Wuthering Heights & The Poetry Anthology Revision Flashcards
About Emily Bronte (1818)
> The 1830s was the Gothic Revival period in Architecture
> In 1832 the Reform Act on women’s suffrage was passed
> In 1847 Wuthering Heights was published under the pseudonym ‘Ellis Bell’ because she wanted her work to receive due critical attention.
> In 1848 was the beginning of the Feminist Movement in England and Emily Bronte dies
The Gothic Genre
> Gothic literature lends itself to Psychological realism.
> This genre is an emotionally charged kind of literature, dealing with the uncanny and the ambiguous.
> This genre combines atmospheric power and the imaginative range of romance.
> This genre combines horror and romance which typically features supernatural encounters, graveyards, ghosts and crumbling ruins.
> Heathcliff’s profound passion and desire for Catherine extends beyond the grave and exceed the conventional boundaries of the class and time.
> The fairy-tale structure, found in tales like “Beauty and the Beast” permitted women writers to elaborate ideas about choice within a 19th century marriage contract.
> Relate to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
> Bronte has incorporated aspects of Gothic trappings. These include the persecuted protagonist, her being wooed by a dangerous but good suitor and the heroine’s appreciation for nature.
The Setting
> The novel is set in a bleak Moorside in Yorkshire and the geography is considered a character itself
> The desolate landscape is difficult to settle in due to the harsh weather. This acts as a metaphor for the uncertain moral landscape which the characters inhabit
> Bronte’s use of hostile weather conditions and bleak settings reflect the social hardships of the 19th century.
The relationship between the landscape description and theme is called Pathetic Fallacy
> These two locations are structural oppositions in that Wuthering Heights is isolated, dark and forbidden and set upon the hillside. Whereas, Thrushcross Grange is sunny and located in the Valley
> The descriptions of the settings are in direct contrast with the Romantic view of the open landscape as sublime and uplifting
Social Context
> Contemporary readers of Wuthering Heights would have been familiar with stories that of Heathcliff being a foundling from the port of Liverpool. Orphans and child beggars were a common social problem.
> Heathcliff’s uncertain origins can be read as a realistic account of the social upheavals of the mid 19th century.
> The mid 19th century also saw mass unemployment as a result of the Industrial Revolution and the decay of a rural lifestyle in the face of increased urbanisation and new technology
> The Industrial Revolution dramatically changed the social structure in Britain. Prior to this event, 3/4 of Britain’s population lived in the countryside working in agriculture or as a skilled craftsman.
> The new enclosure of laws of 1845 - 82 meant that many farmers could no longer afford to farm the land
> A new standard of defining a gentleman was money which challenged the traditional criteria of breeding and family.
> Some argue that Bronte supports the status quo and upholds conventional values. > The readers sympathises towards Heathcliff, the gipsy oppressed by a rigid class system. But as he pursues his revenge and tyrannical persecution of the innocent, the danger posed by the uncontrolled individual to the community becomes apparent.
> Bronte’s fine grasp of the complex inheritance laws of the 19th century are crucial to her development of both the plot and characterisation, affecting the key decisions that her female characters make.
Dual Narration
> dual narration was virtually unprecedented when she wrote Wuthering Heights
> The dual narration in “Wuthering Heights” means that multiple perspective compete with and contradict each other, so that the reader’s understanding of character and plot development is constantly revised.
> Bronte’s first narrator, Lockwood who tells the frame narrative is clearly unreliable. He mistakes social relationships and radically misreads Heathcliff from the start
> Nelly’s narrative is somewhat less subject to contradiction and denial. Nevertheless, it is evident that we are informed by her own preferences and sometimes her interior motive. We are never under the illusion that Nelly is neutral or objective.
> Wuthering Heights has a distinct and complex narrative structure in that is a story within a story. One character tells the story to another character who tells the story to the readers.
Dialect and Structure
> The use of dialect earned the novel hostile reviews since the language and manners of the local characters were criticised for being rough and coarse.
> Joseph’s dialect doesn’t serve to make him ridiculous but to contribute to the authenticity of his character. His dialect is evidence of his resistant to change and his hostility to strangers.
> Bronte’s use of Yorkshire dialect has generally been considered to be an accurate account of the accent of the region.
> In the second edition of the novel, Charlotte Bronte changed the way in which Emily wrote Joseph’s dialect in order to make it more comprehensible.
> Psychoanalytical theorists such as Jay Clayton have drawn on the Lancian view of language as alienating as a crucial part of what it means to be human
> “Wuthering Heights” is an intricately structured novel of great symmetry. Bronte establishes a powerful dichotomy at the heart of the novel, in which two opposing ways of life interact and conflict with each other. These oppositions are primarily represented by the two houses, Wuthering Heights, which represents nature and Thrushcross Grange, which represents culture.
Poetic Language
> Much of the potent imagery in Wuthering Heights is also to be found in her poetry.
> Heathcliff’s tormented account of being unable to sleep because of his love for Catherine and his desire to be reunited with her dead body can be compared with, “Sleep brings no joy to me”
> The superabundance of metaphors, symbols and lyricism of the descriptive passages have earned praise of its poetic language
Cartesian Dualism: René Descartes
> A struggle or conflict between the heart and mind;
> The nature of the mind (that is, a thinking, non-extended thing) is completely different from that of the body (that is, an extended, non-thinking thing), and therefore it is possible for one to exist without the other.
Courtly Love: Denis De Rougemont
> A medieval European literary conception of love.
> The notion that a lover would select a woman who is preferably married and would yearn for her, sing songs and write poetry, all to make her fall in love with him.
> However, they must never sleep with each other because that would be adulterous and would spoil the state of being in love - whereby one should be in a state of constant unhappiness and unfulfilled
Alain De Botton: Romanticism
> He theorised that when we fall in love we are recreating a pattern of earliest childhood.
> The concept of love is introduced in childhood and is recreated in adult relationships. He says we are not drawn to the people who make us happy but rather the people we feel familiar to.
Ellen Moers 1976; Feminist Critic
> She states that the puzzles of Wuthering Heights could be resolved if the novel is read as viewing a girl’s childhood and the woman’s tragic yearning to return to it.
> Catherine’s impossible love for Heathcliff becomes understandable when she is a pre-adolescent, modelled after the brother-sister relationship.
C.P Sanger: about time
> He has notes that Bronte pays careful attention to time
> Exact dates are only mentioned three times, however, there are many indications of time. Such as seasonal references and the age of characters. This alerts us to the complex time shifts of the novel
> The chronological exactitude is of primary importance which is established at the very beginning
> The first word of the novel is ‘1801’ which sets up our expectations for the novel to be set in reality. The expectations are radically challenged as the narrative progress and the shifts of narrators
Q.D Leavis: about time
> Her essay, “A Fresh Approach to Wuthering Heights”
> She states that by setting the story very clearly in the past, Bronte could demonstrate the point that the way of life was to change. This includes ‘patriarchal family life’. These traditional values would be challenged by the progress of culture and civilisation.
> She has also stated that the novel a “Romantic-incest story: Heathcliff as brother-lover”
Lord David Cecil
> He praises the rhythm of Bronte’s prose as ‘unfailingly beautiful’
Nancy Armstrong
> Argues that the enigmatic figure of Heathcliff is the result of his crossing between Literacy genres, The Romantic one and the early Victorian domestic realism
