Narration In Wuthering Heights

Creating a haven from the cruel outside world, families ideally provide protection and support for each of their members. In Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, however, bitterness grows between the Earnshaws and the Lintons. Within these two families, siblings rival for power and parents fail to fulfill their roles as caregivers. The intertwining relationships of the Earnshaws and the Lintons are marked by physical abuse, degradation, and emotional negligence. These reduce each of the family members’ life to a lonely and meaningless journey though the cold and misty moors.

The overuse of a narrative device by an author can hinder a novel. However, such devices, when used with “intelligence and discretion [...can be] capable of moving and powerful effects, without which fiction would be much poorer” (Lodge 85). One such device used craftly by Emily Brontë in her novel “Wuthering Heights” is “the pathetic fallacy, the projection of human emotions onto phenomena in the natural world” (Lodge 85). By using this effect sparingly and only to exemplify the negative emotions and events of the characters, Brontë creates a sense of sympathy in the reader for the characters, thus creating a stronger connection between the two. Overall, Brontë uses different weather patterns to portray the negativity the characters are

Throughout Wuthering Heights, there are multiple symbols employed to enrich the overall narrative, many of which have a multitude of meanings in order to elevate the text to a higher literary standard. One of the less obvious motifs is books. However, when reviewing their role in both Catherine and Cathy’s lives it is not clear to what degree it would be fair to claim they have a central role in the overall narrative, especially because of the “plurality” and “ambiguity” of each individual instance where the symbolism of books is introduced.

Jane Eyre and Incidents in the life of a slave girl are two opposite literary texts which, despite being 19th century texts, belong to different historical periods. Brontë sets her character in the Victorian England. Jacobs, on the other hand, writes about slavery during the civil war in order to relate the treatment of slaves, and more precisely that of female slaves. We will analyse, in this essay, the differences as well as the similarities which exist between Jane Eyre and Incidents in the life of a slave girl written by herself. We see that they differ in terms of genre, the period of history in which they find themselves, the way the characters are presented and so forth. However, they share some of the main

Then in comparison, Lowood is expressed through nature as “Flowers peeped out amongst the leaves: snowdrops, crocuses, purple auriculas, and golden-eyed pansies”. This is a binary contrast to the setting of Gateshead. Then the setting at Thornfield is illustrated by “apple-trees, pear-trees, and cherry-trees on one side, and a border on the other full of all sorts of old-fashioned flowers, stocks, sweet-Williams, primroses, pansies, mingled with southernwood, sweet-briar and various fragrant herbs.” The use of “pansies” in both the Lowood and Thornfield setting draws parallel’s between the two, thereby conveying the true comfort and happiness that both setting’s allowed for Jane. We are positioned to view the emotion to which Jane feels in each setting as a guideline to her resilience. Thus through the bildungsroman form of the text an interpretation of the novel can be formed and thereby positions us to acknowledge and place emphasis of Jane’s resilience as a character.

However, despite changes, the literary world remained predominantly male, and women writers not encouraged, or taken seriously. Consequently, to counteract this Emily Bronte published her novel Wuthering Heights, under the male pseudonym of Ellis Bell. Wuthering Heights is the story of domesticity, obsession, and elemental divided passion between the intertwined homes of the Earnshaw’s residing at the rural farmhouse Wuthering Heights, and the Linton family of the more genteel Thrushcross Grange. This essay will discuss how the language and narrative voices established a structural pattern of the novel, and how these differing voices had a dramatic effect on the interpretation of the overall story.

In Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte used both first person point of view and transitions into third person point of view. With this unique technique, the reader’s emotions may lead to ambivalence towards the protagonists, unable to discern what side to agree on but able to understand with the selective characters of the story. The story is

In some pieces of literature, the concept of a story transitioning to and fro two different settings creates a polar atmosphere, and usually highlights the order and chaos between said places. One of the handful of pieces that use this type of plot include “Tale of Two Cities”, where the story revolves around England and Revolution-Era France, and sets similar tones and moods for each for each place, with England being solemn and dark, and France being restless and livid. In Emily Brontë’s novel, “Wuthering Heights”, not only does it depict two settings, the Wuthering Heights estate and Thrushcross Grange estate, which both contrast greatly, not only in the tone in which it’s described, but also in the residents that reside in the estates, but it also describes the conflicts between many of the characters within the novel, including Heathcliff, Catherine Linton, Edgar Linton, and many others too. And although Brontë highlights the petty quarrels

Heathcliff is introduced in Nelly's narration as a seven-year-old Liverpool foundling (probably an Irish famine immigrant) brought back to Wuthering Heights by Mr. Earnshaw. His presence in Wuthering Heights overthrows the prevailing habits of the Earnshaw family, members of the family soon become involved in turmoil and fighting and family relationships become spiteful and hateful. Even on his first night, he is the reason Mr. Earnshaw breaks the toys he had bought for his children. "From the very beginning he bred bad feelings in the house". Heathcliff usurps the affections of Mr. Earnshaw to the exclusion of young Hindley-: "The young master had learnt to regard his father as an oppressor rather than a

In her novel Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë uses a formal style of writing to portray the language of those used during the early 1800s. Throughout the majority of the novel, Nelly Dean is telling the story of how Wuthering Heights came to be the place that it currently is. Throughout Dean’s narration, characters are voiced differently due to their role in society. An example of this is shown when Brontë would use fragments of words to represent the speech of Hareton, one of the servants of Wuthering Heights. In contrast, Catherine, being well educated, would use sophisticated grammar and an extensive vocabulary whenever she spoke. Heathcliff was revealed as a two-sided character in this reading. On one hand, the author would use negative

The Suffering of the Women in Wuthering Heights It appears that Catherine's expectations are unrealistic especially when placed in the historical context. The novel is written during the Victorian era where the role of women in relation to marriage was that they were to be obedient, disciplined and faithful to their husband. Catherine does not fulfil any of these roles in the long term. Firstly, she marries Edgar for social and financial benefits.

Many authors use the setting of a novel to illuminate certain values and principles in their writing. In Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte utilizes this technique to enhance the theme of the work. The novel is set in a harsh environment in Northern England, highlighting two specific estates, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, as the main places of action. The dreary landscape and houses not only serve as the primary setting, but also as major symbols that aide in establishing the tone and enhancing the novel's theme of good versus evil.

The presentation of childhood is a theme that runs through two generations with the novel beginning to reveal the childhood of Catherine and Hindley Earnshaw, and with the arrival of the young Liverpudlian orphan, Heathcliff. In chapter four, Brontë presents Heathcliff’s bulling and abuse at the hands of Hindley as he grows increasingly jealous of Heathcliff for Mr. Earnshaw, his father, has favoured Heathcliff over his own son, “my arm, which is black to the shoulder” the pejorative modifier ‘black’ portrays dark and gothic associations but also shows the extent of the abuse that Heathcliff as a child suffered from his adopted brother. It is this abuse in childhood that shapes Heathcliff’s attitudes towards Hindley and his sadistic

Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre emerges with a unique voice in the Victorian period for the work posits itself as a sentimental novel; however, it deliberately becomes unable to fulfill the genre, and then, it creates an altogether divergent novel that demonstrates its superiority by adding depth of structure in narration and character portrayal. Joan D. Peters’ essay, Finding a Voice: Towards a Woman’s Discourse of Dialogue in the Narration of Jane Eyre positions Gerard Genette’s theory of convergence, which is that the movement of the fiction towards a confluence of protagonist and narrator, is limited as the argument does not fully flesh out the parodies that Charlotte Bronte incorporates into her work. I will argue that in the novel

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.