Whuthering Heights

A Comment on the Romanticism in Wuthering Heights
Part One. Introduction

The English female novelist Emily Bronte is world-renowned for her wonderful novel-Wuthering Heights. This novel is famous for its gothic style as well as its love theme, which attract readers in an extreme method and technique. Most of its readers intend to allocate it into “horror fiction”, because there are too many horrible plots and terrified atmosphere that shade its tender emotion to some degree. No one can escape the creepy feeling from the content; however, it is just the point that really forges its readers. To take it another way, the background of a love story mixed with some description of natural scenery softens the horrible feeling. Every love story has its romantic color, no matter how gloomy or tragic it is, is an affectionate and beautiful canto.
Then we can see something special from the novel. The narrative tells the tale of the all-encompassing and passionate, yet thwarted love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroys both themselves and many around them.
First, it is a love tragedy from which Emily presented a life of a deformed society and draws the outline of humanity that was warped by the abnormal society, and a series of terrible events caused by it. From this angle we can learn that its romantic ingredient is rare especially.
This thesis will give a detailed comment on the Romanism in Wuthering Heights by analyzing some main characters and the environment, as well as the whole background of this novel.
1.1 The Introduction of the Author
Emily Brontë was born in Thornton, near Bradford in Yorkshire, to Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell. She was the younger sister of Charlotte Brontë and the fifth of six children. In 1824, the family moved to Haworth, where Emily's father was perpetual curate, and it was in these surroundings that their literary oddities flourished. Between the years 1824 and 1825 Emily attended the school at Cowan Bridge with Charlotte, and then was largely educated at home. In childhood, after the death of their mother, the three sisters and their brother Patrick Branwell Brontë created imaginary lands, which were featured in stories they wrote. Little of Emily's works from this period survived, except for poems spoken by characters.
In 1838, Emily commenced work as a governess at Miss Patchett's Ladies Academy at Law Hill School, near Halifax, leaving after about six months due to homesickness. Later, with her sister Charlotte, she attended a private school in Brussels run by Constantin Heger and his wife, Claire Zoë Parent Heger. They later tried to open up a school at their home, but had no pupils.
Her father's bookshelf offered a variety of reading: the Bible, Homer, Virgil, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron, Scott and many others. The children also read enthusiastically articles on current affairs and intellectual disputes in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Fraser's Magazine, and Edinburgh Review.
Unlike Charlotte, Emily had no close friends. She wrote a few letters and was interested in mysticism. It was the discovery of Emily's poetic talent by Charlotte that led her and her sisters to publish a joint collection of their poetry in 1846, Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. To evade contemporary prejudice against female writers, the Brontë sisters adopted androgynous first names. All three retained the same initials: Charlotte became Currer Bell, Anne became Acton Bell and Emily became Ellis Bell.
During their stay in Brussels in 1842, Emily's health, like her sisters', had been weakened by the harsh local climate at home and at school. She caught a cold during the funeral of her brother in September, which led to tuberculosis. Refusing medical help, she died on December 19th, 1848 at about two in the afternoon.
1.2 The Background of the Novel
In 1847, she published her only novel, Wuthering Heights, a story-within-a-story, as two volumes of a three volume set (the last volume being Agnes Grey by her sister Anne), did not gain immediate success as Charlotte's Jane Eyre. Its innovative structure somewhat puzzled critics. Although it received mixed reviews when it first came out, it has acclaimed later fame as one of the most intense novels written in the English language, the book subsequently became an English literary classic. In 1850, Charlotte edited and published Wuthering Heights as a stand-alone novel and under Emily's real name. In contrast to Charlotte and Anne, whose novels take the form of autobiographies written by authoritative and reliable narrators, Emily introduced an unreliable narrator, Lockwood. He constantly misinterprets the reactions and interactions of the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights. More reliable is Nelly Dean, the housekeeper, who has lived for two generations with the novel's two principal families, the Earnshaws and the Lintons.
1.3 A Summation for the Content of the Novel Lockwood is a gentleman visiting the Yorkshire moors where the novel is set. At night Lockwood dreams of hearing a fell-fire sermon and then, awakening, he records taps on the window of his room. "... I discerned, obscurely, a child's face looking through the window terror made me cruel; and, finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes: still it wailed, "Let me in!" and maintained its tenacious gripe, almost maddening me with fear." (Emily Bronte, 1999: 20). The hands belong to Catherine Linton, whose eerie appearance echo the violent turns of the plot. In a series of flashbacks and time shifts, Brontë draws a powerful picture of the enigmatic Heathcliff, who is brought to Heights from the streets of Liverpool by Mr Earnshaw. Heathcliff is treated as Earnshaw's own children, Catherine and Hindley. After Mr. Earnshaw's death Heathcliff is bullied by Hindley and he leaves the house, returning three years later. Meanwhile Catherine marries Edgar Linton. Heathcliff’s destructive force is unleashed. Catherine dies giving birth to a girl, another Catherine. Heathcliff curses his true love: "... Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest, as long as I am living! You said I killed you haunt me then!" (Emily Bronte, 1999: 32). Heathcliff marries Isabella Linton, Edgar's sister, who flees to the south from her loveless marriage. Their son Linton and Catherine are married, but the always sickly Linton dies. Hareton, Hindley's son, and the young widow became close. Increasingly isolated and alienated from daily life, Heathcliff experiences visions, and he longs for the death that will reunite him with Catherine.
Part Two. Romanticism in Wuthering Heights
2.1 The Romanticism Reflected in the Novel First the romanticism is a movement prevailing in the 19th century in Western World in literature, art music and philosophy beginning as a reaction and protest against the bondage of rules and customs of neo-classicism. It was marked and is always marked by a story reaction .It returns to nature and plain humanity for material. It brings about a renewed interest in medieval literature. It is also marked by sympathy for poor people and thus a deep understanding toward common people. It is a movement expression of individual originality and different poets realized their variety. A dream of golden age is established against stern realities .Imagination is the key point. On reflecting the real life, romanticism mainly starts from people’s subjective inner world, voices the pursuit to the ideal world. It always uses words with full enthusiasm as well as the rosy imagination and exaggerative devices to forge characters. It is rightly the enthusiastic aspiration to the ideal world that suggests the dissatisfaction towards the real world. So the romanticism in Wuthering Heights is not an easy topic at all. Instead of being dessert ― softly yummy cakes after a meal, it is more like a portion of poison, a rosy and fantastic dream made by those people who eager to find an outlet in the real world but in vain. Since the 1830s, even though realism gradually becomes the mainstream in literary world, the influence of romantic literary hasn't run out. Focused on romantic fiction, romanticism is interested in bizarre and terror. It always avoids realism that is of patient and careful observation; instead, it likes to make full use of imagination, likes the fierce words and deeds, ugly character and abnormal preference, and this situation in everything can be found in Wuthering Heights of rich examples.
We can make a contrast between the features above and the content of the novel. Emily wrote it in the 1840s when romanticism was popular at its most. Although Wuthering Heights was thought to be a realistic work by a large number of people, it’s undeniable that it must have been influenced by the great tide of romanticism. The romanticism has a tension to nature and the original humanity, in another word; it appeals to the undecorated things in life and likes to explore the deepest inner world of people in Wuthering Heights, there is a great deal description of nature and the author doesn’t hide her love to that beautiful scenery. And at the end of the novel, Heathliff commits suicide after he took revenge and reached his purpose. His death is a dead love that expresses his love towards Catherine will never change till his death, a pursuit to love in the determination that although they can’t live together but they can struggle to get rotten in the same tomb. The revive of his humanity is a sublime of spirit and shines with the author’s humanitarian ideal, and also give a beam of hopeful light in the horrible love tragedy. So Heathcliff’s love—hatred―revenge―revive of humanity一is not only the essence of the novel but also a red line throughout the story. Then as to the sympathy towards the poor, the hero Heathcliff is an orphan and belongs to the lower class. At first he is often insulted and beaten by Hindly, which can always arouse sympathy in the readers heart. At last Heathcliff turns to be crazy and full of revenging mind, we should feel the author’s strong sympathy and hurt towards him. The various coincidence and numbers of description of ghost reflect the imagination of the author, which is also one of the features of romantic literature.
From this Angle, we also can put this work as a late romantic fiction. From Catherine and Heathcliff's love tragedy plot development perspective, as Heathcliff's return and venge begins, there are more and more the romantic factors in the work. On the description of Heathcliff's abnormal love psychology and approximate crazy revenge, Emily's bold imagination, heartily exaggeration shaped Heathcliff, a hero image who is ruthless but loyal to love, till the death of himself.
The romantic color in the novel still presents in dreams, visions that the authors used for lots of portraits. Looked from the whole picture, the story is shrouded in a spooky, terror atmosphere.
Through a nightmare of the outsider, Locke wood, the beginning of the story make the readers feel the terrorist breath: "... I didn't catch the branches, but hold a cold hand ... I see a child fuzzy face looking into the Windows, I pulled the wrist to me and smashed it on the glass, saw it back-and-forth, until blood down and socked the sheet. She cried 'let me in'..."(Emily Bronte, 1999: 45). In addition to that, the description of illusion before the mental breakdown of Catherine, and after Heathcliff died, people see the soul of the two roaming in wild, have strengthened the romantic color of the work, and added elusive mysterious atmosphere of the story.
2.2 Romanticism Reflected in the Love between Heathcliff and Catherine
2.2.1 An Analysis on the Personality of Heathcliff
In the eyes of modern people, romanticism can never exist alone without the subject of love. The love between Heathcliff and Catherine is hearty and despairing, as both of them attach great importance to their affectionate liberation and freedom. Especially to Heathcliff, his identity of adopted son and Gypsies makes him suffer lots of attack from his living environment during his growth. After the death of old Earnshaw, he lost shelter forever. The eldest son of Earnshaw Hindly treats him cruelly and hatredly every second and Catherine loves him heartily and extremely, all these factors give birth to his extremely strong self-protecting and revenging consciousness. To take it good, he has a clear cut stand on what to love and what to hate; to take it bad, he has a split personality. Then no wander that when Hindly’s wife died of dystopia, Catherine was resentful to his smile, he replied: everything that makes Hindly feel sorrow makes me happy. Indeed, this is terrible, and it is an important factor in bring on the tragedy. However, maybe it is more noticeable that what really lead to so many evil thoughts in a people. That is the inequality in the prevailing circumstances, people’s hypo racy widely and the cruelty covered by hypocrisy. But Heathcliff is not to be hated but to be sympathized and make readers feel aching. He is a typical man of personals in which self emotion and freedom can break through everything. To him, whatever things that betray or depress him worth being cursed and hated. As a result, it is destined that Heathcliff and Catherine must suffer from their fruitless love enduringly.
Heathcliff and Catherine's last passionate meeting is the most vivid and most touching chapter in the whole scene of this romantic literary work, and even is the most amazing scene. It was thought that Heathcliff will show the dying lover tenderness side and say some comfortable, forgiving words, actually otherwise. He said to Catherine, who almost collapsed of pain:"...... Why you despised me? Why did you cheat your own heart? Cathy? I don't have a word of comfort, you deserve it. You kill yourself... I didn't break your heart - you cracked it by your own and in cracking it, you put mine also broken in pieces..."(Emily Bronte, 1999: 99).
In the blaming remarks of Heathcliff, it is included accusations of bitterness and resentment, and how helpless it is. When he learned that Catherine's death, his reaction may let a person speechless: "I wish she woke up in the torturous of pain... I only have a prayer - Catherine Sean, as long as I am alive, you never wish to rest. Let your ghost caught me... no matter what shape, just don't throw me in the abyss where I can't find you, without my life, I can't live, without your soul, I can't live!"(Emily Bronte, 1999:125 ).
And Heathcliff’love to Catherine is deep and crazy. He thinks that Linton's 8-year's love to Catherine cannot compare with the whole body and mind he loves Catherine for one day. When he hears the news that Cathy died, the world for him turned hell. He moans and roars, hit his head on the trunk full of blood, like a beast stab to death by sword and spear. In the snowy night when Cathy's body is buried, in order to glance at his lovers face for the last time, he dugs the grave, the heart to Cathy with passion and impulsion makes him shake the coffin firmly, creaky, the love between Heathcliff and Catherine becomes illusion in anguish and eager, he deliberately torments himself, no eating and drinking and died. After Catherine died, her ghost has been in the desert and unwilling to leave, waiting for Heathcliff. The hero and heroine's love is superabundant and their souls are born together. Their love and long for each other is fervent, wild and thrilling with strong artistic appeal.
From crazy curse to fanaticism supplication, although this makes people feel the madness of love, but the crazy love also make a people shocked: how great the power of love.
2.2.2 The Love of Catherine
In the heart of Catherine, although she uses to betray Heathcliff because of the old conception, which will be discussed later, Heathcliff takes a quite important position. Her love towards her husband and Heathcliff is different in nature. In that rainy night when Heathcliff leaves home, Catheine exposes her in the rain doggedly and cries so hard. Her monologue tells us who is her true lover: "In this world, my biggest sorrow is Heathcliff's grief, and from the beginning, I have realized and felt it. In my life, he is the center of my thoughts. If all other things were destroyed, but he still stays, I can continue to live; if all other things to stay but him, the world for me will become a very strange place. I am not like a part of it. My love towards Edgar is like the leaves in woods: I completely know, the coming of winter changes trees while time changes leaves. But to Heathcliff, my love is as the constant rock, although it seems that it cannot give you much pleasant, but those a bit is necessity. Nelly, I am Heathcliff, he lives in my heart forever and forever...”. (Emily Bronte, 1999: 200). She misses Heathcliff every second, she says: "He will never know how much I love him: we know and feel the love from the very beginning because he knows me better than myself. Whatever our souls are made from, his and mine are the same."(Emily Bronte, 1999: 348).
In the novel, Catherine's love is not presented in combination of life emotionally, but through the body and the soul struggling painfully the expression is performed.
Catherine loves Linton in her empirical ego, while transcendental ego is Heathcliff. In order to realize the value of self transcendentalism, she chooses to marry Linton. To marry handsome and rich Linton, she can become a lady, live a happy life in the Thrushcross Grange, isn't it a heaven on earth? However, her soul was struggling to moan "I know clearly I was wrong, if in heaven I will be painful desperately, my marrying Edgar Linton is like in paradise in that kind of ill-match."(Emily Bronte, 1999: 418). If she marries Heathcliff, Heathcliff will intermittently suffer from the oppression and torture of her brother Hindly. It will be the biggest hurt in Heathcliff's life, as he is such an ambitious man. To Catherine, the meaning of the whole world is her love to Heathcliff, and to prove her deep love, help Heathcliff to raise his head again and avoid the insult from her brother, she married Linton in torturous, with her mind breaking the spirit of soul.
This poignancy and noble love is the transcendence of perceptual individuals, which embodies a kind of transcendentalism romantic temperament.
Transcendentalism love in the world of deductive experience is only tragedy. Catherine's "break" and premature death tore Heathcliff's soul in pieces. Heathcliff is almost mad in Catherinr's death, night and day he drifts in the woods of Thrushcross Grange, looking for Catherine's soul, and also looking for his own soul. He chants: "don't leave me in this abyss that I couldn't find you. God! It cannot be explained! I can't lose my soul and be alive!."(Emily Bronte, 1999: 455). Heathcliff, his frustrated love is changed into the mad hatred to the world and performed a gloomy tragedy. How deep the love is that can make a man go to the road of hatred and revenge, what kind of love is so impressed and unforgettable? His fervent emotion and hurtful words is full of romantic breath, which makes us feel longing for while thinking it unimaginable.
Actually, Emily is close to romanticism among all the novelists in the middle 19th century. The tragic plots of the novel must be based on profound life experience and the author’s tragic understanding towards life. Emily’s imagination of art brings up the hero and the heroin’s love beyond time, space, death and full of passion. In their passionate love and the struggle of inner heart, they hold in each other’s arms with tears streaming down their faces, at the same time one curses and blames the other fiercely. The love between them is outrageous, it shocks the world. The author used large amount of words in describing their affection, mainly on the plot that Heathcliff leaves home then Catherine sought him torturously, and they meet each other after Catherine found him. The chapter in which they meet after a forever parting is the most movable chapter of the novel, the final confession of them gives people a clear feeling of painful but sweet love Here, the worth of love is transferred to another totally different significance, for the chase for happiness turns to the chase for ego, and there is no necessary bond between love and happiness in life. Love becomes ego pursuit that breakthrough religion, law, virtue, etc. This is a perfect reflection.
2.3 The Romantic Depiction of Nature
In the novel, the depiction of nature occupies an important position, and through the characters' personalities, the corresponding description of the storm of their inner heart and the storm of nature, the author shows the close contact between man and nature. The romantic plots with natural passion convey distinctive local color. The lonely marsh canyon, the bleak hill-top where the wilderness is decreed by wind and rain, the cold air, hard land, the image of soul-stirring brutishness is presented peculiarly on the desolate wilderness.
The disparate wilderness in winter and summer is the grand performance stage of those protagonists. From the beginning of the story, the characters are placed in remote and isolated lonely environment. Maugham used to talk about Wuthering Heights, which gives him such impression: "(the works), reminds me of one picture of Ale Glake's great paintings. In the picture, under clouds is the dim wilderness, in rumbles of thunder, long-dragged shadows of people were east slanting west pour, muddled by a kind of emotion that seems they do not belong to the earth. They hold breath as a bolt of lightning sweeps past the livid sky, giving a finishing stroke to this scene and adding a mysterious terrorist feeling."(Maugham, 1983: 100). In the former industrial period of Yorkshire in wild, no flourishing form of civilized cities with ornament, except the gloomy desolate fields, winds in all four seasons, solitary villas, and trees, rugged rock, multicolored world were filtered into a simply black and white dream. Only in this exaggerated atmosphere of nightmare can the irrational life value and the spirit pursuit beyond real life be expressed. Rain, snow, storm, and night is the main tone in the desolate wilderness, wild nature and enchanting spirit are the same as making people feel awful, daunting. This mysterious nonchalance of wilderness is Catherine and Heathcliff's eternal spiritual source, nourishing their uncontrollable soul, the delusion of unruly dense love infatuation and madness against reality.
For Emily, the wasteland with peculiarity of straightforward, mysterious and halcyon is her ideal "arcadia" where she can escape the annoyance of secular world. The wasteland brings great comfort and satisfaction for her. "In her eyes, the gloomiest heaths will blossom even delicate and charming flowers than rose; in her heart, one dark valley on a livid hillside will become a paradise. She fined much fun on the desolate lonely place." (Lin Yanfeng, 2006: 45). The author entrust her own ideals on the wilderness, which is the symbol of freedom, love and life. There is no trample to human dignity, no devil's talons of money, no social customs shadow, people can breathe natural, fresh air, can live a free, wild and happy life. In their heart, the wilderness is just like a spiritual paradise in their life, which is the breath of life.
Part Three. Conclusion
The charm of the novel comes from its deep beauty of tragedy, from the pursuit to the human power in spiritual world, from the unique natural wilderness, from the free, restless vigor that is undisciplined like the wind on the wild places in Yorkshire. In Wuthering Heights，despite that Heathcliff and Catherine’s nature was distorted when they are alive, but after the two people died, the flesh back to dirt, their soul roaming the wilderness, man and nature reached an eternal unity. As what the authors finally wrote: "when I was standing below the mild sky, lingering to the three adjacent tombstones, looking at the moths flapping in heather plexus and orchids and listening to the soft wind waving in the grass, I wondered who could ever imagine the unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth?" (Emily Bronte, 1999: 512).After an earthshakingly living and dying infighting, what left finally was only the quiet wilderness and floating soft wind, with everything again back to peace and balance. The dead, alive, the everlasting love will never fade away. The writer's emotional depth and rich have massive inner passion, and she use the transcendental love to frame a cruel beauty, making the whole piece of work take on a romantic atmosphere as bearing a cross. Great works can always give readers different aesthetic pleasure in different levels, the romantic feelings that flows through the work is like the thick land beneath our feet -giving us a texture wander for time long!