Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights Settings Thrushcross Grange • • • • 'Pure white', 'gold'-showing the higher class and social status Opposite to WH 'glass drops' 'the idiots'-the Lintons have wealth, status and class yet are still unhappy

Wuthering Heights • • • • • • • Prison like Oddly beautiful Graveyard 'completely removed from the stare of society' 'grotesque' carvings Lonely, isolated Elemental, with nature. Characters Cathy • • • • Mean and vindictive (Nelly) 'at 15 she was queen of the countryside' Aware of her responsibilities , marrying Edgar 'It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff'

Heathcliff • • • • • • • • Reflects the weather and moors Different in appearance and character 'Out and outer' Nature/nurture Passionate Mysterious Bedraggled Out of control

• Animalistic Lockwood • • • • Looks on Unsure Self depricating Looknig for friends Themes Love • • • • • • • • • Heathcliff and Cathy bond through mutual rebellion Eternal passion 'I cannot live without my soul' 'I am Heathcliff' 'If all else remained and he were annihiliated the universe would turn a mighty stranger' Edgar/Cathy and Cathy/Linton seperated through death Fustration of love? Cathy/Hareton are the only succesful couple, overcame social boundaries 'It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff' Heathcliff hands Cathy back to Edgar, belongs to him

Death and the supernatural • 'Surely you and everybody else have a notion that there is or should be an existance of yours beyond you' • 'i know ghosts have wondered on Earth. Be with me always' • Death brings Hareton and Cathy together • Death is the only thing that can truly merge Cathy and Heathcliff • Supernatural is always dealt with at WH • Ghosts are a manifestation of the past, the power of memories Childhood • • • • Heathcliff's characterised by violence Catherine stays immature and child like she is spoilt throughout her life Cathy is not allowed to WH, Linton aware of how childhood is important and how she should be brought up within society.

Revenge • Hindley wants revenge on Heathcliff, feels he stole his father from him

• Heathcliff wants to 'pay Hindley back' for his mistreatment • Heathcliff wants revenge of Edgar so taking Cathy with their material revenge, he marries Isabella for this purpose • Isabella wishes she could take 'an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth' • Hareton is degraded as revenge of Hindley • Although isolated by his obession with revenge he is reuinted with Cathy in death • WH and TG return to their rightful heirs Narrative Voice Nelly • Colloquial, less educated ' gipsy brat' • Emotional, dramatic • Exaggerated Lockwood • • • • • Well educated, snobby-'Perceiving myself in a blunder' Foolish-'a capital fellow' referring to Heathcliff Naive-'Unluckily, it was a heap of dead rabbits' Complex sentences Doesn't understand the lives of the WH inhabitants Critical reading Psychoanalytical • Cathy and Heathcliff's union is only maintained through Cathy's identity • Their love is tied to the convention of language, which categorises it as having a live and limited outcome • Cathy realises death is the only way to be truly merged with Heathclliff • Cathy and Heathcliff dramatise the unknown, repressed and childish part of everyone • The child is the mother of the man • Cathy and Heathcliff's love represents the pre-Oedipal stage, a time of absalute identification between the self and someone else(mother) • Communication has no need of words at this stage • The Oedipal crisis requires that a child adopts a culture and language demanding seperation and repression of the mother and her culture. • Women survive by enetering into a femininty that doesn't work or suffereign death, walkign the moors as a ghost with Heathcliff. • Each subject of dreams misinterpreted the seventy time seven forgiveness • Unforgivable sin consists in judging other unforgivable

• Cathy and Hareton bind their emotions to find human wholeness through forgivness and understanding • Absence of mothers key • Lacan thinks infants aquire language when they realise their mother's body is not identical or exclusively theirs • Cathy and Heathcliff attempt to replicate the pre-linguistic mother child bond • Individual indentity is constructed within the family • Until a child sees it's reflection it has no concept of its seperatness • Language fills the gap left by absent objects or people • Wuthering Heights represents the danger of being haunted by alien versions of the self. Marxist • WH embodies the bourgeois yeoman, TG epitomises the Gentry • Heathcliff highlights the contradictions between the two, undermining WH and opposing TG • He caricatures the marriage market values of both thathe hates with Isabella • He is a product, participant and parody of capitalism • Cathys's lvoe for Edgar is in a negative relationship • Heathcliff has no status so is a threat to established order • Lack of freedom is a consequence of the bourgeois • The world co-exist at the end, Hareton reconcling them • Cathy and Heathcliff's relationship is a contrast of real and ideal showing how society denies passion but displays love with no social basis • Love and marraige are not inclusive due to social structure Feminist • • • • • • • • • • • • Conflict between the primal nature and social acceptability of women WH is where they can be free, at TG they are expected to accord to society Cathy' changes while at TG are constructed Illness is her downfall as she is trapped at TG, 'I'm tired, tired of being enclosed here' Struggle to find terminology to rescue femininity from stereotypical inferiority 19th century exploration od heaven and hell Validates natural over cultural and anarchic over organised repression WH gives Cathy and Heathcliff power they would not find in society Culture is male and nature is female 'No more business to marry Edgar Linton than I have to be in heaven' Heathcliff is the figurative manifestation of Cathy's desire for a whip Cathy emerging from TG a lady is an inevitable consequence of subjection to male mythologies about heaven

• 'What Catherine, or any girl must learn is that she does not know her own name, and therefore cannot know who she is or whom she is destined to be' • Heathcliff as a female (see interpretations of Heathcliff) • Younger Cathy ebmodies the intervention of patriachy • Connections between the structure of the novel and historical position of womenNelly as narrator. • Authotial strategy for dealing with the unacceptability of subject matter Structuralist • Critisced for the confusing structure, beleif that it is the novelist duty to make their meaning plain • Symmetry of the family pedigree • 'she had a clear idea...then why did she introduce muddle, chaos, tempest?' • 'What is implied is more important to her than what is said' • Ambiguity is a positive rather than a negative quality Genre Gothic • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Sinister settings Supernatural Extreme emotions Hand in window, page 17 'I pulled its wrist onto the broken pane...till the blood ran down' 'The intense horror of nightmare came over me' Heathcliff just told Cathy's dead, page 122 'Haunt me then...I cannot live without my life, I cannot live without my soul' 'Is he a ghoul or a vampire?' page 239 'I won't rest until you are with me, I never will' page 92 Heathcliff is melodramatic, violent and soiltary Cathy and Heathcliff's relationship is very passionate Heathcliff tries to ruin Hindley and Hareton's lives Heathcliff dies beleiving only then can be be with Cathy Lines between good and evil moral and immoral, living and dead are blurred Manipulation of names destabilises the reader Lockwood is constructed within a literary sterotype and shows the values of civilised society, Heathcliff in real, violent and has no status Domestic violence is seen and accepted by all 'Heathcliff is more myself than I am' borders of self and other, outside and inside, civilisation and wilderness do not apply

Romantic • • • • Imagination Man and Nature Creativity Dreams

19th century novel of manners • Status • Etiquette • Social Norms 19th century domestic realism • Home • Gender roles • Reality interpretations of Heathcliff Social outcast and misfit • • • • • • • • • • • Female • • • • • No status or property Seen as a second class person 'I wish I had light hair and fair skin like him' Never the master, simply Heathcliff Connection between physicality and material wealth Unknown background Doesn't fit in even when rich Different Only Cathy accepts him Never thought of as Cathy's brother 'good as dumb' 'it's owner' Not allowed into Thrushcoss grange 'I wish...I had a chance of being as rich as he will be' Manifold eruption of the outside into the centre Threat to domestic status 'It', seen as ;the other' removed from society and normal human status

Romantic or Gothic hero • More gothic due to intensity

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'My love for Heathcliff...' Linked with nature-romantic Power emotionally Difference-attractive Romantic movement-liberation from social convention and morality He makes more conventional people seem less valid 'Where did he come from, this dark little thing?' He is a free spirit

Fairytale creation • • • • • Heathcliff taken to a well of family Fairytale gothic elemen Consolation of fantasy Brought up smartly against expectation and birth 'You're fit for a prince in disguise. Who knows but your father was Emporer of China?' • Rich origins may have provided him with the money he aquires • Rediscovering of wealth and status? Product of circumstance • • • • • • • • • • • Rejected many time Starts with nothing, ends with only money Mistreated physically by males, emotionally by Cathy Talk of revenge Suffers a hell on Earth Invites moral lenience Sold out by Cathy Demands recognition 'hardened, perhaps, to ill-treatment' 'As if he had hurt himself by accident, and nobody was to blame;' His early life was also violent before going to WH

Demon/inhuman monster • • • • • • • No emotional connection to society Feels things so strongly almost inhuman 'Supernatural demon; Acts outside of what is percieved as normal human behaivour Both extremes of human nature Rudely confessed regard for Hareton, only link to humanity 'People feel with hearts Ellen, and...he has destroyed mine'

• Reports filtered through from other people Social context Religion • • • • • Bronte's concept of a private path was viewed as incorrect 'No minister come; nor need anything be said over me Gossip about Bronte not going to church-going against society Joseph as the evil villan, all relilgious references made through him Religion used as a form of oppression

Industrialisation and poverty • • • • • • • • • Women • Charlotte exposed the Brontes as women, was naive to consequences • Heathcliff was legally Isabella's protector • Embodiament of the law Property and the law • • • • • • • • • • Real and personal property, real=house. land personal=belongings WH goes to Hindley when Earnshaw dies Personal property dived equally between Hindley and Cathy Edgar gets Cathy's inherited personal property when they marry Hindley gets in debt, gambles away WH to Heathcliff TG belongs to Edgar Then passes to Isabella's male offspring, or if there is none to Cathy Linton Linton gets TG Linton marries Cathy, dies as a minor so he cannot will his lands to his father Heathcliff claims TG, Cathy as a dispossed widow cannot contest this. Heathcliff/Linton is the proletariat/bourgeois emloyers 'Shouldn't they be happy? We would have thought ourselves in heaven!' 'glass drops' 'silver; vs. 'grotesque' 'dark' Heathcliff has no property or status When he takes all Linton's non material wealth, shows again wealth doesn't mean happiness Wrote during industrial revolution-capitalist society Bramwell Bronte's visit to Liverpool furing Irish famine, inspiration? Heathcliff is emotionally hungry, foreigner, unknown quantitty Heathcliff and Ireland and Society as Britain?