in hell, – only it seems places and people have English names there."[5] In the second half of the 19th century, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre was considered the best of the Brontë sisters' works, but following later re-evaluation, critics began to argue that Wuthering Heights was superior.[6] The book has inspired adaptations...
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...Wuthering Heights as a Gothic Novel 1)The Suspense Wuthering Heights is a strange and threatening place. How is suspense built in chapter 1 and 2? Find six points from each chapter that illustrate Brönte’s creation of suspense. * Consider the contrasts between Lockwood and the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights, and the use of pathetic fallacy. Chapter 1: * Short sentences: ‘A nod was the answer.’ This suggests that not everything is said. She uses the sentence itself to emphasise Heathcliff’s character, particularly when it’s compared to Lockwood’s elaborate ones. The shortness in the sentence suggests that there is something hidden. * Introduction of elements that are not explained until later in the novel, such as the mention of Hareton Earnshaw. * Description of the weather as being dark and gloomy. The weather escapes human control, giving an idea of uncontrollable evil. A storm will build up, such as the suspense. * Descriptions emphasise the isolation of the house. * The architecture of the house; The descriptions describe elements which are typical of Gothic architecture, as well as using foreboding words such as ‘crumbling’, and dark, negative ones, as in ‘grotesque’. * ‘The kitchen had been forced to retreat’. Imagery of oppression, as well as contributing to the idea of warfare. This is a contrast with the idea of the kitchen being the most homely room in the house. There is here suspense and tension building up. Chapter 2: ...
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...The Edge…There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are ones who have gone over.” - Hunter S. Thompson. Explore the presentation of the troubled mind in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and the poetry of John Keats, with illuminating reference to Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. “The Edge” described by Hunter S. Thompson is, he says, unexplainable. What seems clear is that ‘the Edge’ is at the limit of the human mind. It can’t be explained, Thompson says, because the only people who ‘really know where it is’ are the ones who ‘have gone over’ it, those who have died or else never returned to ‘reality’ and ‘sanity’. Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, the poetry of John Keats, and Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest all describe, in differing ways, states of mind on ‘the Edge’. When they were first published, the contemporary reception to Keats’s poems and to Wuthering Heights was remarkably similar. Keats was described as writing ‘the most incongruous ideas in the most uncouth language’ , while Bronte’s novel (published under the male pseudonym Ellis Bell) was called ‘too coarse and disagreeable to be attractive’, and described as ‘wild, confused, disjointed, and improbable’ with characters who are ‘savages ruder than those who lived before the days of Homer.’ These accusations of ‘uncouth’, ‘coarse’ and ‘disjointed’ writing suggest that both authors had already crossed one edge with their writing: the edge...
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...A. Hare English 46B May 18, 2012 Final Question 1 Victorian novels Emma by Jane Austen, Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, Middlemarch by George Elliot and early twentieth century novel Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf all portray and emphasis a heighten sense of awareness in their societies, social lives and love. The evolution of main characters in each of the novels shows transition between the writers and characters through close observations of social interactions. Victorian novels more often idealized a sort of portrait of love and luck that wins out towards the end; rewarding virtue and that wrongdoer are punished. This however was to be intended to improve the moral nature of one’s heart. Twentieth century writers had and a slightly different view of that of Victorian writers in which embodied a more modern period and more modern view on life. The concepts of love in each of these four distinct novels are apparent in the way that each are craftily structured. Jane Austen’s Emma use of free indirect style for example on page 327-28 which marks a crucial moment in the novel where the main character Emma has a crucial realization “with insufferable vanity had she believed herself in the secret of everybody’s feelings; with unpardonable arrogance proposed to arrange everybody’s destiny”; the theme in which this novel centered around a number of marriages and social status. In gaining social advancement was especially important for women if they stood a chance for improving...
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...Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte This eBook is designed and published by Planet PDF. For more free eBooks visit our Web site at http://www.planetpdf.com/. Wuthering Heights Chapter I 1801. - I have just returned from a visit to my landlord - the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country! In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society. A perfect misanthropist’s heaven: and Mr. Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us. A capital fellow! He little imagined how my heart warmed towards him when I beheld his black eyes withdraw so suspiciously under their brows, as I rode up, and when his fingers sheltered themselves, with a jealous resolution, still further in his waistcoat, as I announced my name. ’Mr. Heathcliff?’ I said. A nod was the answer. ’Mr. Lockwood, your new tenant, sir. I do myself the honour of calling as soon as possible after my arrival, to express the hope that I have not inconvenienced you by my perseverance in soliciting the occupation of Thrushcross Grange: I heard yesterday you had had some thoughts - ‘ 2 of 540 Wuthering Heights ’Thrushcross Grange is my own, sir,’ he interrupted, wincing. ‘I should not allow any one to inconvenience me, if I could hinder it - walk in!’ The ‘walk in’ was uttered with closed teeth, and expressed the sentiment, ‘Go to the Deuce:’ even the gate over which he...
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...the supernatural - The psychology of horror and terror - Spooky structures (castles, abbeys) - A sense of mystery and dread - The appealing hero and its villain - The heroine in danger - (Usually) a strong moral closure. The Gothic element in Jane Eyre emphasizes the mystery and the supernatural through the dark, gloomy settings and violent events, which raises a horrific atmosphere. Mr. Reed's ghostly presence in the red-room, Bertha's mysterious laughter in the attic, and Rochester's dark and brooding personality are all examples of gothic conventions, which add to the novel's suspense, entangling the reader in Jane's attempt to solve the mystery at Thornfield. According to Robert Harris, the elements of Goth includes: 1. Setting in a castle. The action takes place in and around an old castle, sometimes seemingly abandoned and sometimes occupied. Inside the castles, there are secret passages, trap doors secret rooms, hidden staircase and sometimes with ruined sections. Ex: Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto. Walpole's novel first introduced to gothic literature its most influential convention, the haunted castle. The castle is the main setting of the story and the centre of activity. 2. An atmosphere of mystery and suspense. The work is pervaded by feelings of threat and fear. The elements 3,4 and 5 below contribute to this atmosphere. Ex: “An awful silence reigned throughout those subterraneous regions, except now and then some blasts of wind that shook the doors...
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...The latter, an Italian word used to describe short stories, supplied the present generic English term in the 18th century. Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, is frequently cited as the first significant European novelist of the modern era; the first part of Don Quixote was published in 1605.[2] While a more precise definition of the genre is difficult, the main elements that critics discuss are: how the narrative, and especially the plot, is constructed; the themes, settings, and characterization; how language is used; and the way that plot, character, and setting relate to reality. The romance is a related long prose narrative. Walter Scott defined it as "a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvellous and uncommon incidents", whereas in the novel "the events are accommodated to the ordinary train of human events and the modern state of society".[3] However, many romances, including the historical romances of Scott,[4] Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights[5] and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick,[6] are also frequently called novels, and Scott describes romance as a "kindred term". Romance, as defined here, should not be confused with the genre fiction love romance or romance novel. Other European languages do not distinguish between romance and novel: "a novel is le roman, der Roman, il romanzo."[7]...
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