Wuthering Heights: Critical appreciation
Wuthering Heights is a single novel by Emily Bronte. It is a masterpiece.
Emily Bronte wrote under the pseudonym of 'Ellis Bell' She had a literal and carefree mind.
Wuthering Heights though written in the Victorian age is different from the Victorian novels.
She arranged the Linton and Earnshaw family symmetrically.
She clearly shows how Heathcliff gained possession of the two properties.
A question arises, then why did she put all this muddle, chaos, tempest, she did so because she was a prophetess.
Wuthering Heights. has no mythology:
No great book is cut off from the Universals of Heaven and Earth.
It is local with the spirit of engenders.
We shall only encounter them among the harebells and limestone of their.. own country ().
Wuthering Heights is a vision of what life in 1847 was like. It is all about the casualness and the complexity.
The role of the two narrators, Lockwood and Nelly Dean, is to keep the story close to the earth. These two are the most normal characters.
They act as the Sieve. They help us to be aware of the difficulty of passing easy judgment. Their existence is not felt.
There is no attempt at a limiting Verisimilitude of the speech. They do not impose themselves between us and the scene.
The Bronte sisters, Charlotte Anne, and Emily are often considered as a group. Bronte was a person who kept thoughts and feelings concealed and her pleasure lay in solitude.
W. H. does not belong to the mainstream of the Victorian novel. It stands in a class by itself. She does not present Victorian life in her novel.
The story is worked up to a tragic climax. Then hastily a happy ending is given"
A crudo method is adopted for its happy end. Heathcliff sees a ghost and he starves himself to death.
The novel has two heroes Edgar and Hereton.
The main protagonist Catherine dies in the middle. - She does not marry the man she loves.
It is Edgar who suffers and not Heathcliff the villain.
Though like the other Victorian novels, Wuthering Heights. ends in wedding bells. But the wedding bells are rung because the villain dies.
The novel is a successor of the Gothic Romance.
Good and evil spring from the came Good source. Good and evil correspond to intellectual concepts when at the best.
At worst, they are rationalized prejudices.
W. H∙ is a psychological drama in which the characters are the personised powers that are stormed and dispersed.
Bronte had an insight into human experiences, as is rarely found. Such can be seen only as ingenious.
No book was more rooted in the native soil and local background.
The Gothic element of horror and fear is an essential part of the novel.
There is a full play of cruelty in human life. Throughout the book, the capacity of brute force seems beyond endurance.
R.D.G. Rossetti says", "The action is laid in Hell Only that it seems places and people have English names".
The characters are taken from real life. The setting is made clear of the moorland and rocks.
Familiar places and persons are identified.
The novelist has given a realistic picture.
Sowdens Farm is the old parsonage, which can be identified with Wuthering Heights Ponden Hall across the moor with Thrushcross Grange.
The Earnshaw Legend is the Grimshaw Legend. Wuthering Heights. is something like a dream or one can say a nightmare.
Most of the characters believe in the existence of supernatural creatures.
Heathcliff declares, "I have a strong faith in ghosts."
Catherine believes in dreams. She Said dreams had changed her ideas and that dreams had altered her mind. She believed in the power of spirits to defy the grave 🪦.
Nelly is also afraid of dreams; she believes Heathcliff is a visitant from another world.
Joseph and many others saw the ghost of Catherine and Heathcliff wandering all around.
Even Lockwood, an educated man, falls victim to an overwrought imagination.
Dreams and visions play a vital part in the Novel.
Symbolism plays its role in the sharp contrast of the two worlds. The novel has a philosophic and symbolic Value.
The end of Heathcliff is the defeat of evil. Evil is always self-doomed.
The emotions in the novel are prominent. They are wild as the north wind, dark as the Storm and clouds and strong as the Rock.
Paganism Nietzsche might have called them Dionysian and Apollonian.
E.B. abondoves Victorian taste, In her style.
She is modern. She has been called the forerunner of Conrad. Her mysticism and symbolism establish her with the modern But she is not modern in taste. She retains the best of the traditional novel.
Treat of Love Wuthering Heights is different from for typical Victorian age. In the Victorian novel, love generally leads to domestic bliss.
Novels generally end with the ringing of wedding bells, Wuthering Heights. also ends with wedding bells. But it is not of the main character. It is of the minor characters.
Bronte's treatment of love is different. The heroine dies in the middle. She does not marry the man she loves.
The central love is of Catherine and Heathcliff. It is a love of unique intensity-Time has not any effect on it. Even the death of Catherine does not separate their love.
"Love's not Time's fool. Love alters not with brief hours and weeks... But bears it out even to the edge of doom." These lines of Shakespeare suggest Bronte's concept of love.
The loves in Wuthering Heights. is united with the ghostly form The lovers after their death are seen walking as ghosts Love in W. H. is imperishable It endures even after the physical death.
Love is a spiritual craving for union and not animal passion in the world of Emily Brontë.
Then there is the love of Hindley and his wife. The death and her separation is a blow to him. He became a rebel against God.
Edgar Linton and Caltirine's love shows a different picture" When Heathcliff did not return their life would have been a domestic bliss.
Then there is Love between Cathy Linton and Heathcliff.
Then their love of Cathy changes Hareton. They got married and live happily.
Treatment of Nature: "This is certainly a beautiful country!" says Lockwood." In all England" he says further, "I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation to Completely remove from the stir of society" A perfect Misanthropist's heaven".
Wuthering Heights. though a beautiful corner of England is secluded. The scenes of action lie on the moors with hills covered with snow. The Other Side is the green valleys. The hills have an indescribable charm..
To a solitary rambler, the moors have theirs. own attraction. When the sky is clear, the moors seemed to be batted with golden. Sunlight.
But when it is not clear there is darkness. Somber darkness as if something is to happen.
Emily Bronte. loved the moors and had entered into the very soul of the moors. That is why she presents them in their different moods.
She seemed to have absorbed the Silence of the governed, lonely moors, which made her almost as one of themselves.
Emily Bronte. presents all the seasons in Wuthering Heights. Each Season has a beauty in its own. Emily Bronte. has a minute observation of the change of weather and the season.
She describes the changes in the direction of the wind with the change in weather.
She tells us that sleet and snow are followed after the shower of rain. She also notices that the effect of the change of weather is on the flowers and birds.
That the primroses and crocuses were hidden and the larks were silent. The entire novel is saturated with the author's feelings for nature. The events and different ways of her characters are interwoven with nature.
Nelly tells Lockwood that Wuthering Heights. does not have trees around, yet the country around is very beautiful.
Clouds delight as much as sunshine for her, there is beauty in winter storms and in summer breeze also.
We find that storms and snow occur more frequently in spring and summer.
The two opposite human temperaments - dull and active, calm and violent are presented in terms of nature imagery.
Cathy in one place says that "his ideas of. heaven happiness was lying from morning to evening on a bank of heath in the middle of the moors".
About herself she says, mine was rocking in a rustling tree with a west wind blowing... not only larks but throstles and blackbirds and linnets ... pouring music on every side… and woods and sounding water and the whole world, awake and wild with joy.
In. Wuthering Heights. we find the contrary human temperaments are presented through two opposite moods of nature, calm and turbulent.
It is in nature that the characters of the novel seek their ideal happiness.
Whatever the mood, in anguish or excitement, the description of nature plays a vital role, All Seasons for Emily Bronte is equally fascinating.
The description of the weather changes with the mood of the characters. When Heathcliff leaves the house.
without telling anyone, "dark clouds appear in the sky indicating that the storm is about to break".
"There was a violent wind as well as thunder". Says Nelly Dean…"
A close affinity between the mood of man and the mood of nature has been beautifully observed by the novelist. And she has vividly described it in her novel.
The storm in King Lear Suggests the storm blowing in the mind of Lear. In Wuthering Heights. Strong winds and Stormy weather are symbolic of the violent emotions in her character.
Lord David Lecil wrote about Emily Bronte that,`` The setting is a microcosm of the universal scheme as the novelist conceived it".
On one hand, we have Wuthering Heights, the land of Storm, and the children of Storm.
On the other, we have Thrushcross Grange., the calmness, and the children of calm.
Each group following its own nature combines to compose a cosmic harmony. Heathcliff is a force active for destruction. Heathcliff's first destructive act was to drive Hindley to death.
Not by love but by hatred he married Isabella.
Heathcliff continues his revenge on Hareton Earnshaw, Catherine Linton and his own son Linton Heathcliff.
These children have both a calm nature and a Storm. Thus in Wuthering Heights., We have the Symbolic presentation of both human and non-human existence.
We find that in the midst of the violent nature, the children of rocks, heath and tempest, they are striving for their identity & they also disrupt all around them.
yet against the "wilderness of inhuman unreality, the novelist sets a quiet conversation between Nelly and Lockwood"
WH. is not just a novel of love and revenge. It presents the aspect of nature, which are responsible for the type of love and revenge.
The characters are symbols of two contrary aspects of human nature - calm and turbulent. The theme of 'Love and revenge" develops from this contrary nature.
The novel breathes the very spirit of wild desolate moors.
The Story seems to be about a man whose soul is torn between love and hate.
Richard Church says, "This novel is one of the oddest and unplaceable works in the whole of English Literature. It remains a lovely peak in the landscape of English novels ·
W. H. is one of the imaginative creations of the century.
TEMPO - Tempo means the speed of passage of time in a story. There are stories in which time appears to pass very quickly. And years appear. to pass in minutes. At the same time, there are Stories in which time appears to pass slowly.
In ULYSSES, the actual time is only a day & the progress of the story is slow. The time between the beginning and end is too long.
Certain factors depend on the speed of the story. As for example descriptions of scenes, and characters.
And the lengthy analyses of states of consciousness, result in the speed.
In Wuthering Heights., the total time is 40 years. It presents three generations. Bronte's narrative method Shortens the descriptions and methods.
CHARACTERIZATION: A great novelist creates original and living characters. The greater novelists create original men and women.
E.M. Forster says there are two types of characters - (i) Flat and (ii) Round.
The flat characters remain the same from the beginning to the end.
'Round' characters. grow and change. Thus they are not the same as seen in the beginning.
Emily Bronte. portrays two contrary aspects of human nature.
Her vision is not limited to the surface of life.
Accordingly, her characters fall into these two groups.
In one is Heathcliff Catherine, Hindley, the children of Storm. The other is the Lintons family- the children of calm.
There is a third group of characters in W. H. The children of calm and strong-young Catherine,
Hareton and Linton Heathcliff.
The characters stand for symbolic significance -One stand for violence and temperature. The other suggests quietness of mind.
Emily Bronte. paints a primitive world. A primitive world In contact with civilized life!
Lintons are civilized But they suffer because they have come in contact with people like Heathcliff.
Wuthering Heights. can be said to be a non-realistic portrayal.
The beast nature gives a similarity to King Lear."
Bronte attempts to picture that the traits of character are inherited from their parents.
The violent temper of the character is in harmony with the violent storm blowing outside. The Lintons live in a calm atmosphere.
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