7418004
Description
Flashcards by Holly Rebecca, updated more than 1 year ago
|
Created by Holly Rebecca
over 7 years ago
|
|
| Question | Answer |
| Social and Economic Context of Wuthering Heights | Industrial revolution underway. People were forced to move to towns and cities for work, countryside even more isolated. Enormous shift in population from rural to urban life. Orphans and foundlings were common, and so Heathcliff's background can be read against the social change at the time. |
| Historical Context: Property Laws | Males had precedence over females in inheritence of property. For these laws, Cathy couldn't inherit Thrushcross Grange when Edgar died, and instead it was passed to Isabella's son, Linton. But if Linton died, Cathy would get the property as the only heir, which is why Heathcliff forces her and Linton to marry - so the property automatically becomes his. |
| Historial Context Men and Women | Inequality between men and women in every area of society. Possible to read WH a a critique of social conditions for women. VIctorian female writers often prevented from writing socio-political criticism in their novels owing to their position as women writing in a patriarchal culture. Rural setting seen as idicative of position of women as isolated from culture and industry (but also reflects Bronte's own life.) |
| Critical Debates: Early Reviews | Criticised for being strange & ambiguous. Critics repeatedly acknowledged it's originality and imaginative power. Following Charlotte's clarification of Emily instead of Ellis Bell, readers placed WH in Gothic genre - category particularly associated with women. Rossetti: "fiend of a book, incredible monster." For Victorians it was immoral and uncivillised. Challeneged all ideas about literature. Cecil: Bronte's motivation in WH was an exploration of the meaning of life. Characters exist in virtue of reality of their attitude to the universe. |
| Critical Debates: Nineteenth-Century Reviews | Analyses emphasised psychological elements of WH's plot. Criticism tended to look at Bronte's life to understand her work. Bsed on view that relationship between literature and world is straightforward - literature describes reality. |
| Critical Debates: Twentieth-Century Reviews | Wished to distance criticsm from the moral judgement and instead to analyse formal elements of the text. Lord Cecil: "storm and calm" structure. Novel based on two spiritual principles. - storm: "harsh, ruthless, wild." - calm: "gentle, merciful, passive." "In spite of their apparent opposition these priciples aren't conflicting. Schorer: Novel a moral story about the futility of grand passion. Van Ghent: attention to the metaphor of windows and threshholds. |
| Critical Perspective: Marxism Eagleton | COnsiders WH in terms of class & economics. Interested in relationship to Victorian ideology - both reflected and produced by the novel WH ideological, presents "world-view" represents conflicts but isn't fragmented by conflict itself. Contradictions and oppsitions coexist in tension. 1. Catherine's choice between H & E. Pivotal in novel - dictating the 2nd half. Chooses E because socially superior, criticised by H for betrayal of authentic love. Social self is false, because it exists in contradictory and negative relationship to authentic selfhood - as seen in C&H's relationship |
| Critical Perspective: Marxism Eagleton on Heathcliff | Analyses Heathcliff's postion in terms of his place in family structure, local society, and economic system. Has no social/domestic status and therefore both threat to established order and opportunity for its reinvention. Disturbs establishment because he has no place in it. Fact that there's no opportunity for freedom within/out of the system is consequence of bourgeois society. H sees culture as tool of oppression, acquires it for weaponry use. Highlights contradictions between the 2 worlds of WH & TG. Opposes TG, undermines WH. He is a parody of capitalist activity, as well as a product and participant in the system - protests against marriage values of both houses, whilst using those values against Isabella. Contradiction of the novel is that Heathcliff both embodies and antagonies the values he wishes to contest. |
| Critical Perspective: Marxism Williams | 1973 Relationship between C&H in terms of alienation rather than oppression. Acknowledges class & poverty divide them, but the solution to their division isn't in terms of social reform. Instead, what Bronte privliges above all, is human connection between people. "tragic separation between human intensity and any available social settlement is accepted from the beginning. The plot is... sustaned by a single feeling." This concept also important to Eagleton's reading. |
| Critical Perspective: Feminism Gilbert and Gubar | See in terms of strategies & opportunities open to women in the novel. Read Heathcliff as "female" because he's dispossessed of social power. Never Mr Healthcliff in contrast to Edgar. H's rebellionsagainst soc conventions of class, marriage and inheritace suggest he's female since endorsing those is to serve the patriarchy. Goes against tradition that H is epitome of heroic masculinity, especially compared to Edgar. E guardian of culture where H is feminine for being unpropertied and an outcast. Novel writes against the male tradition, and Wuthering Heights "the Bible of Hell" - a ovel valuing natural over cultural, anarchic over repression. The Heights are hellish because of their lack of convention but represent a on-hierarchial space for C & H where they're permitted power they'd be denied elsewhere. The Grange represents the standards of patriarchal culture which triumph at the end of the story, but the novel through sympathising with C&H attacks implicitly. |
| Critical Perspective: Feminism Jacobs | Connections between form of novel and historical position of women. Legal-social dimension questionning the narrative frame. The exposure of the real constraints of women indicates a partial loosening of those constraints. Bronte's challenging of formal authoritative discourse of Victorian life itself represent a radical intervention of those structures. Prevalence of nineteenth century domestic violence against women led to the reluctance of reviewers acknowledging its existence within thenovel. The narrative structure represents authorial strategy of dealng with the unacceptability of the subject matter. |
| Critical Perspectives: Deconstructive | No one right way to read text, deconstructive crticism considers way in which all transcendent truths undo themselves in internal contradictions and incompatibilities within the novel. J Hillis Miller: focus on ways novel resits rational explanation throguh structure, language and use of narrators. Aspect of WH generating most persistent debate is the narrative structure and allocation of different parts of the story to different voices rather than one narrator telling the story by convention. C.P. Sanger (1926): Argued structure does conform to logical strictness with regard to its dates. Most obvious thing about the structure is the symmetry of the family pedigree - the whole intricate structure "demonstrates the vividness of the author's imagination." |
| Critical Perspective: Psychoanalytical | Freudian theory offers robust explanation for the obsessive and divided mentalities we see in Heathcliff and Catherine. The unconscious is normally inaccessible to the conscious mind, so must pay attention to the ways it reveals itself, such as via dreams. Dreams dsrupt the narrative flow providing clues to plot and emotions of characters, and innermost thoughts e.g. Catherine's dream in V1 C9 and Lockwood's in V1 C3 Wion: abscence of mothers key feature of Wuthering Heights, attributed to fact that Bronte's mother died whe she was 3. |
| Structure: Use of Dual Narration | Bronte frames narrative in dual narration - virtually unprecedented technqiue at time. Novel has distinctly complex narrative structure: story within a story within a story. First narrator: Lockwood tells frame narrative is unreliable (mistaking relationships & misreading Heathcliff). Second Narrator: Nelly Dean: less subject to contradiction/denial but still informed by her own preferences, bias, ulterior motives. Reader never under illusion that she's a neutral narrator, and novel resists such, saying all narrators are storytellers when Nelly says she 'was deceived completely, as you will here.' (Volume One) Some feminist analyses have focused on fact that Nelly's narrative takes precedence over that of Lockwood and have seen this as Brontte making intervention into the male bias of Victorian literature. Can also be read as destabilising the coventional authority of the narrative voice. Clear redistribution of power from male to female when Nelly takes over the narrative. |
| Form: Genre | Noted for generic ambiguity, considered at time a "rude and strange production." Elliot Gose: "expanded fairytale." Q.D. Leavis: "Romantic incest-story." Others view it as a psychological study. Kiely: "like a dream & life & history. Bronte rejects the exclusiveness of categories." Pleasure of the familiar in realism challeneged by the subversive power of horror. When we read WH the novel's romantic escapism counterpointed by its stand against convention. Causes reader to reasses the conventional. Famously considered to be hard to categorise: a genre-buster, combining elemnts of many different genres. Has hints at roman personnel, and biographic hints (Heathcliff being like Branwell) Airs of Gothic, novel of manners, and romantic. Bronte draws between conventional religion and overarching metaphysical truths and unconventional perception. Our decisions about what sort of novel this is influence what we expect and take away from the plot, characters, and setting. |
| Form: The Gothic | Form marked by ghosts and supernatural. Characteristically has stranglehold of the past upon the present. Emphasis on setting, often gloomy, castles, bleak landscapes, and images of ruin and decay. Gothic Literature lends to psychological realism: combination of atmospheric power and imaginative range of romance. Narratives complex and multi-layered, ambivalence and contradiction prevent single meanings. Based on feeling and emotion. In Wuthering Heights: The Heights themselves, Lockwood describes as "grotesque carving lavished over t he front... wilderness of crumbling griffins." The House also serves as a prison later in the novel, and is noted by Lockwood for "swarming with ghosts and goblins" (Chapter 3). The ghostly figure of young Catherine in V1 C3 "ice cold hand." Sense of the supernatural in the love between Catherine and Heathcliff inc. H digging up C's grave to lie with her. |
| Form: Narrators | Having two main narrators raises question of the authority of the narrator. Narrator makes the story seem "true," and is meant to confer some authenticity. In WH we have to read between the lines f Nelly's & Lockwood's narratives, as the reader is able to interpret information from text which isn't made explicit. Can distinguish [un]reliable accounts to construct knowledge from which to make judgements of the characters. Macherey: post-structuralist idea of having to read what is "not-said." We can perceive accoutns given by the narrators as biased and informed by ideology, allowing us to read what they cannot tell us. E.g. Lockwood mistaking the family relationships in WH, calling Cathy H's "amiable lady" in C2. L cannot tell us that his ideological assumptions block him from seeing the complex relationship between H and Cathy, but he can indirectly alert us to this fact. Narrative of Nelly outranks that of Lockwood. Feminists focus on this and how revolutionary it must have been for Bronte's contemporary readership. |
| Language: Dialect | Use of Yorkshire dialect in Joseph and slightly in younger Hareton. Earned nvoel some of its early hostile reviews, since the language and manners of the local characters were seen as rough&coarse. Joseph's dialect doesn't serve to make him ridiculous, but rather contributes to our interpretation of his authentic character. Dialect is evidence of his resistance to change and hostility to strangers. Literally "difficult to read"(understand). Emphasises part of his character - that Joseph is proudly himself, unwilling to make that self different for those who view the world differently to his own. Nelly: she'd use & understand this dialect herslef, but Bronte writing her in standard English emphasises the fact that she is flexible and capable of using and understanding different discourses according to her audience. Suggests she can manipulate information according to her interests. Manipulative. Bronte's deliberate choice of writing of dialect and speech can be seen as an expression of character and identity. |
| Language: Poetic Language | Excessive use of metaphors, symbolism, and lyricism in descriptive passages. Lord David Cecil (1958): Rhythm of Bronte's prose is "unfailingly beautiful; varied, natural, haunting cadence, buoyantly lilting." Example: "My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary." "not only larks, but throstles and blackbirds and linnets, and the moors seen at a distance, broken into cool, dusky dells." "He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle, and dance in a glorious jubilee." |
| Imagery and Symbolism: Animal Imagery | Frequently uses animal imagery as a metaphor for some human frailty or moral deficiency. Often describing Heathcliff in feral, beastly terms. This description of male characters as beasts can be read as underlining Catherine's reluctance to marry. Schorer: most of the metaphoircal refs to animals in novel are wild animals, untamed. Snider: can read this in terms of vampiric archetypes: novel full of vicious animals e.g., Skulker, who presents the initial disruption in H&C's relationship. Heathcliff described in the most terms "mad dog," "savage beast" "demon" his "howling" reaction to C's death also portrays him as inhumna. "fierce, pitiless, wolfish man" Linton: "puling chicken" - shows the contrast between he and his "bear" of a father. Isabella: Contradictory animal imagery descriptions "a sparrows egg" conteasting to a "vixen". SHows her complex nature - a mix of helplessness and ferocity. |
| Imagery: Dreams and the Supernatural | Dreams important key to knowledge in WH Demonstrate way of thinking through the forbidden, central importance in relation to visions and ghostly apparitions, never understated. Lockwood's dream: disturbing because of the cruelty of him sawing Catherine's wrist against the glass. Kermode: also because neither L or H really believe it was a dream. Therefore resists attempts to be thought about rationally. Extravagence of the supernatural/unearthly strongly connected to C&H's character descriptions. When C is dying, N describes H as "a creature [not] of my own species." -- "Is he a ghoul or a vampire?" Snider: Bronte's choice to make H the "hero" can be read as an intervention against Victorian prejudice against outsiders, as well as fascination with the supernatural Kermode: "vision" of Nelly's where Hindley "turns into" Hareton, who "turns into" Heathcliff has many similarities with a real dream's transformations/displacements. Their merging qualifies our sense of their identities. Becuase Bronte doesn't give a naturalistic explanation for it, it becomes a form of phenomena. |
| Imagery: Dreams - important theorist idea | Kermode sees function of dreams in the novel as being specifically to disturb any "natural" unifying reading which aims to "make sense" of the story. Dreams serve to "muddle routine single readings," and make it necessary to recognise a plurality of the text. |
| Idea of Dreams in the Novel | Sigmund Freud: dreams are the products of a conflict between the conscious and unconscious processes of thought. Strange events in dreams are coded narratives of ways in which the unconscious mind is shaped by childhood events. While Catherine notes her C9 dream of heaven at WH as "this is nothing", the acc to Freud, the unconscious mind is repressed in conscious so expresses itself through dreaming. Dreams reveal innermost thoughts that we may not have even acknowledged ourselves yet. Reveals an immoral desire, whereas Edgar is an allowable desire - the dream reveals to C how tied she is to H despite choosing to marry E. |
| Imagery: Landscape | Critics often focus on Bronte's use of landscape imagery, as often functions as metaphor for human behaviour or characteristics. Schorer: "human conditions are like the activities of the landscape... spirits are at high watermark... illnesses are weathered." Faces also like landscapes, characters noted as clouding over then brightening. Catherine's tempremental nature regarded for "seasons of gloom" First see landscape through Lockwood's eyes - an outsider - as difficult to navigate and hostile - mirrors the first characters he meets. By end of novel and resolution, he observes the "benign sky" and "quiet earth" Though we can't trust L's account wholly, we can still assume that these two juxtaposing descriptions of landscape serve not as pure setting, but as commentary on the nature and lives of the landscape's inhabitants. Landscape imagery: provides foreshadowing, reveals character traits, adds to the gothic atmosphere of the setting |
| Imagery: Landscape - EXAMPLES | "My love for Linton is like foliage in the woods, time will change it. My love for Heathcliff is the eternal rocks beneath, a source of little visible delight, but neccessary." V1C9 Catherine's description of Edgar and Heathcliff - "as different from a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire." Heathcliff on him as a "bleak, hilly coal country," compared to Edgar's "fertile valley" - contrasting images of nature vs civility and nature vs culture. He is dark and mysterious, whilst Edgar is collected and proper |
| Cathy Linton | Daughter of C & E, cousin of L & H, both of whom she marries. Another of H's victims Achieves identity at demise of mother's, inherits best of both her parents: C's sense of adventure and fierce attachments, E's selfless love and civility. N: "The most winning thing that ever brought sunshine into a desolate house." - influences our reflecting on her V1 behaviour, here she's fundamentally good, bringing life to TG, whereas in V1, she's bitter, shwoing her degradation. Contrasts N's dislike for Catherine. Rebellious like C1, has "propensity to be saucy" challenging the limits she's been set. Rebels against Heathcliff, tests him to the point of violence. Hates her oppression but can think of worse "however miserable you make us, we still have the revenge that your cruelty arises from your greater misery." Complex figure with affluent quality of love, not obsessive like Catherine. |
| Cathy Linton: Relationship to Hareton, and Critical Perspectives | Proud but loving, very confident in her social status, berating those beneath her for not treating her respectfully. Treats Linton badly because of her poor education, struggles to believe he's her cousin, suggesting prejudice. After hostility and rejecting his friendship, she teaches him to read, and feels guilt for him loosing power. Marriage + conclusion - not death in love. CP FEMINISM: Isn't passive acceptor of abuse she receives. Very rebellious and assetive. Through education, she has more power over Hareton, reversal of gender power. MARXISM: Pride from social status and power as the upper middle class position. Class makes her struggle to look past status to person beneath - e.g., Hareton. Mocks him, but unlike her mother, chooses love over person's status SOC CONTEXT: looses home and belognings becuase of 18th Century property laws, duped by H&L, all she owns goes to them. |
| Mr Lockwood | Conventional upperclass 18th century gentleman: dignified, unbending, his reaction to the WH/TG relaity humourous. He lacks the experience of people beyond his wealthy bubble. Understands others little, doesn't progress in novel. Lack of understanding of those around him and poor social awareness mean he is ignorant. Narration similar to Isabella's - from a POV which doesn't fully understand Reader has to read between lines and come to own conclusions - unbiased, but judgement makes him unreliable (e.g., thinking Cathy is married to Heathcliff) Judgements reflect artificial nature. Curious and solitary, rife with misconceptions: feels he recognises a sympathetic nature in Heathcliff. Stresses how "strange" WH is, ironic given how well-educated he is, and yet he hasn't been educated ofr the real world and socialisation beyond the elite. |
| Linton Heathcliff | Enters story attached to "uncle" and misses Isabella, under Heathcliff's control he changes - becomes demanding and abusive. Blames others for his illness, a tool for asserting power, e.g., blames Cathy for "teasing me into a feaver" (V2. C9) Pathetic and unpleasant, "the worst tempered bit of a sickly ship" Frail, "peevish". Tragic: father has instant contempt for son, dies isolated with Hc refusing for a doctor to see him. Wills his son to die so he can have his property. His feeble animal descriptions contrast him with Heathcliff - showing him to be a disappointment to him. "worthless" |
| Linton Heathcliff: As a contradiction and critical perspectives | Conflicting Identity: contraditicon. Name signifies unnatural union between Heathcliff and Thrushcross Grange. He's inherited the worst of both his parents, contrasting to Cathy. Shows they'd never be compatible "He wanted an ecstasy of peace, while I wanted to dance in a quiet jubilee". Everything divided in ideas. Gilbert & Gubar: FEMINISM: poss to read L as example of gender ambiguity in novel - displays characteristics that Victorian readers would've considered to be feminine: "sucking on a stick of sugar candy." |
| Importance of Joseph's eye dialect in the novel | 1. Reaffirms where the novel is set, and the social and cultural expectations that may stem from that 2. Isolates Lockwood further than before, he cannot understand it, showing the cultural different between he and those of the land, furthering Nelly's employment as retelling the story to Lockwood 3. genuine and authentic feel to what he represents: a traditional, religious elder. 4. It creates a feeling of isolation between the classes and also for modern audiences as they couldn't understand. Also highlights theme of the rural and puritan. |
| Nelly Dean as a Narrator | 2nd and dominant narratorial voice. Dual role as both a narrator and a character within her own narratorial story. Takes up story from Lockwood and gives it substance. Lockwood's inability to read signs and culture means he can't sustain the story. Nelly's narratorial voice can be read as being the "servant" to the text. Well placed to offer Lockwood a commentary. She is valued, comands respect of the reader & proves to be brave & good-natured. Does have strong biases through favouring some characters over others (e.g., C2 over C1). Novel resists idea that N is ever wholly reliable or unbiasedd, and she admits in regards to Heathcliff, she was "deceived completely" Narration informed by her preferences. |
| Nelly Dean: Personality, Language & Dialect | Emerges as somewhat well-educated (book knowledge at TG, life experience of WH). Level-headed and symapthetic, but lacks patience for those she's trying to protect (e.g., Catherine, Cathy) Confidant to most characters inc Hc (who respects her, but doesn't exclude her from his violence) Not passive, gives sharp advice: e.g., to C on her engagement to E "If I can manke any sense of your nonsense, Miss... you are ignorant of the duties you undertake in marrying." Mother figure to the motherless in novel. Doesn't share regional dialect with other servants, but understands it well adn can use it. Access to rangeof discourses, yet as central narrator, Bronte presents her as a speaking subject: part excluded from culture but positioned to comment on it. |
| Nelly Dean: Critical Perspectives | Leavis (on her as a mother figure): "normal woman, whose turly femininenature satisifes itself in nurturing." - Contemporary critics may take issue with this conflatio of essential feminine nature however, but this was ideology of Victorian readership. Marxist and Feminist: N's use of language and dialect important as when looking at texts, it's important to consider how women's access to language and education is ideologically determined. She's a proletariat with some of the confidence of the bourgeoise, and she's given considerbale power within her houses and within her circles. |
| Isabella Linton Personality | Weak and peevish (somewhat less so than her son though), but has great spirit. Seen as "a charming lady of eighteen" but is still very juvenial. Never really grows up until after her marraige. She falls in love with a romanticised idea of him, despite Catherine's advice that he's a "pitiless wolfish man." Warned but doesn't listen. Never realises the reality of Heathcliff until it's before her and she's absued. Abusive marraige changes her ideas "He's a lying fiend, a monster," "The single pleasure I can image is to die, or see him dead." Destruction of wedding ring crucial to her development, shows the destruction of her former self. Now indepdentn and fearless after her degradation. Cna't match the forces against her, but flees. Tragic puppet - blind to H's faults and so becomes a victim out of love. |
| Isabella Linton Descriptions | Often referred to with animal imagery "a sparrows egg," "vixen," "little canary" - show to demonstrate her complex nature: Mix of helplessness and ferocity. A natural consequence of her personality is the choices she makes "yellow hair, and the whiteness of her skin... dainty elegance, fondness for all the family exhibit for her." initmate - like a portrait, not a person. Never really her own character - she's only seen in relation to others. Attachment to H meant to parallel that of C&E - fails to go beyond selfish love and as a direct result of her cultural knowledge sees H as a romantic hero, ye he pursues her for revenge. Feminism: pov of gynotricism - focus on the power relations that seem to make I complicit in her abuse and oppression, but also feminist in leaving Heathcliff and burning her wedding ring - she grows to be inpendent and in control. Rebels against her oppression. |
| Hindley Earnshaw Volume One (in relation to oppression of Heathcliff and jealousy) | Ties into complexity of father-child relationships n the novel. Mr Earnshaw favours Heathcliff, so Hindley's hate for H grows. JEALOUSY Seeks revenge following MrE's death. Neurotic, and sets the tone for the novel. His actions are the trigger to inspire the rest of the novel and Hc's plot for revenge - as Hc wants to "paint the housefront with Hindley's blood!" Considers Heathcliff to be an "imp of Satan." Concots social climbing scheme to connect the Earnshaws to the Lintons, with Catherine marrying Edgar, and pushing Heathcliff into his "place." |
| Hindley Earnshaw Volume One (marriage, and relation to Hareton) | Encourages Frances to abuse Hc "pull his hair, Frances!" She later dies (with Hindley in denial that she will) and he descends into grief. "For himself, he grew desperate: his sorrow was that blind that will not lament. He either wept nor played; he cursed and defied; execrated God & man, & gave himself up to reckless dissiperation." "sparer and lost his colour." Treats Hareton poorly, to the point where his son is scared of him and calls him "devil Daddy." Deprived of eduation as his father becomes an alcholic widower, drowing his misery in a bottle with neglect Descends into a life of drunkeness and degradation - enabling Heathcliff to seek revenge over him. |
| Hindley Earnshaw Behaviour and Volume Two | Sinks to an animalistic low in his behaviour and through his degradation he becomes an easy target for revenge. Has nothing to live for, and through his neglect, even Hareton favours Heathcliff. Looses ownership of WH in gambling. As master, Hindley was described in terms of hellish language "hellish" "devil" - never finishes revenge against Hc becasuse enacts it upon him instead. Weka natured, compared at one point to E by N "with apparently the stranger head, has shown himslef sadly the weaker man." He dies suspiciously, with J believing Hc killed him, concludes the sordid life of one spiteful tragic man. (Briefly teams with Isabella in the hope they can kill or block Hc - they understand one another.) |
Want to create your own Flashcards for free with GoConqr? Learn more.