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Nature themes in frankenstein
Romanticism and nature in Frankenstein
Themes and Narrative techniques in Wuthering Heights
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In Emily Bronte’s, Wuthering Heights, and Mary Shelley’s, Frankenstein, the utilization of nature-related imagery to symbolize shifts in moods of different characters, allude to underlying themes, and signify approaching tonal shifts. The two main characters, Victor Frankenstein and Heathcliff, display both a romantic and contrasting aggressive individualism with nature within their characterizations throughout both novels. This is shown in their inherent, initial behavior, and their after look when they both capture the aspects of nature that reflect their moods, which creates an environment for both Heathcliff and Victor in which they can take part in. By nature Heathcliff is prone to a lot of the negatives in life, simply because of his deprived early childhood, which clearly has its toll on his future. Not just nature alone, but those who participated in the cruelty, like his stepbrother Hindley Earnshaw. In Frankenstein, the character, Victor Frankenstein’s, responsiveness takes over any other of his emotions, leaving room for ultimate bliss. The serene landscapes in both novels act as a source of unrestrained emotional experience for Heathcliff, Victor and the relationships they have with other characters, such as Heathcliff and Catherine. The weather in Wuthering Heights is used to obscure, both literally and metaphorically, and creates a scene for the reader. In Frankenstein, there is an overpowering sense of greatness and power of nature, which causes Victor to experience the greatness, grandeur, and beauty of nature as to induce a sense of awe. A reoccurring theme in romantic literature is the emphasis towards a love of nature. The importance of nature is prominently shown through both of these analogies, as well as, ...
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...ntë, Emily, and Pauline Nestor. Wuthering Heights. London: Penguin, 2003. Print.
Caroll, Joseph. "The Cuckoo's History: Human Nature in Wuthering Heights." The Johns Hopkins University Press, n.d. Vol.32 No.2 (2008): 241-257. Project MUSE. Database. 30 Apr. 2014.
Conger, Syndy M. "Nature in Wuthering Heights." Modern Language Association, n.d Vol. 93 No. 5 (1978): 1003- 1004. JSTOR. Database. 30 Apr. 2014.
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Maurice Hindle. Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus. London: Penguin, 2003. Print.
Stevenson, John A. ""Heathcliff Is Me!": Wuthering Heights and the Question of Likeness." Nineteenth- Century Literature Vol.43 No. 1 (1988): 60-81. JSTOR. Database. 30 Apr. 2014.
Vine, Steven. "The Wuther of the Other in Wuthering Heights." Nineteenth-Century Literature Vol.49 No. 3 (1994): 339-359. JSTOR. Database. 30 Apr. 2014
Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Maurice Hindle. Frankenstein, Or, The Modern Prometheus. London: Penguin, 2003. Print.
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights share similarities in many aspects, perhaps most plainly seen in the plots: just as Clarissa marries Richard rather than Peter Walsh in order to secure a comfortable life for herself, Catherine chooses Edgar Linton over Heathcliff in an attempt to wrest both herself and Heathcliff from the squalid lifestyle of Wuthering Heights. However, these two novels also overlap in thematic elements in that both are concerned with the opposing forces of civilization or order and chaos or madness. The recurring image of the house is an important symbol used to illustrate both authors’ order versus chaos themes. Though Woolf and Bronte use the house as a symbol in very different ways, the existing similarities create striking resonances between the two novels at certain critical scenes.
The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Volume 1c. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2006. Print. The.
Fafari, Morteza. Freud's Uncanny: The Roles of the Double in Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. 2010. Print. April 28, 2014
Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights, set in the countryside of England’s 1700’s, features a character named Heathcliff, who is brought into the Earnshaw family as a young boy and quickly falls into a passionate, blinding romance with the Earnshaw’s daughter, Catherine. However, Heathcliff is soon crushed by this affection when his beloved chooses the company of another man rather than his own. For the remainder of the novel he exudes a harsh, aversive attitude that remains perduring until his demise that is induced by the loss of his soulmate, and in turn the bereavement of the person to whom the entirety of his being and his very own self were bound.
. The reader sees an extraordinary inwardness in Emily Bronte’s book Wuthering Heights. Emily has a gloomy and isolated childhood. . Says Charlotte Bronte, “ my sister’s disposition was not naturally gregarious; circumstances favored and fostered her tendency to seclusion; except to go to church, or to take a walk on the hills, she rarely crossed the threshold of home.”(Everit,24) That inwardness, that remarkable sense of the privacy of human experience, is clearly the essential vision of Wuthering Heights. Emily Bronte saw the principal human conflict as one between the individual and the dark, questioning universe, a universe symbolized, in her novel, both by man’s threatening and hardly-to-be-controlled inner nature, and by nature in its more impersonal sense, the wild lonesome mystery of the moors. The love of Heathcliff and Catherine, in its purest form, expresses itself absolutely in its own terms. These terms may seem to a typical mind, violent, and even disgusting. But having been generated by that particular love, they are the proper expressions of it. The passionately private relationship of Heathcliff and Catherine makes no reference to any social convention or situation. Only when Cathy begins to be attracted to the well-mannered ways of Thrushcross Grange, she is led, through them, to abandon her true nature.
Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus. Edited with an Introduction and notes by Maurice Hindle. Penguin books, 1992
Holman, C. Hugh and William Harmon. A Handbook to Literature. MacMillan Publishing Company, N.Y. 1992.
Psychological Interpretations of "Wuthering Heights"" Psychological Interpretations of "Wuthering Heights" 13 Oct. 2011. Brooklyn College Department of English. Web. 20 May 2014. Melani, Lilia.
In comparison, Catherine has not only grown up with Heathcliff, allowing her access to a myriad of interactions which Brontë’s audience wasn’t previously privy to, but she has developed her understanding of societal norms alongside him. Thus, the unabashed sympathy Cathy initially feels for her “poor Heathcliff” provides a new narrative altogether—a narrative that focuses on the individual, closely following Heathcliff’s transmogrification from a “starving, and houseless, and as good as dumb [child] in the streets of Liverpool” to a man who Lockwood interprets as filled with cruelty and “savage vehemence” (22, 37, 27). In addition, Catherine’s possible retelling of Wuthering Heights through her diaries eventually allows for Heathcliff’s cruelty to be put into conversation with his upbringing as a non-white subject in a wholly white
Hornby, Richard. "Two Hamlets." Hudson Review 65.1 (2012): 122-128. ContentSelect Research Navigator. Web. 4 Mar. 2014.
Wuthering Heights, written by Emily Bronte, has 323 pages. The genre of Wuthering Heights is realistic fiction, and it is a romantic novel. The book is available in the school library, but it was bought at Barnes and Nobles. The author’s purpose of writing Wuthering Heights is to describe a twisted and dark romance story. Thus, the author conveys the theme of one of life’s absolute truths: love is pain. In addition, the mood of the book is melancholy and tumultuous. Lastly, the single most important incident of the book is when Heathcliff arrives to Edgar Linton’s residence in the Granges unannounced to see Catherine’s state of health. Heathcliff’s single visit overwhelmed Catherine to the point of death.
Wuthering Heights is filled with different examples of the Romantic Movements. Heathcliff is an exceptionally difficult character to analyze because he displays numerous altered personalities. This raises the question: which Romantic Movement was most common in Wuthering Heights? An analysis of Wuthering Heights reveals the most common Romantic Movement in the text: Romanticism. Romanticism is based upon the ideas of subjectivity, inspiration and the primacy of the individual. Various examples of these from the text are when Heathcliff has Catherine’s grave excavated, the repeated possibility of supernatural beings, and the love from the past that is seen from Heathcliff and Catherine.
Bloomfield, Dennis. "An Analysis Of The Causes And Effects Of Sickness And Death In Wuthering Heights." Bronte Studies 36.3 (2011): 289-298. Academic Search Complete. Web. 13 Feb. 2014.
In conclusion, Bronte uses the supernatural and ghosts in Wuthering Heights to emphasise the power of love between Cathy and Heathcliff and proving that love exists beyond the grave and that the quality of love is unending. Furthermore, ghosts are used to assist in the storytelling, to help in enhancing the setting and develop characterisation, particularly in the character of Heathcliff, Nelly and Lockwood. The use of the supernatural enables the reader to be intrigued by the confusing use of extraordinary beings.