Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Wuthering Heights
Objectives
- AO1
- Examples of imagery include landscape
imagery, pathetic fallacy, landscape as a
symbolic character and the use of animal
imagery to suggest savagery in the novel.
- The dual narration of Lockwood and Nelly can
be compared and contrasted in terms of class
and gender, reliable and unreliable narration,
objectivity and immediacy.
- Joseph and Nelly's dialect can be seen to represent a
closed community while lockwood's style establishes
him simultaneously as both vain and educated.
Language in wuthering heights is undicative of culture
and class.
- In wuthering heights there is a
doubling of names and repition of
stories, while family symmetries
contrast with turbulent lives.
- Religious allegory is linked to morality and
metaphysics in the novel, and can be
connected to the prometheus myth, defying
gods for the sake of humanity. Political
allegory can be linked to revolution on themes
of power and violence and disruption as seen
in the character of Heathcliff
- AO5
- Feminist reading, The presentation of female
'madness' in the characters of catherine earnshaw
and isabella linton. Bronte's account echoes the
beliefs of victorian psychiatry of the madness: The
reproductive system was the sources of mental
illness in women. Suffers rom the moral insanity
associated with women's sexual desires.
- Post Colonial reading, Heathcliff is described throughout the
novel as a savage an outsider, perhaps brought in on a slave
ship, or could be a famish irish immigrant escaping the irish
potato famine.
- Formalist reading, Significance of the numerous
windows and doors in this novel. Such formal
boundaries represent the tension between two
conflicting realities. Different characters aim to cross
these physical boundaries and unite the two kinds of
reality.
- Marxist reading, The story of WH is concerned not
with love in the abstract but with the passions of
living people.
- The novel reads about a girl's childhood and the
adult womans tragic yearning to return to it.
Catherine's impossile love for Heathcliff becoms
comprehensive as a pre-adolescent. The gratuitous
cruelties of the novel are this justified as realistic
attibutes of the nursery world - and as frankly joyous
memories of childhood eroticism.
- AO3
- It is possible WH was first published under a
male name because the strength of passion
depicited was thought unsuitable for a lady.
- Their aunt raised the Bronte children after
their mother died, and was deeply
religious. The character of Joseph, a
caricapture of an evangelical may have
inspired by her aunt's religiosity.
- They were also influenced by their
servant Tabitha - who was fond of
telling them local stories (Nelly Dean?)
- The setting high up on the
yorkshire dales in a lonely
and wild place, typical of
romance novels
- The romantic movement was also a time of strict
morals and value, running wild on the moors
would not have been acceptable social class was
very important
- Second industrial revolution 1780 - 1850, New
opportunites for upwardly mobile gentlemen challanged
ideas of breeding and family. Heathcliffs uncertain
background and lack of status reflect the changing
shape of society.
- Cholera epidemics widespread
death from cholera and typhoid
left children orphaned and
homeless; link to heathliff's
orphan status.
- Charlotte fell for a married
teacher and was
heartbroken - 1844,
Branwell was also suffering
from a broken heart. There
was a family crisis with
Bramwell over his former
love and he became almost
insane (Heathcliff) Emily
witnessed allot of
heartbreak
- Chartist movement (1838-42) A campaign
for industrial reform and equality for
workers; conflict between WH and the
grange is symbolic of the conflict
between the working classes and the
bourgeoisie.
- Lord Byron, respected by the Bronte
sisters established the figure of the
Byronic hero, this can be compared
to Heathcliff