Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Character analysis of heathcliff in wuthering heights
Character analysis of heathcliff in wuthering heights
Character analysis of heathcliff in wuthering heights
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë BRONTË USES IMAGERY EFFECTIVELY TO EMPHASISE THE CHARACTERS OF
HEATHCLIFF, CATHERINE AND LINTON AND THEIR COMPLEX RELATIONSHIPS IN
THE NOVEL.
DISCUSS THIS STATEMENT
----------------------
In the novel, Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë, symbolism is used
continuously throughout, making it a brilliant, gripping story. In
this essay I will be explaining how Brontë uses it, like using
physical appearances of each person to emphasise their character. I
will also be writing about the way she describes the settings and how
they are built or decorated to again enhance or create analogies of
each character. Brontë not only uses these but also by cleverly
making what each person says and how they say it, makes it be symbolic
of what they are like. The weather and the atmosphere that they live
in creates a picture of what is going on at certain points in the
novel, like if characters are in an argumentative mood the weather
will be dark which symbolises that state of mind. At the more
poignant points in the text Brontë even refers to the supernatural or
to natural phenomena to emphasise or illustrate the deep emotions of
that person. Many metaphors and similes are used and also heaven and
hell to symbolise the extreme parts of the story. All these brilliant
techniques and devices create...
... middle of paper ...
... situations like the characters have been in.
The most effective part of the story for me was the speech between
Nelly and Cathy, where Heathcliff hears Cathy say that it would
degrade her to marry him. This part appealed to me because it made me
think about what could have happened if he had heard the rest of the
conversation and if it would have been a good novel. I thought that
it would most probably not have been very gripping or even that good
if it were to have happened. Although it didn’t happen it still could
keep the story as being powerful and evocative.
I think that Wuthering Heights is about love but there are many other
genres’ that it could be, Revenge Spiritual or even a book about the
Supernatural. Whatever the type if the storyline remained it would
again still be an intensive, emotive novel.
. 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.
At Gateshead Jane Eyre grew up with her malicious cousins and Aunt. This fictitious location is placed in a part of England north to London. The name Gateshead has significant meaning in the book. This location was the “gateway” to the rest of the world. Also, this is where Jane grew up, so evidentially it was the “head” or beginning of all her tribulations in life. Throughout the rest of the book, all that Jane has to deal with is linked back to her childhood there at Gateshead. Abused verbally and physically by her Aunt and cousins, Jane felt an outsider among her kinsmen. She was ostracized by Aunt Reed from the rest of the family. At one point when her Aunt became extremely oppressive, she locked adolescent Jane into the dreaded “red room”, where Mr. Reed had died. She was frightened that his spirit haunted the room. Jane clearly describes how she feels when saying, “…I lifted my head and tried to look boldly round the dark room: at that moment a light gleamed on the wall. Was it, I asked myself, a ray from the moon penetrating some aperture I the blind? No; moonlight was still, and this stirred: while I gazed, it glided up to the ceiling and quivered over my heard… I thought the swift-darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from another world. My heart beat thick, my head grew hot…I was oppressed, suffocated: endurance broke down-I uttered a wild, involuntary cry-I rushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate effort.” (Bronte 17-18) Once Bessie came to rescue Jane’s, Aunt Reed to decided maliciously punish her for crying out and even went to say, “Let her go…loose Bessie’s hand child: you cannot succeed in getting out by these means, be assured. I abhor artifice, particularly in children; it is my duty to s...
Bronte uses symbolism through the use of colour to portray emotions and describe the setting. ' Burning with the light of a red jewel', this reflects the passion Jane and Rochester are constantly feeling. This is very effective because people have already associated different colours with different thoughts and meanings. Another example of this is, 'spread a solemn purple', this is used to describe the sunset
Definitive criteria for judging the success or failure of a work of fiction are not easily agreed upon; individuals almost necessarily introduce bias into any such attempt. Only those who affect an exorbitantly refined artistic taste, however, would deny the importance of poignancy in literary pieces. To be sure, writings of dubious and fleeting merit frequently enchant the public, but there is too the occasional author who garners widespread acclaim and whose works remain deeply affecting despite the passage of time. The continued eminence of the fiction of Emily Bronte attests to her placement into such a category of authors: it is a recognition of her propensity to create poignant and, indeed, successful literature.
Wuthering Heights seems to be a series of destructive decisions. Heathcliff and Catherine never achieve a life of happiness together; their actions cannot lead to a blissful ending. The other characters are guilty of creating their own strife, whether from personal faults or lack of wisdom. In a way, Emily Bronte’s ability to weave flaws into each person’s character lends a sense of reality or humanness to the novel; no one is seen as entirely good or bad. Without lecturing her readers, Bronte demonstrates just how regrettable succumbing to impulses can be. I realized while reading that even though their lives have an aspect of romance, I would never want to live the way that they did.
was dying so Hindley went to visit her. While he was there, she did passed
Virginia Woolf and Emily Bronte possess striking similarities in their works. Both works have inanimate objects as pivotal points of the story line. For Bronte, Wuthering Heights itself plays a key role in the story. The feel of the house changes as the characters are introduced to it. Before Heathcliff, the Heights was a place of discipline but also love. The children got on well with each other and though Nelly was not a member of the family she too played and ate with them. When old Mr. Earnshaw traveled to Liverpool he asked the children what they wished for him to bring them as gifts and also promised Nelly a “pocketful of apples and pears” (WH 28). Heathcliff’s presence changed the Heights, “So, from the beginning, he had bred bad feeling in the house” (WH 30). The Heights became a place to dream of for Catherine (1) when she married Linton and moved to the Grange. For her it held the memories of Heathcliff and their love. For her daughter, Cathy, it became a dungeon; trapped in a loveless marriage in a cold stone home far away from the opulence and luxury of the home she was used to. Then, upon the death of Heathcliff, I can almost see, in my minds eye, the Heights itself relax into the warm earth around in it the knowledge that it too is once again safe from the vengeance, bitterness, and hate that has housed itself within its walls for over twenty years.
In the gothic novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, the author hides motifs within the story.The novel contains two major love stories;The wild love of Catherine, and Heathcliff juxtaposing the serene love of Cathy,and Hareton. Catherine’s and Heathcliff's love is the center of Emily Bronte’s novel ,which readers still to this day seem to remember.The characters passion, and obsession for each other seems to not have been enough ,since their love didn't get to thrive. Hareton and Cathy’s love is what got to develop. Hareton’s and Cathy’s love got to workout ,because both characters contained a characteristic that both characters from the first generation lacked: The ability to change .Bronte employs literary devices such as antithesis of ideas, and the motif of repetition to reveal the destructiveness of wild love versus a domestic love.
Wuthering Heights is a novel which deviates from the standard of Victorian literature. The novels of the Victorian Era were often works of social criticism. They generally had a moral purpose and promoted ideals of love and brotherhood. Wuthering Heights is more of a Victorian Gothic novel; it contains passion, violence, and supernatural elements (Mitchell 119). The world of Wuthering Heights seems to be a world without morals. In Wuthering Heights, Brontë does not idealize love; she presents it realistically, with all its faults and merits. She shows that love is a powerful force which can be destructive or redemptive. Heathcliff has an all-consuming passion for Catherine. When she chooses to marry Edgar, his spurned love turns into a destructive force, motivating him to enact revenge and wreak misery. The power of Heathcliff’s destructive love is conquered by the influence of another kind of love. Young Cathy’s love for Hareton is a redemptive force. It is her love that brings an end to the reign of Heathcliff.
Emily Bronte wrote only one novel in her life. Wuthering Heights written under her pen name, Ellis Bell, was published in 1847. Although, Wuthering Heights is said to be the most imaginative and poetic of all the Bronte's novels, Emily's book was not as popular as her older sister, Charlotte's, new release, Jane Eyre ("Bronte Sisters" 408). In looking at Bronte's writings, the major influences were her family, her isolation growing up, and her school experiences.
'The herd of possessed swine could have no worse spirits in them then those animals of yours, sir!' (7) How could readers of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights not laugh at this quote? I found the book exciting as well as awful to read. It was so difficult and hard to read, but in the end was worth it. The characters were the ones that made it so enjoyable to read but made it also too complicated. However, all of them were fun to ?get to know?.
In "Wuthering Heights," we see tragedies follow one by one, most of which are focused around Heathcliff, the antihero of the novel. After the troubled childhood Heathcliff goes through, he becomes embittered towards the world and loses interest in everything but Catherine Earnshaw –his childhood sweetheart whom he had instantly fallen in love with.—and revenge upon anyone who had tried to keep them apart.
(4) Wuthering Heights’s mood is melancholy and tumultuous. As a result, the book gives off a feeling of sorrow and chaos. For example, Catherine’s marriage with Edgar Linton made Heathcliff jealous and angry. In retaliation, Heathcliff married Edgar’s sister, Isabella, to provoke Catherine and Edgar. Heathcliff and Isabella’s marriage ignited a chaotic uproar with Edgar and Catherine because Linton disapproved of Heathcliff’s character, and Catherine loved Heathcliff in spite of being married to Edgar. Inside, Catherine wanted to selfishly keep Heathcliff to herself. Their relationships all had tragic endings because Catherine died giving birth to Edgar’s child. Isabella also died, leaving behind her young son. Heathcliff and Edgar resented each other because of misery they experienced together. The transition of the mood in the story is from chaotic to somber.
Much meaning that was not overtly written into Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights can be discovered by using Freudian interpretation. This meaning was not consciously intended by Bronte, but can be very interesting and helpful in finding significance in the book. Freud used dream analysis, symbolism, and psychoanalytical techniques to find meaning that was not apparent in his patients the other subjects of his analysis.
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.