Emily Bronte's 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.

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

Heathcliff is abused; his only source of love is his dearest Catherine, yet even that love cannot thrive in Heathcliff’s environment. The problem is not that his love is unrequited, but rather that Catherine believes she would fall to ruin if she were to be with Heathcliff “It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him---because he's more

1. As it deteriorates and dies, Heathcliff and Catherine’s relationship serves as a cautionary tale and a witness to love’s destructive nature. Their love for one another is an addiction. Catherine long for Heathcliff and states, “I wish I could hold you.. till we were both dead” (Brontë 357). Catherine understands their relationship as “a source of little visible delight, but necessary” (Brontë 183). She views herself as one in the same with her lover, “Nelly, I am Heathcliff” (Brontë 183). She is obsessed with him-- regardless of her relationship with Edgar, Heathcliff never ceases to occupy her thoughts. If she were to lose Heathcliff, she would effectively go through withdrawal; their love is an addiction. She wants possession of Heathcliff

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.

This begins with his childhood. As the character Nellie details what life was like for the children of Wuthering Heights, we quickly understand that Heathcliff especially lived as a target for abuse. This abuse namely came from Hindley Earnshaw, who viewed Heathcliff as a usurper of his father’s affections, and grew jealous of the way Mr. Earnshaw doted on the boy. In return, Heathcliff was subjected to frequent beatings and harsh treatment, all of which he took without complaint. His only true friend at the house was wild child Catherine Earnshaw- later Catherine Linton- who granted him a reprieve from Hindley’s cruelty, and showed him love. By showing the reader this kind of brutality, we understand the potency of Heathcliff’s hatred toward Hindley, and subsequently his urge to seek retribution in adulthood. In addition, the author establishes this strong connection with Catherine early on so the reader understands Heathcliff’s

Emily Brontë uses her novel Wuthering Heights to showcase how the constraints of one’s class, while only enforced by will, can take control over one’s autonomy and desires. Brontë accomplishes this in her depiction of the characters Catherine Earnshaw Linton and Heathcliff. Catherine begins the novel as a tomboyish girl, with no intentions of becoming a “lady” as defined by the society of her time. She only begins to want to conform to feminine roles when she is introduced to the expectations of women by the Lintons, causing her to begin to abandon her own independence in favor of conforming to societal norms. In doing so, she not only limits her own life, but spurns Heathcliff into a rage and resolution that limits his life also.

Conversely, 'Wuthering Heights ' may be interpreted as a socio-economic novel. The novel opens in 1801, a date Q.D. Leavis believes Brontë chose in order “to fix its happenings at a time when the old rough farming culture, based on a naturally patriarchal family life, was to be challenged, tamed and routed by social and cultural changes”. At the time, the Industrial Revolution was under way in England; it was a dominant force in English economy and society. The traditional social class- dynamic was disrupted by an upwardly-inspired middle class. A new standard for defining a gentleman was challenging the conservative ideals of breeding and family. This reality provides the context for socio-economic readings of the novel. [8]

Mr. Heathcliff progresses through his own type of personal revolution which he supports the culture of his enemies, to use them primarily against the future. Noticing the contradictions Catherine states, “It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff, now; so he shall never know I love him; and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am”(Bronte 70). Since Catherine’s brother, Hindley, has given Heathcliff the status of a servant, she cannot marry him. Here contradictions between both social classes, upper class has to be with the rich and lower class with the poor. Even though Catherine admits that she loves Heathcliff and finds him very handsome she still marries Edgar Linton, who has social position and money.

As represented in Catherine Earnshaw’s early characterization, the social and cultural ideals of the time period are heavily reinforced through Catherine’s defiant individualism and love for the initially lowly Heathcliff, which contrasts with the civility and propriety of the people around her. Despite being set solely in the Yorkshire Moors in England, the delicate social hierarchy of class is clearly seen in the residents of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, in which Wuthering Heights lacks the class, refinement, and civilization of the latter. Despite the era’s social expectations of women as submissive and demure individuals expected to marry into a wealthy family, Catherine rejects these very standards through her fierce love for Heathcliff

With this unusually leading statement, Catherine Earnshaw is able to profess her love for Heathcliff, the outcast and rugged villain of the novel Wuthering Heights. Being separated from Heathcliff, deadens Catherine’s soul. Since they both experience many things together in their childhood, they have become so related to each other, that even their thoughts and souls have been shaped in the same way and they have become a fussed oneness now. When she compares her love for Heathcliff with that for Edgar she externalizes her love for Heathcliff when she claims that her love towards him resembles ‘the rocks beneath’, whereas her love for Edgar is like ‘the foliage in the wood, that time will change it’. Here Catherine speaks not of soul, but of

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.

The novel ‘Wuthering Heights’ (1847) by Emily Brontë and the film adaptation ‘Wuthering Heights’ (2011) by Andrea Arnold each convey respective values and perspectives reflective of the contrasting contexts and forms of each text. The novel, set in the Romantic period, is centred around two families living on the isolated, Yorkshire moors, and the explosive interactions between them. The concept of confinement contrasts against the freedom of nature throughout the novel. Nature is another key theme and a fundamental aspect of the Romantic period, used to present ideas such as rebellion and freedom. Finally, passion within human relationships is thoroughly explored through Catherine and Heathcliff’s relationship within the novel. However, as the film adaptation is a product of a contemporary post-feminist, post-colonial time period, these themes can now be explored through lenses such as racial discrimination, feminism, and human connection.

The novel I chose for my term paper is Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. This novel was written during the Victorian era but is considered under the genre of Romantic literary works. The Romantic period pushed boundaries and opened up the correlation of intellect and art. This period is also known as a movement as it brought such passion and color to the minds and lives of the everyday people through the domination of imagination and feelings rather than reason and straightforward black and white rules. Some of the elements of Romantic literature include nature as a powerful spiritual influence, the presence of supernatural components, and strong passionate emotions while the Victorian era of literature almost contrasted the ideas and practices of the romantics as it strayed more towards the black and white notion of right and wrong along with the cold struggles the working people faced throughout England. Although Brontë wrote the novel in 1847 which is considered to be within the Victorian era, she used more elements within her novel that connect to the Romantic era like nature being portrayed as a strong spiritual force and this is why Wuthering Heights can also be considered a link between both time periods.

Setting: Wuthering Heights is set up with an outer frame being at Wuthering Heights with Heathcliff, Cathy, Hareton, Joseph, Nelly, and Lockwood and constantly reverts to an inner frame of the past. The main locations in which the characters interact the most is Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. The location for both houses is very isolated and remote, instilling a sense of longing in the characters. The setting plays a large role in the characters’ lives and helps develop them as individuals. The harsh weather in both these locations repeatedly parallels the emotional toll faced by its inhabitants. Wuthering Heights’s original owners were the Earnshaws later taken over by Heathcliff. Thrushcross Grange was always owned by the Lintons up until Heathcliff manipulatively took ownership of the property.