A Comment on the Romanticism in Wuthering 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 Bront? was born in Thornton, near Bradford in Yorkshire, to Patrick Bront? and Maria Branwell. She was the younger sister of Charlotte Bront? 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
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A Comment on the Romanticism in Wuthering Heights
Bront? 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 Zo? 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 Bront? 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
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A Comment on the Romanticism in Wuthering Heights
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. \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, \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, Bront? 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!\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
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A Comment on the Romanticism in Wuthering Heights
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
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A Comment on the Romanticism in Wuthering Heights
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: \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'...\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
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wuthering heights 呼啸山庄英语专业本科毕业论文
