Wuthering Heights Juxtaposition

In Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, Heathcliff’s strong love for Catherine guides his transformation as a character. While Heathcliff enters the story as an innocent child, the abuse he receives at a young age and his heartbreak at Catherine’s choice to marry Edgar Linton bring about a change within him. Heathcliff’s adulthood is consequently marked by jealousy and greed due to his separation from Catherine, along with manipulation and a deep desire to seek revenge on Edgar. Although Heathcliff uses deceit and manipulation to his advantage throughout the novel, he is never entirely content in his current situation. As Heathcliff attempts to revenge Edgar Linton, he does not gain true fulfillment. Throughout Wuthering Heights, Brontë uses Heathcliff’s vengeful actions to convey the message that manipulative and revenge-seeking behaviors will not bring a person satisfaction.

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.

Through self-centered and narcissistic characters, Emily Bronte’s classic novel, “Wuthering Heights” illustrates a deliberate and poetic understanding of what greed is. Encouraged by love, fear, and revenge, Catherine Earnshaw, Heathcliff, and Linton Heathcliff all commit a sin called selfishness.

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 the classic book of Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë gives her insight into the similarities between different emotions. While most think that admiration and hatred are different, they are similar. Moreover, studies conclude that to admire, a person first must dislike and to dislike, a person first must admire. Proving this is Brontë. During the novel, the set of partners’, Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, and Catherin Linton and Hareton Earnshaw, exhibit an indistinguishable tie of the emotions love and hate. Through her writing, she expresses the thin line between liking someone and hating someone.

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

    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

The juxtaposition of sharply disparate elements, i.e. "clashing contrasts," can give rise to violence. Such is certainly true of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. In fact, the entire novel could be analyzed using comparison and contrast. Examples of the "clashing contrasts" are found in the violence between Heathcliff and Edgar, Heathcliff and Linton, Heathcliff and Hindley, Catherine and Isabella, and Heathcliff and Isabella. Other contrasts which serve to explicate the plot and relationships are the differences between Heathcliff and Edgar, Hareton and Linton, and Nelly and Lockwood.

In the novel, Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte discloses the plight of her characters through contrast. Bronte uses a mix of situations from the past and the present to relay to her readers the juxtaposition of her characters, most notably, between older and younger Catherine. Despite the apparent contrast of the timeframes, Bronte’s disclosure of older and younger Catherine situation gives insight into their contrasting results, which brings to surface the suppositional question of what if. Catherine is the blood daughter of Mr. Earnshaw, which gives her a position of some status within the social hierarchy of the Wuthering Heights estate. Heathcliff, a love interest of Catherine, was neglected by Hindley, Catherine’s brother, and essentially

Thesis: Through the use of mistaken identity, fallen man, and social status, Emily Brontё reflects upon the human’s psychological state of mind in Wuthering Heights thus expressing the conflict of ...

He is no longer a playmate she simply pushes around. He transforms into a desirable bachelor solely because of his wealth. This provides a strong criticism of society’s inability to see past the wealth and opulence in possession of a man that overshadows their true character. Yet, the reason behind these quick judgements can actually be traced back to science. Darwinian literature tells us that our perception of strength is often based on the projection of ourselves. These projections, what we call as appearances, determine others perception as to our strength, our capabilities, and our value in society. After Heathcliff’s transformation, Heathcliff and Catherine are physically strong and robust, active, aggressive, domineering. Edgar Linton is physically weak, pallid and languid, tender but emotionally dependent and lacking in personal force. Even Nelly Dean, fond of him as she is, remarks that “he wanted spirit in general” (Bronte, 1847). Isabella Linton, in contrast, is vigorous and active. She defends herself physically against Heathcliff, and when she escapes from him she runs four miles over rough ground through deep snow to make her way to the

As a child Heathcliff was as innocent as most children are, and shared the traits of some underlying nobility. Upon his introduction he was shuttered and abandoned by the family of Mr Earnshaw, who had saved the unlearned boy of 11. In the night “[he] crept to Mr Earnshaw’s door, and there he found [him] on quitting his chamber” (Brontë 62) seeking out the only kind face the boy might have seen since his birth, just as any other child unaware of circumstance would do. He soon found solace within the love of his new adopted sister, Catherine, and, experienced great grief with her. Mr Earnshaw died suddenly, leaving both Heathcliff and his sister to “both set up in a heartbreaking cry” and soon thereafter were

The social class imposed upon the people of the Victorian Era followed harmed people’s lives instead of improving them, as seen through the novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. Through symbolism, characters, and settings, the negative effects of the class structure prevents people from living a life they want, thus causing people to adopt a persona instead of living their true

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

Heathcliff does, over time, acquire the veneer of a Victorian man, but never does he lose his dark and brooding disposition, nor can he rid himself of his darker complexion. The adopted Victorian aesthetic nurtured by socialization does clash with Heathcliff’s apparent hard and dismal nature. This inversion, or perversion, of the Victorian male is partially what makes Heathcliff such a compelling character, mysterious and strange because he both subverts and lives up to expectations. Heathcliff is almost an automaton; a personification of Sigmund Freud’s “The Uncanny”, which joins the familiar with the strange or absurd, causing a cognitive dissonance so disorienting the person observing it is repulsed and rejects it. The Uncanny is a mirror and a window reflecting and showcasing the perverse inversion of societal expectations. The uncertainty that Heathcliff inspires both in the novel’s characters and in readers conjures anxiety and even maybe a perverse curiosity.