Wuthering Heights One A230B 9/19/2018

We will discuss the first half of the novel in this chapter. Wuthering Heights was published in 1847.The chapter examines the two contrasting homes presented in the novel, their inhabitants and external landscape. The theme of abroad, the structure and the genre of the novel will be also examined. Reviews of the Novel We will discuss the first half of the novel in this chapter. 9/19/2018

Home at Wuthering Heights The novel begins with accounts by the southerner Lockwood of his first experience in his new home in the north of England, His increasing confusion was shared by some of the first reviewers. The reviews were published in periodicals and magazines and were likely read within the home. The novel was underappreciated and misunderstood at the time of its publication. 9/19/2018

This part of the chapter looks at the literary texts in relation to their readers’ responses. It can be tempting to dismiss early responses as narrowly moralistic. The first reviews were working within a context where it was common to speak about the healthfulness or otherwise of reading material. Ruskin constantly discussed reading in terms of wholesome or unwholesome diet. 9/19/2018

The early reviews of the Novel tended to discuss the home setting of the novel more than the landscape it evoked. Henry Chorley describes the home at Wuthering Heights as the prison which might be pictured from life. “the house at Wuthering Heights in the first chapter of the novel brought us into the family sitting room. Wuthering Heights clearly has the appearance of a well-ordered home within which is revealed the full domestic chaos of a disordered family. Mr Cliff forms a contrast to his abode and style of living. The gloomy and prison –like atmosphere of Wuthering Heights was largely determined by the pervasive presence of the brutal master of the lonely house. 9/19/2018

Outside the home Many other reviews focused on the interior of the house, and the joint significance of Wuthering Heights as both a wild, abandoned landscape and a house. They noted connections between events taking place inside and the exterior weather and landscape. 9/19/2018

This Wild external landscape has a pervasive presence in the text. What does Lockwood’s account of the exterior of the house and the first sighting of its inhabitants lead us to anticipate? The readers are left in no doubt as to the significance of the natural setting of the novel. This Wild external landscape has a pervasive presence in the text. In the novel itself, exterior landscape tend to be symbolic of events in the story rather than the immediate location for its action . The modernist writer Virginia Woolf 1882-1941 noticed how the landscapes in the Bronte's novels, their storms, moors, lovely spaces of summer weather…carry the emotion and light up the meaning of their books. 9/19/2018

Home at Thrushcross Grange The landscape in Wuthering Heights certainly works in this way on the reader- as a spatial expression of the themes and emotions portrayed. Home at Thrushcross Grange What are the immediate contrasts with Wuthering Heights? The first description of the Grange is Heath cliff's narration retold by Nelly. He and Catherine have run all the way ‘from the top of the heights and planted themselves under the drawing –room windowp.p.41. We get an account at this stage only of the interior of this house , intensifying the contrast between the wild race and the constraints of its domestic space. 9/19/2018

The focus of the attention on its interior means that the reader seems to learn about this house from indoors, rather than from its exterior to its interior spaces. 9/19/2018

Mysterious inhabitants One of the reviews of the Novel regards the atmosphere of the Wuthering Heights as “less the result of a cold and bleak situation…than of the strange and mysterious character of its inhabitants. How do these inhabitants appear “strange and mysterious”? 9/19/2018

Lockwood ‘s narrative shows him as entirely disconcerted by the inhabitants of the house- a feeling shared by many readers confronted by such wild behavior while reading in the apparent safety of their own homes. Lockwood cannot understand the behavior of Wuthering Heights family or even understand their relationships. 9/19/2018

They are strange and mysterious in themselves. Strangest of all is heathcliff.His origin remains unexplained as does the source of his wealth and education he acquires when he temporarily disappears. He has a powerful effect on everybody else, and apart from Catherine and her father, who feel affection towards him, the main emotion he inspires is fear. 9/19/2018

The Character of Heath cliff.. Heathcliff ‘s character description starts in chapter one. His appearance, speech and behavior are portrayed by Bronte early in the novel. He is described as a dark-skinned gypsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman. He has an erect and handsome figure- and rather morose. 9/19/2018

He is a foreign thing; his origin is a mystery in a novel where genealogy is vital as is signaled by the name ‘Hareton Earnshaw which has stood above the doorway to Wuthering Heights since 1500.Heathcliff owns only one name. Throughout the novel he is never properly knitted into the genealogy pattern. However, though he is foreign in the novel, in other respects he is common in literature. 9/19/2018

All this suggests that he might share the characteristics of a hero, or indeed villain, from a genre which is in contrast to the polite domestic novel of manners that lockwood seems designed for, but would have been well known to Bronte's readers. He is compared to the hero of the Corsair who is linked to one virtue and a thousand crimes. 9/19/2018

In Wuthering Heights Heathcliff is portrayed as a proud, courageous, defiant of laws and conventions, given to violent utterance and action, with flashing base like eyes. Such qualities also figure in the hero-villain of popular gothic romances. Though he is mysterious , in other respects he can be identified with character types familiar to Victorian readers and from whom extreme behavior was to be expected. Again, all the occupants of his house are described in their wild state. 9/19/2018

The structure of Wuthering Heights The novel puts pressure on familiar literary classifications. The novel’s treatment of familiar genres increases the sense of uncanny disturbance that is produced in the reader by the strange –familiar events it depicts , and this recurs throughout the novel’s generic make up. A sense of disturbed familiarity is also produced by the way in which the novel is structured. 9/19/2018

This part considers the structure of the novel in relation to the idea of home, the narrator and the narrative frames through which the novel is told, the patterns of repetition and variation between events and character and the novel’s chronology. 9/19/2018

Home and Structure.. The idea of home and the house at WH can provide a reference-point for the formal composition of the novel along For readers of the WH, their progression through its domestic spaces feels anything but orderly or decorous. However, the novel itself is structured along highly organized lines with a clearly indicated span of dates both for Lockwood's narrative and for the events that Nelly Dean narrates. 9/19/2018

There is a constant symmetrical patterning of contrast and repetitition between characters. Characters are related not just through naming and genealogy, but through similar yet different experiences. They all contribute to a sense of tightly organized literary structure. 9/19/2018

Structure of the story.. We have two main narrators in WH.Both HAVE A ROLE IN SHAPING our experience of the text.Lockwood,the house tenant, introduces the novel. His narrative forms an outer frame for the whole work . He reports the central narrative as related by Nelly from vol.1 onwards. He is not at home at WH and therefore he is representative of the geographical and class location of the majority of the novel's readership.WH’s characters have grown up untaught and unchecked, except by mentors as harsh as themselves. 9/19/2018

Nelly is at home at WH and at the Grange Nelly is at home at WH and at the Grange. She can move easily between these two worlds. Critics have often read Nelly as the voice of conventions and narrow-minded prejudice. Nelly represents the domestic home but home in WH is something other than merely benevolent as readers know. 9/19/2018

Read Discussions on p.368 and top of page 369. How the narratives are brought together? How many narrators are we aware of? Read Discussions on p.368 and top of page 369. The multiple narrative viewpoints in WH mean that readers tend to experience a lack of authoritative stance- about the events and most notably the violence depicted in the novel. The burden of interpretation lies firmly with the reader. There is a sense of narrative uncertainty that makes the novel sound confused and confusing. 9/19/2018

The time span of the novel is defined between 1801 and 1802. Chronology. The time span of the novel is defined between 1801 and 1802. Within this frame, the events are narrated retrospectively by Nelly.This covers about 21 years and the story of Heathcliff and Catherine. The second half of the story is given to the second generation. 9/19/2018

WH and realism p.371 WH would have been better romance if Heath cliff alone had been a being of stormy passions. Romance meant that we need to discuss what a novel should be. The novel form is often described as hybrid. In fact each novel enjoys a complex relationship with earlier texts and traditions. Wh draws on numerous literary genres, but the discussion in the next chapter will concentrate on the interaction of realism and romance in the novel. 9/19/2018

How can WH be read as a romance? 9/19/2018