Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte - Essay Example

Wuthering Heights’ by Emily Bronte Affiliation of Emily Bronte presents ‘Wuthering Heights’ as a crossover novel between romanticism and realism in different ways. On the surface, the novel Wuthering Heights is a love story. Digging deeper, readers find both psychological and symbolic novel. The isolated setting in the novel is important for Brontë’s combination of gothic symbolism and realism. Brontë took protocols of the time and rather than simply recreating them in a work of her own, used them as a foundation to write a completely original tale creating characters who are symbolic archetypes and concurrently real (Allott, 1974). Brontë uses these characters in the novel to explore themes of evil versus good, rationality versus passion, punishment and crime, selfishness, culture and nature, revenge, sickness and health, the nature of love, and chaos and order. Brontë exemplifies how class mobility is not always moving in the same direction. For instance, for Catherine, representing a lower class, social class plays a vital role when settling when to get married. This is the reason she cannot marry Heathcliff rather she agrees to marry Edgar. Brontë’s accurate and honest representation of life during an early era provides a hint of history. Brontë reveals that even if the society of today is different from that of two centuries ago, individuals remain the same. Therefore, readers can still relate to the emotions and feelings of the main characters such as Catherine and Heathcliff and those of the supporting characters (Bronte, 2009). Since the novel’s characters are real, they are human subjects with human emotions. Thus, the novel is not just an affectionate romance novel but a presentation of life, a hint at relationships, and an essay on love. However, the vigorous antithesis or antagonism Brontë presents in the novel tend to subvert. The novel’s realism in presenting life and Yorkshire landscape and the historical precision of hours, season, and dates co-exist with the dreamlike. Lastly, even towards the end of the novel, a crossover between romanticism and realism is evident. In many novels, endings are unsatisfactory and disturbing because most writers resist a definitive conclusion one which explains away any doubts and accounts for all loose ends (Watson, Towheed, & Open University, 2012). The fondness for open-endedness is an effort to resist place and time limit. Brontë uses the effort to explain the importance of memories and dreams of other location and time, like Catherine’s memories of walks on the moors and childhood at Wuthering Heights. Wuthering Heights has all the elements of a gothic novel. However, the characters are a lot more multifaceted than average gothic antagonists and protagonists. Heathcliff’s response and motivation go beyond the flat character of an average gothic anti-hero. On the other hand, Catherine is far from the defenseless, threatened girl in need of rescue. Rather than a ruined crumbling castle, there is Wuthering Heights. Additionally, Heathcliff’s motivations, his schemes and tricks, his manipulation and ravage, are all represented in a great deal defying the ideal model of romantic heroism (Fegan, 2008). Brontë creates colossal suspension in the novel making the reader to spectacle how Heathcliff will quiet his troubled soul and settle his feelings of vengeance. Brontë’s main character in the novel shows excessive cruelty, maniacal behavior, and madness. However, Brontë features a troubled family line and tyrannical fathers. In this case, the threat is from Heathcliff, an outsider, who causes chaos by seizing the family line and taking all of their property. In an ideal romantic heroism, it is expected that the evil characters reform. In the novel, Heathcliff does not reform, and his wickedness proves long-lasting and great that it cannot be sufficiently explained even as a desire for ravage against Catherine, Hindley, and Edgar (Moore, 2011). Taking into consideration the historical context, Heathcliff appears to exemplify the anxieties that the novel’s middle and upper-class audience had about the working classes. An ideal model of romantic heroism does not expect Heathcliff to become an anti-hero when he acquires power and returns to Wuthering Heights with money and the accouterment of a gentleman. This corresponds to the uncertainty the upper class felt toward the lower class. Burningham, Fennell, and Brontë (2004) assert that the upper class had bountiful impulses towards the lower class when they were miserable, but dreaded the prospect of the lower class trying to escape their unhappy circumstances by acquiring cultural, economic, or social power. Wuthering Heights’ characters are anti-heroes; the very opposite of what a hero is supposed to be. Instead of sympathetic and heroic, Catherine and Heathcliff are petty and selfish. Instead of ecstatically in love, Catherine marries someone else ending up breaking Heathcliff’s heart (Burningham, Fennell, & Brontë, 2004). Too proud to tell each other how they feel, Catherine and Heathcliff storm, range and fight against each other, crushing each other. This makes the novel to have a tragic outcome. Catherine and Heathcliff make mistakes, create fiascoes, totally devastating both places and people and ruin their romance by blaming solely themselves. An important question for thinking about Wuthering Heights is does the novel end happily or not. The novel is filled with despair and anguish. At the beginning of the story, Catherine and Hindley inhabited Wuthering heists and Isabella and Edgar inhabited the Grange. The clear methodical plot would have been; Isabella is married to Hindley producing a son, while Edgar married to Catherine, producing Cathy (Mezo, 2002). At that point, Cathy and her cousin would marry. This would unify the two houses, and Cathy would become Catherine Earnshaw. However, the harmony of this plot was interrupted by the introduction of Heathcliff, an alien figure who destroys the romantic balance even though at the end of the novel Heathcliff and his issues are eliminated. The union between Heathcliff and Isabella should not have occurred, therefore, Linton Heathcliff was a mistake. Linton’s marriage to Cathy was likewise a mistake, pushed by Heathcliff. So as to maintain the veracity of the pattern, their marriage was childless. Before the death of Heathcliff, Brontë offers a window into Heathcliff’s mind. Whenever he looks at something, he sees Catherine, and he hears her voice in every single sound. According to Mezo (2002), this is Brontë’s concept of true haunting, which seems to bear far more similarity to madness than it is to creepy noises in the dark. This is an interior phenomenon. If Catherine’s ghost is at work, she has found home in Heathcliff’s mind, and her mission is to distort his apprehension and his capability to communicate with the outside world. This finally caused Heathcliff to be depressed. The depression made Heathcliff to lose interest in food, be restless and not to speak coherently, and finally resulting in his death. The novel is a real page-turner, making the reader want to know how it ends. Marriage? Death? Both. Finding out what happens to Heathcliff becomes more important after Catherine dies halfway through the novel (Johanson & Brontë, 2000). Brontë brings out a whole new viewpoint on love in the novel. With her passionate characters and violently romantic plot line, Brontë has no problem attracting the reader into the novel. However, Brontë does not make it easy to follow the timeline of the novel. There are flashbacks in the novel. Therefore, a reader has to pay attention to where he/she is on the story. The flashbacks are recorded in the diary entries. The events in the novel are presented out in a chronological order (Mezo, 2002). For instance, Nelly’s narrative comes before Lockwood’s narrative but is interspersed with Lockwood’s story in the Journal. However, the novel contains enough clues to allow an estimated reconstruction of its chronology. Brontë varies the styles in the novel depending on whether Nelly or Lockwood is narrating. Nelly’s speech is energetic, with vivid description and lively images that mirror her presence at the scene she describes. She enjoys intensifying up the drama, instilling her accounts with her attitudes and opinions (Fegan, 2008). A reader can tell that she enjoys her status as narrator to Lockwood’s listener. However, this sense of power shapes her style. Nelly narrates the majority of the action from her outsider’s viewpoint. This makes the readers listen in instead of experiencing the action. When compared to Nelly’s style, Lockwood’s style is intimate but more composed and formal. Above both styles, Brontë’s style overcomes. Brontë has something of an elegiac and rhythmical approach in the novel. Her text style is not so heavily under the effect of the gothic that she refutes the likelihood of redemption and hope. The attitudes of the narrators help create the tone as the drama in the novel unfold. The novel’s ending has more hopes and promises as do certain moments in the novel, for instance, the years after the death of Catherine. As a reader, I would have preferred a realistic ending. This is because a realistic ending raise questions that a reader could face in her/his life. In a conservative Victorian society, such relationship would not have stood up. A conservative Victorian society mainly believes that people should have relationships with people of their race and class (Carroll, 2015). Any cross-cultural relationships made the parties involved outcasts. References Allott, M. (1974). The Brontës: The critical heritage. London [etc.: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Bronte, Emily. (2009). Wuthering Heights. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Burningham, H., Fennell, T., & Brontë, E. (2004). Wuthering Heights. London: Evans Bros. Carroll, J. L. (2015). Sexuality now: Embracing diversity. Place of publication not identified: Cengage Learning. Fegan, M. (2008). Wuthering Heights: Character Studies. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Johanson, R., & Brontë, E. (2000). Wuthering Heights: A play. Woodstock, Ill: Dramatic Pub. Mezo, R. E. (2002). A students guide to Wuthering Heights: Emily Bronte. Parkland., Florida: Brown Walker Press. Moore, G. (2011). Emily Brontes Wuthering Heights. St Kilda, Vic: Insight Publications. Stoneman, P. (2011). Rochester and Heathcliff as Romantic Heroes, Bronte Studies, vol.36, no, 1, pp. 111-18. Watson, N. J., Towheed, S., & Open University. (2012). Romantics and Victorians. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Read More