Emily Bronte's Life and Its Mirror Image in Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte is a wild, twisted, passionate, and tragic love story between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff. The book has many similarities and differences with the elements of fairy tales. These elements also reflects on the way Emily Bronte has been brought up due to her surroundings and family. Most fairy tales usually ends with a happy ending where the prince and princess live happily ever after, however this one has a much more dark and vengeful taste.

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.

Writing had been a large part of Emily’s life as her father & mother both showed literary ambitions. Her father published “The Cottage in the Wood” an Evangelical tale which supported Sunday school and rebuked the evils of drinking was published in 1815. It also said that in that same year her mother wrote an unpublished piece called “The Advantages of Poverty, in Religious Concerns,” which was an essay exhorting the faithful to take care of the poor. Also in the year of Emily’s birth her father had also published his novella “The Maid of Killarney”.

Novels are often taken by the reader at face value, and are never looked into on a deeper level. It is important to search for more than what is seen in a literary work. Wuthering Heights is a great example of a book with its own hidden secrets that can surface with a little research. Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights depicts the oppression of women from mentally unstable individuals.

Wuthering Heights was written by Emily Bronte’, although she first published her novels under a gentleman’s name. Her famous novel has become a classic in English literature. It would be the least to say her imagination was quite impressive. Through her child imagination, Bronte’ and her siblings would write children stories. “Emily’s childhood created an imaginary nation, originating from the numerous poems devoted to the doings of the Gondals” (Bradner 129). The ‘Gondal’ poems they wrote inspired some of the fairly known novels. “The Gondals were written in her poetry as late as 1845” (Bradner 129). Wuthering Heights contains crossing genres, changing settings, multiple narrators, and unreliable narrators. Bonte’s techniques and ideals

Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights draws a close line between love and hate as a major theme in the novel. The different sides of love are demonstrated by Bronte through situations that draw upon the nature of being human. The author displays the selfish, destructive and the betrayal side of love between the main character as well as minor characters in the novel and how they are imprisoned by the same recurring cycle.

How Emily Bronte Introduces the Reader to the Themes of Enclosure and the Supernatural in Wuthering Heights

In addition, to better understand the book, you first have to get an overview of the author. Emily Bronte was born on July 30, 1818, in Thornton, Yorkshire, in the north of England, the third child of the Reverend Patrick Bronte and Maria Branwell Bronte. Emily and her sisters—entertained themselves by reading Shakespeare, Milton, Virgil and the Bible. As well as playing on the Yorkshire moors were they dreamed up fanciful, fabled worlds, creating a constant stream of tales, such as the Young Men plays (1826) and Our Fellows

Through her trials and tribulations, Charlotte Bronte has kept her passion for poetry alive and remains as one of the most influential British poets of all times. Even though she is one of the most famous female writers of all times, she is mostly famous for her most popular novel Jane Eyre. Charlotte Bronte has experienced more tragedy in her life than happiness by losing her mother and all five of her siblings. But, in her moments of tragedy, she expressed her feelings through poetry. As a result, Charlotte’s experience as a poet has not only shown her creativity, but it has proven that you can still be the best through hard times and stress.

Wuthering Heights is one of the most famous novels of the Victorian time period. Emily Brontë coins the intricacy of her creations in a multitude of admirable literary ways. In this tragic and twisted love story, Brontë presents her characters in pairs, conveys a unique story-telling method, and utilizes internal character turmoil in order to build the distinct characterization of many characters. The complexity of the characters’ beings leads way to a compelling love story that also serves as a great mystery.

Coming from a very talented and literate family background, the Brontë sisters have both written novels centered on orphans’ pursuits of love that may have challenged civilized society. Emily Jane Brontë and Charlotte Brontë are among the six children born to Reverend Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell Brontë (“Emily Brontë”). The loss of their mother and two eldest sisters resulted in different responses between Charlotte and Emily, while Emily became shyer, Charlotte developed a dominant attitude (“Charlotte Brontë”). Initially unsuccessful, Wuthering Heights was written during the years 1845 and 1846 by Emily Brontë and published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell (“Wuthering Heights”). The novel follows two generations of orphaned lovers between the manors Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights. Later, Charlotte Brontë wrote Jane Eyre in 1846 and published it in October 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell(“Jane Eyre”). Her novel was about Jane Eyre, an orphaned girl, and follows her through many of the challenges she faces regarding the balance between her responsibility and her desire for passion. Even though both novels focus on challenges between societal duties and passionate loves, Wuthering Heights is a rougher and more detached novel compared to Jane Eyre because Emily Brontë was a reclusive and mysterious person whereas Charlotte Brontë was a courageous and outspoken person.

Emily Bronte was born in 1818 and published Wuthering Heights in 1847. Wuthering Heights, reflects her experience with both the Romantic Era, which existed from 1785 to 1830, and the Victorian Era, which took place from 1830 to 1848. Romantics placed high importance on the individual, nature and human emotion. The Victorian Era, in turn, was a reaction to the Romantic period. The Victorians had a sense of social responsibility, which set them apart from the Romantics. Wuthering Heights exemplifies both periods with its presentation of a natural, all-encompassing love between Heathcliff and Catherine, encased by the pressures of social rank, responsibility and economics. Bronte’s novel presents a strong criticism of the shallow values

This essay will discuss the way in which the themes of Romance and the Gothic are portrayed heavily in Brontë’s novel, Wuthering Heights, while also being juxtaposed with dogged Realism, in a way that makes Brontë’s work significant and unprecedented. It aims to highlight how contemporary interpretations of the text as a timeless love story have undermined the powerful realism put forth by Brontë, in her deliberate language and refusal of societal conventions. It will also analyse the extent to which Kosminsky is able to represent these themes accurately, and where the shortcomings of the filmic representation become decidedly apparent. It will explore the representation of the sublime, and discuss how Brontë & Kosminsky’s views on gender and class appear to vary greatly, based primarily on which characters each text elects to focus on developing. Furthermore, it will focus on each text’s interpretation of gender conventions and character development.

Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is not only one of the most widely read books in English 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 childhood has an impact on adult life, “psychological history that begins in childhood experiences in the family and each with patterns of adolescent and adult behavior that are the direct result of that early experience”(Tyson 12). Just as the way everyone else acts in reality Brontë creates a reality that is more realistic in the sense of their actions to acknowledge the complexity of the novel as a whole.

In Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, two seemingly contrasting worlds are created. In many ways, the two houses, Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights, represent good or light and evil or dark, respectively. This contrast is noticed upon inspection of their appearance, location, and inhabitants. The two houses do, however, share an ability to attract people and a struggle for dominance.