Wuthering Heights Context

Wuthering Heights Context

1. Emily Bronte

   • Published novel under the pseudonym Ellis Bell
     • Prejudice society
     • Reviews written by men who will have expected writer to be male
   • Complex structural layering reflects her higher intelligence, superior to that of the male critics who could not accept her different techniques
   • Use of authorial technique - uses one character to tell the reader about another e.g. we never meet Cathy but hear about her through Nelly

2. Background

   • Published in 1847 - Victorian readers found it hard to accept the violent characters and harsh realities presented by Bronte
     • 'such shocking pictures of the worst forms of humanity'
   • Audience found it impossible to accept that it could have been written by a woman
   • However, readers at the time could relate to the central relationship of Heathcliff and Cathy
     • Harder for us to relate as social class is less judgemental regarding love
   • Written from 1801 and goes backwards - use of flashbacks and flash forwards
   • Heathcliff only has one name - reflection on his social position

3. Victorian Families

   • Potato famine in Ireland along with industrialisation led to an increased number of children on the streets of Liverpool e.g. Heathcliff
   • Middle class families often had servants and many children spent most of their childhood with their nanny
     • Children would be expected to call their Father 'sir'
     • Father considered to be head of household
   • Linton = more upper class
     • Cathy = more upper class
       • Married up a class
   • Family provided retreat from stress and turmoil of industrial world
     • Moors are considered gloomy and grim
     • Idealised as centre of stability
   • Family more isolated from its larger kinship network, although unmarried women often lived with married siblings
     • "spinsters"
     • Family structure primarily nuclear
       • Aristocratic families had closer kinship ties beyond nuclear core
   • 'There can be no security to society, no honour, no prosperity, no dignity at home, no nobleness of attitude towards foreign nations, unless the strength of the people rests upon the purity and firmness of the domestic system'