...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...
Words: 748 - Pages: 3
...Through out Wuthering Heights Heathcliff is presented in many different ways to the reader which create a completly different view of his personality and motives. This is no different in the opening four chapters of the novel. During this time we are able to look at Heathcliff’s character through the perspective of three other characters, Lockwood, Nelly and Cathy. Each of these perspectives shine light on certain aspects of Heathcliff’s personality and to understand what a complex character he is. The reader is not provided with enough information on his background to know enough about his former life. We only become aware of whom he really is, later on in the novel when he narrates for himself. Heathcliff enters the Earnshaw home as a poor orphan and is immediately assualted by questions of his parentage. He is characterized as devilish and cruelly referred to as "it" in the Earnshaw household. This impression of a poor, defencless Heathcliff during his childhood creates a binary opposition to the cold, confident Heathcliff we are introduced to through Lockwood’s narration. “ ‘Mr Heathcliff’ I said, A nod was my answer” this shows that Heathcliff holds Lockwood in contempt and doesn’t deem him worthy enough to break his isolation and engage in converse. “He is a dark skinned gypsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman” this description highlights Heathcliffs dark complextion which isolates him from the rest of the Earnshaw family, this is shown to be key as...
Words: 805 - Pages: 4
...Heights is an allegory to which he applies the ‘House of Storm’ and House of Calm’ concept, the Heights is immediately established to be a place of innate cruelty and of wild uninhibited primitive emotions. This is made evident when Mr. Lockwood, an educated gent of a high social class visits the heights and is met with the imminent cruelty of the residents. The dogs which inhabit Wuthering Heights are “not accustomed to being spoilt”, much like Heathcliff who is first labelled as “it” and experiences the long term effects of mental cruelty through exclusion and brandishing as a “gipsy boy”, which were deemed as undesirable and a pollutant to society at the time of writing. Instantly Heathcliff is faced with mental cruelty of both social attitudes at the time towards ethnic groups, and the torment which faces him in the form of Hindley and Edgar Linton as he is treated and brandished as an outsider, in the liminal state of acceptance. Arguably, more suffering is inflicted in this instance by mental cruelty by Hindley towards Heathcliff, as the mental cruelty absorbs itself into every fibre of Heathcliff’s being, constructing his future and his persona. Whereas he becomes somewhat immune to Hindley’s thrashings from the offset, as he would stand Hindley’s blows...
Words: 1177 - Pages: 5
...man named Lockwood who lives in house owned by another man named Heathcliff. Lockwood wants to know more about Heathcliff so he asks the maid to tell him about Heathcliff. The maid, Nelly, begins a long story starting with Heathcliff’s childhood. A man named Mr. Earnshaw had one son, Hindley, and one daughter, Catherine. One day Mr. Earnshaw took a trip to Liverpool. He came back with a young boy, Heathcliff. Although Hindley did not like him, the daughter Catherine approved of him. Catherine and Heathcliff spent every day playing with each other and eventually grew to love each other. When they became older, Catherine decided to marry a man named Edgar Linton instead of Heathcliff. Heathcliff was so mad that he left the house, called Wuthering Heights, for three years. He returned soon after Edgar and Catherine got married. Heathcliff is still infuriated and wants to get revenge on everyone who did not treat him well. Hindley started drinking heavily after his wife died from giving birth to his son Hareton. Heathcliff gives money to Hindley to gamble with. When Hindley died, Heathcliff inherited Wuthering Heights. In order to get back at Catherine for getting married, he marries a woman, Isabella, who lives four miles away at a place called Thrushcross Grange. Soon after, Catherine gives birth to a daughter, also named Catherine, but dies giving birth. Isabella moved to London because Heathcliff did not treat her properly. While she was there, she gave birth...
Words: 1276 - Pages: 6
...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...
Words: 3252 - Pages: 14
...Charlotte Brontë described Heathcliff as a ‘man’s shape animated by demon life – a ghoul” To what extent do you think this is an accurate assessment of the ways in which Heathcliff is presented in the novel? Heathcliff is presented in this novel in various different ways. He is a character that arguably shifts from having human qualities, to presenting traits of the Byronic hero and finally becoming a typical gothic villain. The doomed central character of Heathcliff in this gothic novel could be paralleled to that of Satan in John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ where Satan is cast out by God from Heaven into the terrible darkness of Hell. One could argue that Brontë does in fact present Heathcliff as “a ghoul” by making a connection between him and the exotic and describing him from the very start as “dark almost as if [he] came from the devil” showing that his striking physical appearance, just like the Byronic hero, makes him unable to integrate into a higher social class. In an attempt to confine and dehumanize Heathcliff, Hindley forces him into servitude; although Heathcliff endures it, he plots how he can “paint the house-front with Hindley’s blood”. His cruelty serves to conceal the heart of a romantic hero and the fact that Heathcliff is subject to xenophobia which was a common sentiment among the British people in the colonial days of the early nineteenth century leads him to become an outcast and makes him a “child of the storm”, someone product of circumstances and...
Words: 701 - Pages: 3
...In Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, cruelty serves as a crucial motivator. When Heathcliff feels hurt because of Hindley Earnshaw's treatment of him, Heathcliff lashes out at Hindley and his child. When Catherine, Heathcliff’s childhood love, marries another man, Heathcliff becomes angry and hateful. He begins to become motivated by his hate and he becomes feared for his cruelness. In Wuthering Heights, jealousy and a need for revenge drives Heathcliff's feelings of love to turn into feelings of cruelty. Although several other characters in Wuthering Heights are described as cruel, Heathcliff's cruelty fiercely contrasts theirs because he willingly acts on it. Hindley's treatment of him and Catherine's decision to choose Edgar over himself directly cause...
Words: 799 - Pages: 4
...may not be the usual happy ending love story; however, it is one with a dysfunctional love. The love between Heathcliff and Catherine was intervened by pride and ego. Although the characters expressed their love for each other various times, it is them who deprived themselves from happiness. The novel well interprets the the dysfunctional love of the characters, giving it an ultimate twist to the love story. Towards the beginning of the novel, Lockwood’s unexpected stay at Wuthering Heights triggers an emotional breakdown in Heathcliff. During the night of his stay,...
Words: 871 - Pages: 4
...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 problems are significant. By provinding characters such as Heathcliff, Lockwood, and Catherine, she communicates various aspects of homelessness. The life of the Ernshaw family changes for good the night an orphan child arrives at Wuthering Heights. The boy is being named Heathcliff, “the name thus signifies his acceptance but also his difference and implied inferiority; in lacking the family...
Words: 3665 - Pages: 15
...novel ‘Wuthering Heights.’ The childhood of both Heathcliff’s and Catherine’s is significant. Both characters don’t have the ability to show love and affection to anyone else or in some instances Heathcliff has no morals which is deduced by the following quotation, ‘she degenerates into a mere slut!’ the colloquial language used has the effect of setting a tone and defining the type of distant relationship Heathcliff has with other characters. The words ‘degenerates and slut’ represents how Heathcliff shows no hesitation to oppress other women who he has no love for and to objectify them. Whereas with Catherine he is deeply in love with her and never speaks ill of her, this shows how their relationships with others tends to be superficial. They live in their own little world and when separated from each other they feel completely isolated such as when Heathcliff had found out that Catherine had died he was just like a living corpse, losing all his earthly passion he has to ‘remind himself to breathe’ shows he has given up on life and has nothing worth living for, he even did some actions to even hurt himself from then on he dropped into an extremely melancholic mood. This reinforces the idea how their love and dependency on each other is consuming and obsessive. Powerful forces and a supernatural theme are yet again refreshed by lexical sets of love, explicitly barriers to love and Romanticism. Such as Catherine saying ‘let me alone’ and Heathcliff replying ‘kiss me again’ this...
Words: 327 - Pages: 2
...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...
Words: 6936 - Pages: 28
...“The poems of Carol Ann Duffy and Emily Bronte’s Prose novel Wuthering Heights, though written in different centuries, can be linked through their portrayal of strong-minded, independent and empowered female protagonists / narrators.” Consider the validity of this argument, through close reference to the texts. Your answer should make reference to at least THREE of Duffy’s poems. Both Duffy and Bronte chose throughout there work to tackle difficult subjects predominantly through the portrayal of females in there writing. Duffy was born 1955 a Scottish poet and the first female Poet Laureate. Her poetry the subject of much controversy, she follows in the poetic tradition of, for example, Robert Browning, in writing monologues from the point of view of a disturbed character. The majority of her poems feminist in themes and approach. Her collection The Worlds Wife took characters from history, literature and mithiloligy and gave them a female point of view, as a sister, a wife, or feminised version of the character. Similarly Emily Bronte was an extremely talented writer, pretending to be a male in order to get her Gothic romance Wuthering Hight's published. A complex novel of love vengeance, is still controversial today.While it has been called one of the most carefully constructed novels in the English language, Charlotte refers to Emily as “an unconscious artist who did not know what she had done;” in other words, a visionary genius. Hence there are uncanny links between these...
Words: 1718 - Pages: 7
...The novels The Color Purple by Alice Walker, Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, and Wuthering Heights by Charlotte Bronte depicts that evil is associated more with society than with nature through the characters of Albert, George, and Heathcliff respectively. The authors use the idea of nature versus nurture to justify the actions of these characters due to the environment they were exposed to as opposed to the characteristics they naturally possess. Walker shows, in The Color Purple, how evil is associated with society more than nature though the character of Albert. Throughout the majority of the novel, Albert is primarily portrayed as an abusive husband and father. However, as the novel progresses, it is revealed that he struggled with...
Words: 781 - Pages: 4
...lessons are shared between various novels. This can be seen within the two classic novels Grendel by John Gardner and Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. Both books are centralized around the theme that our strong desires for love can strengthen our need for revenge. In the novel, Wuthering Heights there is a large cycle of revenge that ensues as a result of a desperate desire to be loved. This revenge is executed by two main characters within the novel. The first is Hindley who shares a large and public disregard for Heathcliff, and an orphan his father, Mr. Earnshaw, took in when he was a child. As a child, Hindley was accustomed to being the only male in the house and receiving a fair amount of his father’s attention. With the arrival of Heathcliff, however, this all changed. Mr. Earnshaw immediately takes a strong liking to Heathcliff and treats him as if he were his own son. Similar to her father, Catherine, Hindley’s sister, gets along famously with Heathcliff, and the two eventually...
Words: 1145 - Pages: 5
...nurture, in her novel Wuthering Heights. Throughout the novel, Bronte demonstrates the role of parental figures, along with environment during childhood, and how they enable the solidification of these human tendencies within the child. Wuthering Heights is a run-down, isolated building located in Yorkshire, inhabited by the Earnshaw family. Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw have two biological children, by the names of Hindley and Catherine, along with an adopted boy, Heathcliff, Mr. Earnshaw brings home after a visit to Liverpool. Tension plagues the family as Mr. Earnshaw dotes on Heathcliff’s every action. Hindley and Catherine are ignored and abused with words of hate and receive occasional beatings dealt by hand of their father. The children however, demonstrate two different responses to the actions bestowed upon them. Hindley acts out in fits of rage towards Heathcliff with beatings and constantly demeaning him to that of a servant status. Catherine, on the other hand, delightfully befriends young Heathcliff; they spend most of their time frolicking through the Moores and causing chaos. “My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! 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 82).” Parental...
Words: 932 - Pages: 4
