Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë : A Perfect Misanthropist’s Heaven

In Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte uses the setting of the English Moors, a setting she is familiar with, to place two manors, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. The first symbolizes man's dark side while the latter symbolizes an artificial utopia. This 19th century setting allows the reader to see the destructive nature of love when one loves the wrong person.

The curious life Emily Bronte, author of Wuthering Heights and a collection of poems, has been highly analyzed alongside those of her sisters and fellow writers, Charlotte and Anne, for decades. Born in 1818, Emily was the fifth of six children born to Patrick and Maria Bronte. Her father was curate of Haworth parsonage in Yorkshire, England, a home for local clergymen, where Emily spent nearly all of her life. The lonely parsonage offered few companions for Bronte besides her family, but included a large library which consumed her childhood. Bronte never married, and much of her later life was filled with caring for her alcoholic brother, Branwell. This solitary life and experience with Branwell seems to have heavily influenced Wuthering Heights, the only novel written by Bronte, which centers on a similar setting of isolated, lonely households and contains a heavily alcoholic character.

    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

Vengeance unleashes its utmost immoral behaviors in its perpetrators. And although its success brings temporary happiness, it ultimately rewards remorse. In the novel, Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte, the current tenant of Thrushcross Grange learns the history of the events that took place on the Yorkshire moors: the intense, dramatic romance between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, her betrayal of him, and Heathcliff’s resentful vengeance on the innocent heirs. In conversations of Bronte’s classic, Wuthering Heights, questions about the book’s meaning inevitably emerge. While many argue that the book focuses on love, others assert that the nature of redemption lies at the heart of the

Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is not only one of the most widely read books in America, but it also encourages different critical approaches. One of the most interesting approaches is the psychoanalytical approach in this circumstance. Through the entirety of this book it is understood that defending oneself in different ways is a way to escape the stresses of reality. “Our unconscious desires not to recognize or change out destructive behaviors- because we have formed our identities around them and because we are afraid of what we will find if we examine them too closely- are served by our defenses” (Tyson 15). Just as the way

How Emily Bronte Introduces the Reader to the Themes of Enclosure and the Supernatural in Wuthering Heights

“The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish,” said Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island. Any person can write a book, but to be able to write what you mean and affect your readers is very difficult. A writer simply can’t just drop dialogue into a character’s mouth without having any context of the dialogue. If an author has his or her character saying “I’m broke,” what does this really mean without any context? To Oprah Winfrey, being broke may mean she can’t buy a Silk Jet, a winery, or a country. To a middle- class American, being broke may mean they can’t buy a new pair of shoes that week, buy a new car, or get their hair

Wuthering Heights is one of the most famous novels of the Victorian time period. Emily Brontë coins the intricacy of her creations in a multitude of admirable literary ways. In this tragic and twisted love story, Brontë presents her characters in pairs, conveys a unique story-telling method, and utilizes internal character turmoil in order to build the distinct characterization of many characters. The complexity of the characters’ beings leads way to a compelling love story that also serves as a great mystery.

Coming from a very talented and literate family background, the Brontë sisters have both written novels centered on orphans’ pursuits of love that may have challenged civilized society. Emily Jane Brontë and Charlotte Brontë are among the six children born to Reverend Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell Brontë (“Emily Brontë”). The loss of their mother and two eldest sisters resulted in different responses between Charlotte and Emily, while Emily became shyer, Charlotte developed a dominant attitude (“Charlotte Brontë”). Initially unsuccessful, Wuthering Heights was written during the years 1845 and 1846 by Emily Brontë and published in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell (“Wuthering Heights”). The novel follows two generations of orphaned lovers between the manors Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights. Later, Charlotte Brontë wrote Jane Eyre in 1846 and published it in October 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell(“Jane Eyre”). Her novel was about Jane Eyre, an orphaned girl, and follows her through many of the challenges she faces regarding the balance between her responsibility and her desire for passion. Even though both novels focus on challenges between societal duties and passionate loves, Wuthering Heights is a rougher and more detached novel compared to Jane Eyre because Emily Brontë was a reclusive and mysterious person whereas Charlotte Brontë was a courageous and outspoken person.

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

Brontë also compares the characters indirectly, as she did the houses. Two very prominent characters she displays in this way include Lockwood and Isabella. They are both fundamental narrators in the work. Lockwood does so directly through his retelling of Nelly’s recounting of the story, and Isabella does so through her letter to Nelly explaining her relationship and life with Heathcliff soon after they were married. Although Isabella only briefly seen as a narrator, she and Lockwood have various similarities in their styles and traits. Their similarities begin through their experiences, which serve as a basis for their narration. Both characters have horrible first impressions of Wuthering Heights. Lockwood’s was through being

Wuthering Heights is considered one of the greatest Gothic novels written by Emily Bronte, the only novel published under the name Ellis Bell. It is a tragic love story that presents the consuming passion between Heathcliff and Catherine. These two characters live under the pressures of social class and gender inequality. One of the classic features of Gothic literature is the supernatural. Bronte succeeds in combing the Gothic elements with romantic themes and horror and supernatural sense to involve the readers to use their imagination and stimulate their senses within the story.

Although certainly unjust and arguably immoral, assigned gender roles have permeated history and its literature for centuries. Authors have penned the injustice of such gender roles throughout their works, although it was simply a part of life to them at the time. One such author is Emily Brontë, a woman who never married. She and her sisters experienced many familial hardships and began writing at a young age, perhaps as a coping mechanism. With this in mind and assessing trials and events in her life, one cannot help but find uncanny parallels between the characters of her novels and the social turmoil she witnessed. At first glance, Brontë’s Wuthering Heights may seem to be the tragedy of two young lovers. However, the reader cannot truly comprehend or explain Catherine’s decision to marry Edgar, as opposed to Heathcliff, without first understanding the period in which Brontë set her novel. The Victorian era, although positive in a scientific sense, was a brutal period for women, a “world of sadism, violence, and wanton cruelty” (Thompson 71). It perpetuated ideals such as specified gender roles, primogeniture, and the belief that women are property, without a societal voice. As a woman, Brontë experienced this discrimination firsthand as she was forced to initially publish her work under a male pseudonym, Ellis Bell, in order for it to have any societal merit. Her characters in Wuthering Heights were thusly affected by this cloud of sexism. The woman in the

This essay will discuss the way in which the themes of Romance and the Gothic are portrayed heavily in Brontë’s novel, Wuthering Heights, while also being juxtaposed with dogged Realism, in a way that makes Brontë’s work significant and unprecedented. It aims to highlight how contemporary interpretations of the text as a timeless love story have undermined the powerful realism put forth by Brontë, in her deliberate language and refusal of societal conventions. It will also analyse the extent to which Kosminsky is able to represent these themes accurately, and where the shortcomings of the filmic representation become decidedly apparent. It will explore the representation of the sublime, and discuss how Brontë & Kosminsky’s views on gender and class appear to vary greatly, based primarily on which characters each text elects to focus on developing. Furthermore, it will focus on each text’s interpretation of gender conventions and character development.

The motif of nature is so relevant in Wuthering Heights that nature itself can be considered a character. Nature, as a motif, does not seem to have been placed in the novel to simply enhance the farmstead setting. Instead, the motif of nature acts as an animated metaphor throughout the novel. Nature interacts with the setting, plot, tone, and characters. The concept of nature is carefully placed in scenes in which the motif can add to the tone and mood. The motif of nature seems to closely follow Cathy, Catherine and Edgar's daughter, and personally reacts to Cathy's emotions and the situations she is placed in. Nature acts as an extension of Cathy throw ghost Wuthering Heights.