The Importance Of Parenthood 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.

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.

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.

First things first, Wuthering Heights is a fiction novel written by Emily Brontë. The incidents take place in a gloomy atmosphere, it can also be defined as the setting, named as “Wuthering Heights”, in which determines the overall plot of this novel. Brontë mostly uses the “first person” perspective because the readers mostly see the personal “I” throughout the novel especially in the first chapter. The narrator tells the story by himself (Mr. Lockwood). So, that is why the author uses personal “I”. When it comes to the setting again, it creates a gloomy atmosphere in the first chapter as well as in the whole novel.

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.

Emily Bronte includes a variety of themes in Wuthering Heights that are prominently strengthened by the use of symbolic figures. A specific theme that sticks with the reader is the theme of love, and a symbol that strengthens this theme is the 'ghost' of Catherine that appears a few times in this novel. Love drives the plot in this story and is the reason that everything unfolds the way that it does.

Wuthering Heights’s Catherine Earnshaw is infamous for her complex character, some arguing that she is manipulative, others sympathizing with the difficult choices she is faced with. However, there is no doubt that she is innately childish. As Catherine grows older, her character is not changed; she remains juvenile and selfish, making everything a game that revolves around her. In a sense, her mindset never progresses past one of a child. As Sigmund Freud wrote in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, “What makes an infant characteristically different from every other stage of human life is that the child is polymorphously perverse”. Children are dominated by what Freud labelled as the “ID”, or the unconscious instinctual selfish urges one experiences. Ultimately, children are egocentric, expect to gain what they want, and do not understand complexity in others’ feelings - all characteristics Catherine exemplifies. Her selfishness goes beyond the "ordinary self-centeredness" (Thormahlen 5) one might encounter in a regular adult - rather, Catherine directly affects her relationships with people through her "perverse" actions, and still does not recognize the harm in doing so. She exists in an irresponsible state, not perceiving that "she cannot have, and be, everything she wants whenever she wants it” (5) - and this is reflected in every single relationship she experiences. It is Catherine’s intrinsic

Brontë’s novel depicts the addictive yet destructive relationship between orphaned Heathcliff and Catherine. Wuthering Heights repeats cycles of relationships from the 1st generation of the Linton’s, Earnshaw’s, and Heathcliff’s transferred on to their children, the 2nd generation- Linton, Hareton, and the 2nd Catherine. Amongst this cycle, amorous and vengeful relationships are amid the family. However, the 2nd generation is able to accomplish the goal set by Heathcliff and the first Catherine finally putting an end to the cruelty introduced by their parental figures.

Wuthering Heights, a novel by Emily Bronte is one of the most admired and favorable written works in English literature. When the novel was published in the year 1847, it sold very poorly and only received a minimum amount of reviews. Although the novel does not contain any sexual relations or bloodshed, it is considered to be inappropriate due to its portrayal of an unconstrained love and cruelty. Wuthering Heights is formed on the Gothic tradition in the late 18th century, which consists of supernatural encounters, malformed imagery, and the effects of mystery and fear. The novel has been studied and analyzed for many years, yet it remains unexhausted as a result of its memorable powerful characters. Because of the depiction of Catherine and Heathcliff’s corrupted love, their story remains one of the most nostalgic love stories in all of literature. Also, during the Victorian Age there were some drastic changes economically, socially, and politically. So as a Victorian writer, Emily Bronte clearly distincts the difference between the wealth of middle and upper class in Wuthering Heights. The setting of the novel is mainly within the Yorkshire moors of northern England and rural areas at that time were controlled by a strict Hierarchy government. Bronte represents this accurately in the novel by entitling the Linton family as the gentry’s class and the Earnshaw family as gentlemen farmers. In Wuthering Heights, the theme of revenge takes place as a necessity after the loss

Emily Bronte’s classical literary masterpiece, Wuthering Heights, can more or less be viewed as a struggle between conventional, civilized human behavior, as well as the wild, anarchistic side that each of us humans possess, although subtly. Bronte’s piece can be summed up by the “good vs. evil” elements that include Wuthering Heights as opposed to Thrushcross Grange, Heathcliff vs. Edgar, and much more. These elemental set points lead to the conclusion that Wuthering Heights cannot be classified as a love story, as there is no ‘happy’ ending, and the heroine dies at roughly the halfway point of the book. This aspect makes the masterpiece an enduring Gothic classic, as Bronte is able to transform characters’ feelings onto paper, unmatched by any in the ‘dark’ literary realm. Bronte’s inclusions of aspects such as ghosts, as well as the tranquility in which the Grange brings are the set pieces that make the novel a battle between good and evil, rather than simply a fictitious love account that ends in futility.

This study will examine Emily Bronte's novel Wuthering Heights, focusing on how evil is related to love. The study will explore the main relationship in the book, the relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine. That relationship is full of both love and evil and will show us what happens when evil and love become tied to one another.

Wuthering Heights, the gothic novel by Emily Bronte, introduces us to two neighbouring families living on the moors of Yorkshire. The remote setting sets a cold, windy, dark vision which infiltrates the perspective households of the Earnshaws of Wuthering Heights and the Linton’s of Thrushcross Grange. The setting of Bronte’s novel is the wild, untamed moors of her birthplace. Emily Bronte brings her own personality and essence to Wuthering Heights, which is contrary to those of her sisters’, Anne and Charlotte. Emily Bronte’s love for the outdoors and in particular the Yorkshire moors, as well as her “unusual and extremely unsocial and reserved” character is identifiable in Heathcliff, the main character (Wuthering-heights.co.uk 2014). Also weaving its way through the novel is her unconventional religious beliefs. The incorporation of the supernatural and gothic references defies her family upbringing.

Despite the vampire myth having such a seemingly new connotation, the story of the vampire and its interaction with its surrounding culture has been evident in all societies dating back to the beginning of literature. In the nineteenth century, many were involved in writing vampire lore, from John Polidori’s novella, The Vampyre (1819), to the works of the romantics, Coleridge, Shelly and Keats, who all wrote about characters with vampire-like qualities. (Nelson 94) In 1847, the epic of the vampire was taken down in a new light, by Emily Bronte, in her novel Wuthering Heights. The story follows the vampiric symbiotic relationship between the characters Heathcliff and Catherine, and how each portray different aspects of the legend of the vampire, creating a new take on the century old tale. Through this Bronte makes a commentary on the social structure of nineteenth century society.

The depictions of women in Wuthering Heights reveal that despair and happiness are direct outcomes of one’s decision to either be submissive to or oppose patriarchal constructs respectively. Catherine and Cathy II are portrayed as examples of both how giving power to patriarchal demands leads to misery and pain in contrast to how resisting patriarchal demands will lead to hope and joy. Firstly, the underlying theme of freedom illuminates how the women are influenced to make such critical decisions regarding their respective futures. Secondly, the concept of upbringing illustrates how childhood,

1). I felt interested in a man who seemed more exaggeratedly reserved than myself...He is a dark-skinned gypsy in aspect, in dress and manners a gentleman, that is, as much a gentleman as many a country squire: rather slovenly, perhaps, yet not looking amiss with his negligence, because he has an erect and handsome figure—and rather morose... I know, by instinct, his reserve springs from an aversion to showy displays of feeling—to manifestations of mutual kindliness. He’ll love and hate, equally under cover, and esteem it a species of impertinence to be loved or hated again. (Brontë 3-6)