Social Class And Its Effect On Love : Wuthering Heights

Since its publication, Wuthering Heights has intrigued its readers; a love story gone wrong, twisted by vengeance and heartbreak. Many important factors of the novel are displayed in the portion of the novel narrated by Ellen. The passage in Wuthering Heights in which Catherine Linton’s funeral is described is vital in explaining important relationships in the novel, particularly the relationship between Heathcliff and Edgar Linton.

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.

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

Love can make people say and do crazy things; it can completely consume them. Throughout Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte uses psychic pathology in the personalities of her characters. Unhealthy thoughts and actions take place because of the psychic pathology found in the novel. Each of the characters relates to the mental unhealthiness; the causes of their twisted mentality can vary. Mr. Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw’s relationship embodies the damaging mindsets that Bronte imbues throughout Wuthering Heights.

    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

Much of the charm and allure of Wuthering Heights stems from Heathcliff, one of the main characters and the destined lover of Catherine Earnshaw. He is passionate and short-tempered, and he is also very prideful of himself despite the fact that he was considered a “dirty, ragged, black-haired child” and a “gipsy brat” (Bronte 37). Heathcliff is insecure as a young boy. At first, Heathcliff believes himself to be inferior to Edgar Linton, a light-skinned, dapper boy that was his rival for Catherine Earnshaw’s love. He wishes that he had “light hair and a fair skin, and was dressed and behaved as well, and had a chance of being as rich as [Edgar Linton] [would] be,” (Bronte 56).

Emily Bronte really does do good job bringing in love, passion, longing, and death and also the afterlife, which has a way of linking them all rolled up into one, and creates the excellent novel that we all refer to in this current time as Wuthering Heights. Even though Catherine and Heathcliff's desire for each other did appear to be the attraction of Wuthering Heights, provided that it is greater and more lasting than any other sentiment that had really put on display throughout the entire novel, Bronte also does a great job with showing the provocative theme of demise and the afterlife in her novel, conferring to the disapproval of Robert M. Polhemus. Polhemus composes a criticism that goes all the way back to the early 1990s era and it was titled, "Love and Death in Wuthering Heights", and in this he makes a huge discussion of death, love, and the afterlife, and then clarifies how all three are connected.

The novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte tells a story of a man named Heathcliff, who spends his whole life fueled by jealousy, revenge, and love. As a young boy, he and a girl named Catherine spend a lot of their time together. Heathcliff falls in love with Catherine and wants to pursue a marriage with her, however Catherine has other plans. Catherine is in love with a man named Edgar, but for all the wrong reasons. Thus begins the story of Heathcliff’s revenge.

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

Martha Nussbaum describes the romantic ascent of various characters in Wuthering Heights through a philosophical Christian view. She begins by describing Catherine as a lost soul searching for heaven, while in reality she longs for the love of Heathcliff. Nussbaum continues by comparing Heathcliff as the opposition of the ascent from which the Linton’s hold sacred within their Christian beliefs. Nussbaum makes use of the notion that the Christian belief in Wuthering Heights is both degenerate and way to exclude social classes.

Emily Bronte’s work Wuthering Heights can be directly connected to Emily’s life. In fact there are direct parallel connections between Emily’s family and her characters in the story. It can be concluded that Emily Bronte used her own relationships to inspire the story of her characters in Wuthering Heights. These characters share exact characteris that Emily’s family displayed throughout her life upon publication of the story. Some examples of these direct connections would be through the characters Heathcliff, Cathy Earnshaw, Nelly, and Hindley. In summary this work by Emily Bronte is a reflection of the life she lived, and can be very closely translated.

The novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte tells a story of a man named Heathcliff who spends his whole life fueled by jealousy, revenge, and love. As a young boy, he and a girl named Catherine spend a lot of their time together. Heathcliff falls in love with Catherine and wants to pursue a marriage with her, however Catherine has other plans. Catherine is in love with a man named Edgar, but for all the wrong reasons. Thus begins the story of Heathcliff’s revenge.

The gothic and often disturbing Wuthering Heights is Emily Bronte’s classic novel that contains undeniably powerful writing that created her timeless love story. Andrea Arnold transformed her masterpiece into a cinematic rendition to recreate the wild and passionate story of the deep and destructive love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff.

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

The novel Wuthering Heights begins with an outsider, Mr. Lockwood, paying a visit to his landlord, Mr. Heathcliff. At first Lockwood, who is seeking solitude “from the stir of society”(1), believes that Heathcliff is something of a soulmate: “my heart warmed to him when I beheld his black eyes withdraw so suspiciously under their brows”(1), but by the end of Chapter II, Lockwood says, “I no longer felt inclined to call Heathcliff a capital fellow” (8). The Heathcliff of 1801, the year the novel begins, is the owner of Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights, but he chooses to live in the remote dwelling shaped by “atmospheric tumult”(2) with an odd assortment of housemates: the family heir Hareton Earnshaw, his widowed daughter-in-law Catherine, the “scandalous old hypocrite” (10) Joseph, and the housekeeper Zillah. How did Heathcliff come to be the person who we meet at the beginning of the novel? In Chapters IV-VII of Wuthering Heights, Nelly Dean tells Mr. Lockwood about Heathcliff’s upbringing in the Earnshaw household. Several of the relationships and environmental influences described in Chapters IV-VII of Wuthering Heights provide significant clues to the character of Heathcliff that Lockwood meets in the opening pages of the novel.