Comparing Bronte's Wuthering Heights and Dickens Coketown

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Comparing Bronte's Wuthering Heights and Dickens Coketown

Throughout British Literature, compositions created by honored literary artists reflect current dominant lifestyles. The differences in prevailing environments are visible when comparing Emily Bronte's Withering Heights and Charles Dickens Coketown. Bronte reveals the wild unbinding freedom available though country living predominate in the late 17th and early 18th century, whereas Dickens explains the disheartening effects of industrialization, which caused massive urbanization and numerous negative consequences. Within both works, the authors portrayed the lifestyles their culture encouraged.

Rural households, spaced several miles apart, were common during Bronte's lifetime, therefore it is no surprise that she chose this enjoyable environment to set her scene for her novel which so closely mirrored her life. The moors surrounding Withering Heights remind each reader of the tranquil lifestyle enjoyed by the British at this juncture in their history. As pointed out in Seminar 1, "travel was not an easy chore" at this time, thus making frequent visiting among neighbors impossible (Seminar 1 J.H.). Therefore, it is understandable that women occupied their time knitting and gossiping (Seminar 1 K.T.). The women of Withering Heights portray this idol lifestyle. When Lockwood meets Cathy 2, she is idly setting in the apartment. Cathy 1 receives many tongue-lashings for her wild adventures in the moors as a girl. Later in her life, after her marriage to Edgar Linton, she realizes her position is to remain at the house and receive visitors there. These women represent the expected lifestyle of women during the romantic period.

Personal feelings an...

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...hese terms infer the results of abandonment of faith and religion, vividly displaying the differences of the two periods.

Each author portrayed darkness of the soul in a separate way, just like the characteristics and origins of the darkness are separate. This turning from describing a revolting nature to a desecrated nature graphically describes the atmosphere in each period. Individual struggles dominated Bronte's time where societal hardships, resulting from technological and industrial advances, governed Dickens and his contemporaries.

Works Cited

Damrosch, David, et al., ed. The Longman Anthology of British Literature: Vol. B. Compact ed. New York: Longman - Addison Wesley Longman, 2000.

Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights. Norton Critical ed. 3rd ed. Ed. William M. Sale, Jr., and Richard J. Dunn. New York: W. W. Norton, 1990.

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