Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte

General Introduction  Now considered a classic of English literature, Wuthering Heights met with mixed reviews by critics when it first appeared, mainly because of the narrative's stark depiction of mental and physical cruelty. Though Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre was generally considered the best of the Bronte sisters' works during most of the nineteenth century, many subsequent critics of Wuthering Heights argued that its originality and achievement made it superior.

The Yorkshire Moors

North Yorkshire Moors

Gothic Elements  Ghosts appear throughout Wuthering Heights, as they do in most other works of Gothic fiction.  Bront ë always presents them in such a way that whether they really exist remains ambiguous.  Whether or not the ghosts are “ real, ” they symbolize the manifestation of the past within the present, and the way memory stays with people, permeating their day-to-day lives.

Gothic Elements  Heathcliff: He is very obscure, mysterious, (dark skin, curly hair – almost like a foreigner) nobody knows where he comes from and how he gets rich. He ’ s the classic outsider,with wild manners and earthy sensibility.  The Wuthering Heights on the moor.

Themes of the Novel  Catherine and Heathcliff ’ s passion for one another seems to be the center of Wuthering Heights.  It is stronger and more lasting than any other emotion displayed in the novel, and that it is the source of most of the major conflicts that structure the novel ’ s plot.

 The book is actually structured around two parallel love stories.  The first half of the novel centering on the love between Catherine and Heathcliff.  The less dramatic second half features the developing love between young Catherine and Hareton.

 In contrast to the first, the latter tale ends happily, restoring peace and order to Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange.  The differences between the two love stories contribute to the reader ’ s understanding of why each ends the way it does.

 Sigmund Freud in Civilization and its Discontents:  "At the height of being in love the boundary between ego and object threatens to melt away. Against all the evidence of his senses, a man who is in love declares ‘I' and 'you' are one, and is prepared to behave as if it were a fact."

 Catherine and Heathcliff ’ s love is based on their shared perception that they are identical. As Catherine once said they are “two hearts beat together.”  Heathcliff is the pursuit of Catherine’s ego, Linton her superego, her self is imbalanced, split. The ego will erupt when it is suppressed too much.  Heathcliff loves Catherine to the bone, his cruelty to all around him is just the twisted expression of this love, while money, property, position are not his goal, love is.

'I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy. That will do to explain my secret, as well as the other. I've no more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven; and if the wicked man in there had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him: and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.'

 What were the use of my creation, if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it.—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. So don't talk of our separation again: it is impracticable; and—'

'You teach me now how cruel you've been—cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they'll blight you— they'll damn you. You loved me—then what right had you to leave me? What right—answer me—for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart—you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you—oh, God! would you like to live with your soul in the grave?'

 'Let me alone. Let me alone,' sobbed Catherine. 'If I’ve done wrong, I'm dying for it. It is enough! You left me too: but I won't upbraid you! I forgive you. Forgive me!'  'It is hard to forgive, and to look at those eyes, and feel those wasted hands,' he answered. 'Kiss me again; and don’t let me see your eyes! I forgive what you have done to me. I love my murderer— but yours! How can I?'

'May she wake in torment!' he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. 'Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens— Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!'

 "... for what is not connected with her to me? and what does not recall her? I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped in the flags! In every cloud, in every tree—filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object by day—I am surrounded with her image! The most ordinary faces of men and women—my own features— mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!"

 the love between the two is the most passionate and yet the most destructive love in the world literature.  The love between them reveals the essential isolation of the soul, the agony of two souls–or rather, two halves of a single soul–forever sundered and struggling to unite.  The love becomes a principle unconditioned by anything but love itself.  Psychologically, it shows the split of ones id and superego, sociologically the class conscious’ destructive effects on love.

 Given that Catherine and Heathcliff ’ s love is based upon their refusal to change over time.  The disastrous problems of their generation are overcome not by some climactic (causing climax) reversal,  but simply by the inexorable passage of time, and the rise of a new and distinct generation.

Themes of the Novel  The conflict between nature and culture is the second center of the novels depiction.  In Wuthering Heights, Bronte constantly plays nature and culture against each other.  Nature is represented by the Earnshaw family, and by Catherine and Heathcliff in particular.  These characters are governed by their passions, not by reflection or ideals of civility.

 Correspondingly, the house where they live, Wuthering Heights comes to symbolize a similar wildness.  On the other hand, Thrushcross Grange and the Linton family represent culture, refinement, convention, and cultivation.

 Wide, wild expanses, high but somewhat soggy, and thus infertile.  Moorland cannot be cultivated, and its uniformity makes navigation difficult.  The moors serve very well as symbols of the wild threat posed by nature. As the setting for the beginnings of Catherine and Heathcliff’s bond (the two play on the moors during childhood), the moorland transfers its symbolic associations onto the love affair

Literary Elements  Point-of-view  Natural imagery  Frame tale  Gothic elements

Structure of the Novel  The novel followed the classic pattern on structure which is recurrent in literature since Greek tragedy based on:  Harmony  Destruction of Harmony  Restoration of Harmony