How far do you agree that Wuthering Heights is a Romantic Novel?
How far do you agree that Wuthering Heights is a romantic novel? Zaib Nasir
The romantic novel is characterised by a conscious preoccupation with the subjective and imaginative aspects of life. The romantic age was further evolving at the point of publication in 1847, where prior Mary Shelly had published Frankenstein and Charles Darwin had published The Origin of Species. It was the age of new ideas, the dreamlike and intangible, something that Wuthering Heights shows aspects of. Romantic thought places higher emphasis on emotion than on rationality, it exalts the individual over society, it questions or attacks rules and conventions, it prefers Nature over the city,it sees humankind in nature as being morally superior to civilized humanity (the concept of the noble savage) and it sees children as essentially innocent, until corrupted by their surroundings. Bronte specifically creates a romantic feel within the childhood narrative of the novel. This vision of childhood shows to the audience that the children are full of the authority of their own natural vitality. Romanticism, in this aspect, it portrayed strongly in Chapter 5.
The way in which we are first introduced to Catherine sets us up in our later expectations, foreshadowing her role in the novel as a romantic heroine. She is first introduced as a child full of vividness and life, until the death of her father somewhat taints her childhood. ‘A wild wick slip she was- but, she had the bonniest eye, and the sweetest smile, and the lightest foot in parish; and after all, I believe she meant no harm’. The ‘wild, wick slip’ creates the initial impression to us as readers that Cathy is full of energy and lively (wick specifically used as a geographically specific northern English utterance), in contrast to her dying father. Also for readers at the time Bronte subverts the standard impression of woman hood, she rejects social conventions which is another technique that touches upon
The romantic novel is characterised by a conscious preoccupation with the subjective and imaginative aspects of life. The romantic age was further evolving at the point of publication in 1847, where prior Mary Shelly had published Frankenstein and Charles Darwin had published The Origin of Species. It was the age of new ideas, the dreamlike and intangible, something that Wuthering Heights shows aspects of. Romantic thought places higher emphasis on emotion than on rationality, it exalts the individual over society, it questions or attacks rules and conventions, it prefers Nature over the city,it sees humankind in nature as being morally superior to civilized humanity (the concept of the noble savage) and it sees children as essentially innocent, until corrupted by their surroundings. Bronte specifically creates a romantic feel within the childhood narrative of the novel. This vision of childhood shows to the audience that the children are full of the authority of their own natural vitality. Romanticism, in this aspect, it portrayed strongly in Chapter 5.
The way in which we are first introduced to Catherine sets us up in our later expectations, foreshadowing her role in the novel as a romantic heroine. She is first introduced as a child full of vividness and life, until the death of her father somewhat taints her childhood. ‘A wild wick slip she was- but, she had the bonniest eye, and the sweetest smile, and the lightest foot in parish; and after all, I believe she meant no harm’. The ‘wild, wick slip’ creates the initial impression to us as readers that Cathy is full of energy and lively (wick specifically used as a geographically specific northern English utterance), in contrast to her dying father. Also for readers at the time Bronte subverts the standard impression of woman hood, she rejects social conventions which is another technique that touches upon