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Characterisation of emily bronte
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It is a question that has baffled readers and critics alike through generations, a question that can be endlessly pondered upon and debated over, as to why Emily Bronte chose to name her first and only novel, after the house in which a sizable part of the action chronicled takes place, despite being armed with characters of such extra-ordinary strength and passion as Heathcliff or Catherine. But on close scrutiny, a reader can perhaps discern the reason behind her choice, the fact that Wuthering Heights is at once a motif, a setting and according to a few critics, even a ‘premonitory indication’ of the tempestuous nature of things soon to occur.
‘Wuthering Heights’, although having survived the test of time as a work that is poignant and passionate, and eminently capable of holding the reader’s attention, received mixed criticism upon publication in 1847 under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. Apparently, the vivid description of mental and physical violence and agony was hard to stomach, and the atmosphere was too oppressive to merit popular liking. But many later readers and critics have given ‘Wuthering Heights’ the mantle of being the best of the works of the Bronte sisters, displacing Charlotte’s ‘Jane Eyre’. One of its prime merits, at least to my eyes, lies in Emily’s ability to make Nature an eloquent party to the story-corresponding closely with a character’s emotions, with the incidents, with the movement of the plot, and thus adding to the quality of the story. Emily was born in Thornton, Yorkshire, and her love for the landscape that she grew up with is reflected in the novel in the moors and the crags, the storms and the spring. One can see an extension of this one-ness with nature, this unity, in her choice of Wuthering Hei...
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...e. On a very simplistic level, it is attractive, the name ‘Wuthering Heights’ sounds to the ear a more mysterious and enigmatic choice than Thrushcross Grange. But it can be assumed that the author had made the choice of naming the novel based on reasons that run deeper than mere attractiveness. The setting is vital to the plot, and as Wuthering Heights and its presence directly or indirectly precipitates a major part of the action, the choice is an apt one. In conclusion,the characters’ relation with Nature runs deep, and this too has been highlighted forcefully by the title, that keeps reminding the reader that in ‘Wuthering Heights’, the setting is the thread that runs through the entire narrative holding it together, and halfway through the novel, we can almost perceptibly feel the throb of Nature that is alive, that is at work, and that has a will of its own.
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.
Wuthering Heights is a classic in which Emily Bronte presents two opposite settings using the country setting. Country settings are often used as a place of virtue and peace or of ignorance and one of primitivism as believed by many city dwellers. But, in the novel Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte has used Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights to depict isolation and separation. Wuthering Heights setting is wild, passionate, and strong and Thrushcross Grange and its inhabitants are calm, harshly strict, and refined and these two opposite forces struggle throughout the novel.
Martha Nussbaum describes the romantic ascent of various characters in Wuthering Heights through a philosophical Christian view. She begins by describing Catherine as a lost soul searching for heaven, while in reality she longs for the love of Heathcliff. Nussbaum continues by comparing Heathcliff as the opposition of the ascent from which the Linton’s hold sacred within their Christian beliefs. Nussbaum makes use of the notion that the Christian belief in Wuthering Heights is both degenerate and way to exclude social classes.
The setting used throughout the novel Wuthering Heights, helps to set the mood to describe the characters. We find two households separated by the cold, muddy, and barren moors, one by the name of Wuthering Heights, and the other Thrushcross Grange. Each house stands alone, in the mist of the dreary land, and the atmosphere creates a mood of isolation. These two places, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange differ greatly in appearance and mood. These differences reflect the universal conflict between storm and calm that Emily Bronte develops as the theme.
Society today embellishes the words romance and passion, claiming them to be all good and positive. However, almost no works of media capture the darkness of intense fervor like Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Her two protagonists, Heathcliff and Catherine, are one of literature’s most romantic star-crossed lovers, whose only parallel is Romeo and Juliet. Once her father brings the young and wild gypsy home, Catherine forms an unbreakable attachment with him. They embody the term “gothic romance” with tragedy and distress in every chapter threatening the relationship and sanity of the two characters. Catherine and Heathcliff’s amorous affinity and bond towards each other kindles drama that inflicts pain and suffering on those around them, causing the world that encompasses Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange to fall apart.
At the outskirts of a time when capitalism and industrialization are changing in the society of the Post-1700 's, there lies a universal stratum made up of two opposite forces, storm and calm. Represented by the clash of elemental forces, Emily Brontё 's novel, "Wuthering Heights”, depicts two houses in England that are almost the exact opposite of each other in a strong, contrasting incentive between the storm and the calm. Illustrating two different moods, Brontё represents one house, Thrushcross Grange, as the calm, peaceful side of life where it even comes to the point of appearing dull and lifeless. The other house, Wuthering Heights, serves as the symbol of the storm, a livelihood of emotion and passion. In these two houses,
Psychological Interpretations of "Wuthering Heights"" Psychological Interpretations of "Wuthering Heights" 13 Oct. 2011. Brooklyn College Department of English. Web. 20 May 2014. Melani, Lilia.
First, Wuthering Heights is a contribution to the theme of the novel because it sets the mood for the scenes taken place inside the house. The house is first introduced to the reader during a storm. The house stands alone and the land around it is described as dreary and foreboding, which creates a mood of isolation. “On the bleak Yorkshire moors” describes the Yorkshire moors physical appearance. The estate has little vegetation and is more weathered, which moors are, as they are jutting, bare rocks towards the ocean. Wuthering Heights is an old stone house with gothic architecture and bleak interior. The people that live in Wuthering Heights are bitter and act violent. The characters of the story act wild when they are at Wuthering Heights, compared to other places in the novel. The setting of the house enforces the actions of the Earnshaws’, and Heathcliff. The name of the estate even sets a theme of gloom in the novel. Lockwood says Wuthering is, “a significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather” (12).
Shapiro, Arnold. “‘Wuthering Heights’ as a Victorian Novel.” Nineteenth Century Literary Criticism. Vol. 16. Eds. Joann Cerrito and Paul Kepos. Detroit: Gale Research, 1992. 108-110.
Laar, Elisabeth T. M. The Inner Structure of Wuthering Heights: A Study of an Imaginative Field. The Hague: Mouton, 1969. Print.
To sum up, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is a classic that portrays a love, even though confined by social classes, trespasses boundaries of life and death. The Gothic elements incorporated in this novel such as extreme landscape and weather, supernatural events and death brings about a mysterious and gloomy atmosphere suitable for a revenge plot with heightened emotions.
“Wuthering Heights is a strange, inartistic story”(Atlas, WH p. 299). “Wuthering Heights is a strange sort of book” (Douglas, WH p.301). “This is a strange book” (Examiner, WH p.302). “His work [Wuthering Heights] is strangely original” (Britannia, WH p.305). These brief quotes show that early critics of Emily Bronte’s first edition of Wuthering Heights, found the novel baffling in its meaning - they each agreed separately, that no moral existed within the story therefore it was deemed to have no real literary value. The original critical reviews had very little in the way of praise for the unknown author or the novel. The critics begrudgingly acknowledged elements of Wuthering Heights that could be considered strengths – such as, “rugged power” and “unconscious strength” (Atlas, WH p.299), “purposeless power” (Douglas, WH p.301), “evidences of considerable power” (Examiner), “power and originality” (Britannia, WH p.305). Strange and Powerful are two recurring critical interpretations of the novel. The critics did not attempt to provide in depth analysis of the work, simply because they felt that the meaning or moral of the story was either entirely absent or seriously confused.
Wuthering Heights went through its own transformation throughout the novel. Wuthering Heights is a good novel to show that everyone and everything has the ability to change. Almost every character’s appearance or personality is altered in some way.
Bronte's Use of Language and Setting in Wuthering Heights Between pages 15 and 18 there are identifiable ways in which 'Bronte' uses 'language and setting' to establish the characters and create a distinguishable atmosphere. In this essay, themes, genres and styles will be discussed to show how 'Bronte' establishes the characters; there will also be a discussion of the 'gothic' elements which Wuthering Heights contains. Many people would argue that the style of 'Wuthering Heights' is peculiar and complex, the power of Wuthering Heights owes much to its complex narrative structure and to the device of having two conventional people relate a very unconventional tale. Bronte importantly introduces the element of 'the supernatural' into chapter 3 which is an important technique as it grips the reader. Lockwood has come into contact with the ghost of Cathy, who died 18 years before, Some might argue that she is a product of Lockwood's imagination, and it is clear that Bronte has presented these facts in this way so that the reader can make up their own mind on the subject.
Lockwood descends on the Yorkshire moors, like the reader unaware of the turbulence that the ‘beautiful country’ conceals. I have read that Bronte’s original purpose of the book was to show Lockwood the meaning of love and her choice of name, ‘Lockwood’, implies a depth that is not on display nor easy to withdraw. (From this respect it is an ambitious novel for Emily Bronte to attempt as her life is from all accounts barren of much romantic attachment. Perhaps her impression of love mimics Isabella Linton’s adoration for a Byronic Heathcliff, an ideal never quite within reach.) Lockwood strikes me as a character who is much astonished by his own intelligence, he dilutes his account of the Heights with Latinate words and pompous expressions, ‘relaxed a little in the laconic style of chipping off his pronouns and auxiliary verbs’. Either this is an early indication of his arrogance, later confirmed by his unlikely fear that Catherine would regret a union with Hareton on observing how ‘tolerably attractive’ he was or possibly the ‘primitive’ nature of the Heights provokes him to use language that he associates with civilised society in order to feel comfortable in an evidently uneasy situation. If this be the case Bronte mocks the established politeness of introduction showing his language to be simply a façade disguising his unsettled emotions. This language helps him to preserve his detached demeanour as only once is the reader given an insight to his insecure character. He relates an amusing incident in which a ‘goddess’ he professed to be in love with hinted at a reciprocation of feeling that unfortunately caused him to flee rabbit-like, rapidly lessening the warmth of his ‘glances’. This minor incident demonstrates his inability to handle complex emotions and in comparison to the forthcoming passion of Cathy and Heathcliff, Lockwood appears all the more sheltered. It is as though a distant relative of the Lintons has come to call.