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    Wuthering Heights and The Gothic 2

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    The document discusses whether Emily Bronte's novel Wuthering Heights can be considered a Gothic novel. It outlines several key Gothic conventions that are present in the novel, such as the villainous Heathcliff, rejection of Christianity, violence, and the wild setting of Wuthering Heights. The document also provides background on the Gothic genre, defining it in terms of common plot elements, settings, themes, and narrative strategies. Students are then asked to explain or analyze in what ways Wuthering Heights illustrates or challenges Gothic conventions through specific passages from the novel.

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    Wuthering Heights and The Gothic 2

    Uploaded by

    api-301037423
    367 views18 pages
    The document discusses whether Emily Bronte's novel Wuthering Heights can be considered a Gothic novel. It outlines several key Gothic conventions that are present in the novel, such as the villainous Heathcliff, rejection of Christianity, violence, and the wild setting of Wuthering Heights. The document also provides background on the Gothic genre, defining it in terms of common plot elements, settings, themes, and narrative strategies. Students are then asked to explain or analyze in what ways Wuthering Heights illustrates or challenges Gothic conventions through specific passages from the novel.

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    wuthering heights and the gothic 2

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    The document discusses whether Emily Bronte's novel Wuthering Heights can be considered a Gothic novel. It outlines several key Gothic conventions that are present in the novel, such as the villainous Heathcliff, rejection of Christianity, violence, and the wild setting of Wuthering Heights. The document also provides background on the Gothic genre, defining it in terms of common plot elements, settings, themes, and narrative strategies. Students are then asked to explain or analyze in what ways Wuthering Heights illustrates or challenges Gothic conventions through specific passages from the novel.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    367 views18 pages

    Wuthering Heights and The Gothic 2

    Uploaded by

    api-301037423
    The document discusses whether Emily Bronte's novel Wuthering Heights can be considered a Gothic novel. It outlines several key Gothic conventions that are present in the novel, such as the villainous Heathcliff, rejection of Christianity, violence, and the wild setting of Wuthering Heights. The document also provides background on the Gothic genre, defining it in terms of common plot elements, settings, themes, and narrative strategies. Students are then asked to explain or analyze in what ways Wuthering Heights illustrates or challenges Gothic conventions through specific passages from the novel.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pptx, pdf, or txt
    of 18

    Wuthering Heights and the

    Gothic
    To what extent is Wuthering
    Heights a Gothic Novel?

    Assessment and learning objectives


    AO2 Demonstrate detailed critical
    understanding in analysing the ways in
    which structure, form and language
    shape meanings in literary texts.
    AO4 Demonstrate understanding of the
    significance and influence of the
    contexts in which literary texts are
    written and received.

    Band

    AO2 Demonstrate
    detailed critical
    understanding in
    analysing the ways
    in which structure,
    form and language
    shape meanings in
    literary texts.

    AO4 Demonstrate
    understanding of the
    significance and
    influence of the
    contexts in which
    literary texts are
    written and received.

    Skills ladder

    Band 6

    Evaluation of how
    Evaluation of relevant
    the authors methods contextual factors arising
    Evaluatio work
    from the study of texts and
    n
    genre
    Band 5
    Analysis
    Band 4

    Analysis of how the


    authors methods
    work

    Analysis of relevant
    contextual factors arising
    from the study of texts and
    genre

    Explanation of how Explanation of relevant


    the authors methods contextual factors arising
    Explanati work
    from the study of texts and
    on
    genre

    Is Wuthering Heights a Gothic


    novel?

    Gothic features of Wuthering


    Heights
    Heathcliff as the Gothic villain, destroying women and
    pursuing inheritance
    Rejection of Christian heaven
    Transgression of boundaries of life and death
    Cruelty and violence of patriarchal figures
    Imprisonment and escape
    Appearance of the supernatural
    The mysterious identity of the central figure (the foundling
    with no social status)
    The wild and gloomy setting
    The extremes of weather
    Inclusion of taboos
    Death and destruction of lives
    Revenge

    The Gothic
    The term Gothic was first used to refer to
    literary texts in the period between 1764 and
    around 1820.
    Gothic began as a literary movement with the
    publication of The Castle of Otranto (subtitled
    A Gothic Story) by Horace Walpole in 1764.
    Literary texts from this period tend to share a
    very characteristic set of features.
    The genre itself has some common features
    (sometimes called tropes)

    The first
    Gothic novel
    Walpoles novel
    was originally
    published
    anonymously,
    with the subtitle
    A Gothic Story
    printed on the
    title page.
    Walpole was
    clearly not using
    the term Gothic
    here in a
    pejorative sense.

    Walpole establishes a set of


    Gothic conventions
    Walpoles novel spawned a new genre of Gothic

    Romance, that established the following Gothic


    ingredients:
    An obsession with medieval architecture.
    The discovered manuscript device.
    An exotic, European setting.
    The centrality of a Romance tale.
    The opposition of tyrannical patriarch and
    vulnerable heroine.
    The theme of inheritance and the hereditary
    curse.
    The theme of imprisonment.

    The Gothic Romance:


    desire fulfilled and desire
    frustrated
    In the Gothic Romances of the eighteenth and

    nineteenth century, with which Wuthering Heights


    bears comparison, desire and the actions it provokes
    have an important narrative function.
    The typical Gothic Romance, follows a pair, or pairs, of
    lovers through courtship, towards marriage or physical
    union.
    As the plot unfolds, these lovers will be subjected to
    challenges that they will either overcome, to be united
    at the resolution of the plot, or be overwhelmed by, to
    be separated by the point of resolution.
    The challenges that confront the lovers are typically
    posed by an illness or death, a supernatural event, a
    seemingly supernatural event, or a villain who may
    wish to claim one of the lovers for themselves.
    In Gothic Romance, illegitimate desires (including
    adultery, incest, necrophilia, bestiality and rape) are as
    likely to be fulfilled, or partially fulfilled, as legitimate

    Kelly Hurley (2002) sums up the different


    ways that the Gothic has been defined:
    PLOT (which features stock characters, like the virtuous,
    imperiled young heroine and stock events, like her imprisonment
    by and flight from the demonic yet compelling villain),
    SETTING (the gloomy castle, labyrinthine underground spaces;
    the torture chambers of the Inquisition),
    THEME (the genres preoccupation with such taboo topics as
    incest, sexual perversion, insanity, and violence; its depictions of
    extreme emotional states, like rage, terror, and vengefulness),
    STYLE (its hyperbolic language; its elaborate attempts to create
    a brooding, suspenseful atmosphere),
    NARRATIVE STRATEGIES (confusion of the story by means of
    narrative frames and narrative disjunction; the use of densely
    packed and sensationalist, rather than realistic, plotting),
    and its affective relations to its readership (whom it attempts to
    render anxious, fearful, or paranoid).

    The Gothic Universe:


    Inheritance in time
    The universe of the Gothic text is a strange place in

    which time appears to ignore the normal rules of


    physics.
    Characters typically experience time in unusual ways
    (e.g: journeys are shorter or longer than anticipated;
    twilight is briefer or longer than expected).
    Seemingly long-forgotten historical events or figures
    return to haunt the present (e.g: family curses; ancient
    monsters; buried corpses).
    Seemingly outdated practices or artefacts retain their
    power in the present (e.g: feudalism, folk-charms).
    Certain characters seem to possess a timeless quality
    (e.g: Satan; demons; undead characters that age at a
    different rate to human characters).
    The hero/heroine of the Gothic text typically has to
    contend with some kind of fearful inheritance in time
    in the course of the plot.

    The Gothic Universe:


    Claustrophobia in space
    The rules of space in the typical Gothic text show a

    similar disregard for the laws of physics.


    Seemingly vast Gothic castles, mansions and buildings
    appear to have an endless series of tiny rooms, narrow
    passages and subterranean chambers of which there is
    little evidence from the exterior.
    Gothic buildings seem to be frozen in a state of
    perpetual disintegration or ruin, but rarely fall midnarrative.
    Gothic bedrooms and chambers frequently take on the
    airless, dingy, isolating qualities of the dungeon or
    prison-cell.
    Gothic heroes/heroines spend a lot of time
    incarcerated in such claustrophobic spaces.
    Given the remoteness of the conventional Gothic
    location, the prevalence of such geographical features
    as dense forests, impassable mountain ranges,
    turbulent rivers and the proximity of dangerous wild

    Is Wuthering Heights a Gothic


    novel?
    The Gothic novel characteristically includes a story of the
    supernatural, the melodramatic or the macabre. It was a
    fashionable form of writing in the late eighteenth and early
    nineteenth centuries.
    Often set in a sinister place such as a castle or ruined
    building, preferably with underground passages, labyrinths
    and dungeons.
    The supernatural element of the story might result from a
    curse or omen.
    The supernatural may take the form of ghosts, nightmares
    or animation of previously inanimate objects.
    The hero is generally passion-driven, violent and
    melancholic. The heroine tends to be weak enough to need
    rescuing.

    A summary of Wuthering Heights


    (1847) by Emily Bronte (1818-1848)
    Lockwood narrates the story as a diary. He has rented Thrushcross
    Grange and his landlord is Heathcliff, who lives at Wuthering
    Heights. Heathcliff is melodramatic, violent and solitary. Bad
    weather forces Lockwood to stay the night at Wuthering Heights
    and while he is there he wakes from a nightmare about a girl
    called Catherine. Lockwood questions Nelly Dean (a housekeeper
    of eighteen years who has worked at both houses) about the story
    of Catherine [1].
    Nelly tells him how Catherines father (Earnshaw) brought back
    Heathcliff as a foundling from the streets of Liverpool. From the
    start Earnshaws son (Hindley) bullies Heathcliff, but his daughter,
    Catherine [1], forms a strong attachment to him. After Earnshaws
    death, Hindley inherits the power, and effectively reduces
    Heathcliff to the status of servant.
    One day, Heathcliff overhears Catherine [1] telling Nelly that she
    cannot marry him for economic reasons. He has already left by the
    time she goes on to say that she loves him.

    He disappears for three years, returning with unexpected


    wealth and discovers that Catherine [1] has married
    Edgar Linton (whose family owns Thrushcross Grange).
    The passion between Heathcliff and Catherine [1]
    remains. Catherine [1] grows ill under the strain of
    yearning for what she can never have. Shortly after, she
    dies in child birth having given birth to a daughter
    (Catherine [2]).
    Heathcliff marries Isabella Linton (Edgars sister) and
    mistreats her, and also encourages Hindley to drink
    himself to death. This he duly does, leaving his son
    (Hareton) to be raised predominantly by Heathcliff.
    Heathcliff deprives Hareton of education and status. His
    child with Isabella is called Linton.
    Edgar does his best to prevent a friendship forming
    between Catherine [2] and Linton Heathcliff, keeping
    Catherine [2] in isolation at Thrushcross Grange.
    However, after Edgar dies, Heathcliff imprisons
    Catherine [2] and forces a marriage between her and
    Linton, in order to ensure that Thrushcross Grange

    Task: The Gothic Form


    Band 4 Explain In which ways do you think
    Wuthering Heights illustrates the conventions
    of the Gothic novel? Can you point to a
    passage which illustrates these conventions?
    Band 5 Analyse How does Emily Bronte
    challenge, extend or complicate the features
    and conventions characteristic of the Gothic
    novel? Choose another passage which
    challenges or complicates the interpretation
    of Wuthering Heights as a Gothic novel.

    Key Gothic concepts

    Horror and terror


    The Sublime
    The Uncanny
    Taboos
    The Supernatural
    or Preternatural
    Oppositions
    Otherness
    Obscurity

    The Revenant
    The Doppelganger
    The Liminal
    Abhuman

    Which are present


    within Wuthering
    Heights?

    Plenary
    Gothic novels
    Preoccupied with the supernatural
    and the fantastic
    Locations such as gloomy forests and
    ruins
    Charismatic villain (mysterious,
    powerful, driven by ambition)
    Gothic protagonist has contempt for
    conventional forms of authority (eg
    the church and law)
    Landscape is charged with the
    emotions of the characters
    Brooding atmosphere of gloom and
    terror
    Dealing with aberrant psychological
    states, looking at the realm of the
    irrational
    Aims to evoke terror by dwelling on
    mystery and horror generally

    To what extent is
    Wuthering Heights
    a Gothic Novel?

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