Wuthering Heights Thesis

Since the beginning of civilization, one’s wealth, and status were determining factors that influenced their place in a stratified society. In Emily Bronte’s novel Wuthering Heights, the author embodied the realities of England's class system during the Victorian Era. During this Era, people were born into a class and stayed there. This was essentially captured by the idea that social mobility was rare and limited. Bronte uses characters such as Catherine, Heathcliff and Edgar as well as the second generation as a tool to emphasize the differences in class, and how it ultimately impacted the fate of the characters.Through the use of symbolism and juxtaposition, Bronte exemplifies that the potency of love and relationships cannot outweigh the necessity social status. While many will argue the impracticality of social status being the determining factor of one’s way of life, this is most notably seen through Catherine Earnshaw.

Wuthering Heights is a novel which deviates from the standard of Victorian literature. The novels of the Victorian Era were often works of social criticism. They generally had a moral purpose and promoted ideals of love and brotherhood. Wuthering Heights is more of a Victorian Gothic novel; it contains passion, violence, and supernatural elements (Mitchell 119). The world of Wuthering Heights seems to be a world without morals. In Wuthering Heights, Brontë does not idealize love; she presents it realistically, with all its faults and merits. She shows that love is a powerful force which can be destructive or redemptive. Heathcliff has an all-consuming passion for Catherine. When she chooses to marry Edgar, his spurned love turns into a

In Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte uses the setting of the English Moors, a setting she is familiar with, to place two manors, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. The first symbolizes man's dark side while the latter symbolizes an artificial utopia. This 19th century setting allows the reader to see the destructive nature of love when one loves the wrong person.

The curious life Emily Bronte, author of Wuthering Heights and a collection of poems, has been highly analyzed alongside those of her sisters and fellow writers, Charlotte and Anne, for decades. Born in 1818, Emily was the fifth of six children born to Patrick and Maria Bronte. Her father was curate of Haworth parsonage in Yorkshire, England, a home for local clergymen, where Emily spent nearly all of her life. The lonely parsonage offered few companions for Bronte besides her family, but included a large library which consumed her childhood. Bronte never married, and much of her later life was filled with caring for her alcoholic brother, Branwell. This solitary life and experience with Branwell seems to have heavily influenced Wuthering Heights, the only novel written by Bronte, which centers on a similar setting of isolated, lonely households and contains a heavily alcoholic character.

    Critics analyze and examine Wuthering Heights to obtain a deeper understanding of the message that Emily Bronte wants to convey. By focusing on the different literary elements of fiction used in the novel, readers are better able to understand how the author successfully uses theme, characters, and setting to create a very controversial novel in which the reader is torn between opposite conditions of love and hate, good and evil, revenge and forgiveness in  Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights. There is no doubt that the use of conflictive characters such as Catherine Earnshaw, Heathcliff, and Edgar, with their interactions in the two different settings creates an

Wuthering Heights follows the Romantic Movement, a movement within literature during the late 18th century with captured intense emotion and passion within writing as opposed to rationalisation. Emily Bronte’s main focal point within the novel is the extreme emotion of love and whether it leads to the characters contentment or ultimate calamity. This confliction of love is portrayed mainly through Catherine Earnshaw, a contemptuous, spoiled beauty whose metaphysical love for the protagonist, Heathcliff, will be tested by her disillusion of Edgar Linton and the social and financial benefits he

One of them is family life. As mentioned above, Heathcliff is a gipsy and also an orphan, which are the main reasons for discrimination and humiliation of him (especially by Hindley). Because of those reasons, he decides to take revenge on Hindley and his family and he succeeds later on, because he ruins their family and also shows no respect to his wife and son. Also there are two families which are totally different from each other: Earnshaws and Lintons. Earnshaws live in a manor located in Wuthering Heights, so their characters can easily be understood from its features. Apart from this, Lintons live in Thrushgross Grange which is located in a wealthy land and the weather conditions and residents’ characters are much better than the other place. Actually, the reason why Catherine decided to be a Linton by marrying with Edgar is the land and life conditions are much

Wuthering Heights, a novel written by Emily Brontë is a passionate story of the intense love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw. Written in the Victorian Era where social class played a major role in determining one’s position in society, Brontë utilizes mirroring characters to illustrate the parallelism of multiple characters to present the idea that one’s identity and the choices they make mirror their social standing.

In the novel, Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte discloses the plight of her characters through contrast. Bronte uses a mix of situations from the past and the present to relay to her readers the juxtaposition of her characters, most notably, between older and younger Catherine. Despite the apparent contrast of the timeframes, Bronte’s disclosure of older and younger Catherine situation gives insight into their contrasting results, which brings to surface the suppositional question of what if. Catherine is the blood daughter of Mr. Earnshaw, which gives her a position of some status within the social hierarchy of the Wuthering Heights estate. Heathcliff, a love interest of Catherine, was neglected by Hindley, Catherine’s brother, and essentially

Vengeance unleashes its utmost immoral behaviors in its perpetrators. And although its success brings temporary happiness, it ultimately rewards remorse. In the novel, Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte, the current tenant of Thrushcross Grange learns the history of the events that took place on the Yorkshire moors: the intense, dramatic romance between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, her betrayal of him, and Heathcliff’s resentful vengeance on the innocent heirs. In conversations of Bronte’s classic, Wuthering Heights, questions about the book’s meaning inevitably emerge. While many argue that the book focuses on love, others assert that the nature of redemption lies at the heart of the

Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is not only one of the most widely read books in America, but it also encourages different critical approaches. One of the most interesting approaches is the psychoanalytical approach in this circumstance. Through the entirety of this book it is understood that defending oneself in different ways is a way to escape the stresses of reality. “Our unconscious desires not to recognize or change out destructive behaviors- because we have formed our identities around them and because we are afraid of what we will find if we examine them too closely- are served by our defenses” (Tyson 15). Just as the way

Throughout the compelling conspiracy of Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë, creates an inhospitable and ominous estate, known as the Heights, that mirrors the savage inhabitants’ demeanor, such as the characters, Joseph or Hindley, but it is for most part apparent with Mr. Heathcliff. In the exposition, the reader gets a clear idea that the Heights is a dim, depressing, miserable residence when Mr. Lockwood first arrives there, and he begins to describes the Heights by observing the terrain; and he thinks to himself, “[O]ne may guess the power of the north wind blowing over the edge, by the excessive slant of a few stunted firs… [and] by a range of gaunt thorns all stretching their limbs one way, as if craving alms of sun” (4 Emily Brontë d).

     In "Wuthering Heights," we see tragedies follow one by one, most of which are focused around Heathcliff, the antihero of the novel. After the troubled childhood Heathcliff goes through, he becomes embittered towards the world and loses interest in everything but Catherine Earnshaw –his childhood sweetheart whom he had instantly fallen in love with.—and revenge upon anyone who had tried to keep them apart.

Love is a strong attachment between two lovers and revenge is a strong conflict between two rivals. In the novel Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte uses setting to establish contrast, to intensify conflict, and to develop character. The people and events of Wuthering Heights share a dramatic conflict. Thus, Bronte focuses on the evil eye of Heathcliff's obsessive and perpetual love with Catherine, and his enduring revenge to those who forced him and Catherine apart. The author expresses the conflict of Wuthering Heights with great intensity. Hence, she portrays a combination of crucial issues of romance and money, hate and power, and lastly

Knowledge is not only power, but also, the ability to distinguish one person from the rest of the people. Emily Brontë, author of Wuthering Heights, was a copy of her siblings and therefore used her extreme passion for learning and teaching to set herself apart from her siblings. In the novel, Wuthering Heights, Brontë creates many similar characters but differentiate between them solely on their mental capacity. Growing up in a household of writers and artists, Emily Brontë felt like a copy of her siblings and therefore used Gnosticism as a way to separate herself from her siblings; this is evident in the tension between closely related characters in Wuthering Heights.