EMILY BRONTE & WUTHERING

HEIGHTS
Introductory lecture

Overview:

Emily Brontes (EB) Life and Background

Romanticism & EB
Genre
Themes

Her Birth

Emily Bronte (EB) was

born on 30 July 1818 in
the village of Thornton
some miles to the West of
Bradford in Yorkshire
where her father Patrick
was curate/rector.
She was the 5th of 6
children all brilliantly
gifted.

Her Father

Her father Patrick was a Church of

England clergyman who had emigrated
from Ireland.
The oldest son of an Irish labourer, he had
to struggle very hard to educate himself.
Entered Cambridge (St Johns College) to
read theology and became a gentleman.

Her Father

He married a well-to-do woman Maria

Branwell from Cornwall in 1812 and who
died after 9 yrs from a long and agonizing
cancer, 1 year after the birth of her
youngest child Anne

He was never rich as curate but made a

reasonable living as permanent curate in
Haworth.

Haunted by family tragedy

Mothers early death she was just a
toddler
Her 2 oldest sisters Maria and Elizabeth
were to die in their childhood too
Her only brother Branwell was to dissipate
his talents and die with all his bright
promise come to naught.
=> resp for sense of grim fatalism and
acceptance of tragedy in life in her novel.

Fathers influence
His rapid rise to the status of
gentleman albeit poor man in an age of
still rigid social divisions was nothing
short of miraculous
=> his daughters sensitivity to social
status and their ambition &
perseverance in pursuing a writing
career.

Fathers influence

he was also a published if

unsuccessful writer
he had written poems and short tales
5 volumes in all.
=> may have influenced his childrens
literary ambitions.

Fathers influence

He was largely self-taught and was in the habit

of developing his intellect in isolation (a trait his
children shared).
he subscribed to and borrowed an unusual
number of newspapers and periodicals which
undoubtedly enriched the cultural lives of his
children.
=>the Bronte children were better informed
about current events then many of their more
conventionally educated contemporaries.

Fathers influence
He belonged to the evangelical strain
of the Anglican church (low church)
The evangelical or low church Anglican
movement believed in mans sinfulness
and need for redemption through a
personal communion with God enabled
by studying the infallible Holy
Scripture.
=> influence on how his children viewed
religion.

Her Life

He was a typical Victorian father that left the

household in the hands of his sister-in-law who
was tasked to look after the children.
His neglect meant the children were left to their
own resources from infancy and were largely
isolated.
They formed deep emotional ties with each
other and created a world of imagination that
was far real to them than any outside world
could be.
Raised in Spartan simplicity becos of their
poverty, they found excitement and novelty in a
world of ideas, not things.

Her education

They were educated at home until 1824 when

they (girls) were sent to Cowan Bridge School
a charity institution founded by a wealthy
clergyman William Carus Wilson. Emily at age 6
was the youngest to be enrolled there.
The institution was poorly run and funded. Food
was inedible and scarce and the school was
situated in an unhealthy area with poor sanitary
conditions.
When a typhus epidemic hit, Maria and
Elizabeth contracted tuberculosis and the girls
were sent home. Charlotte and Emily survived
but the 2 older girls died within months of
returning.

Roe Head School

In 1835, Emily followed Charlotte to Roe Head

School boarding school for girls where her
sister worked as a teacher.
Emily suffered as she was miserable away from
home. At school she had to rein in her
imagination and behave like a lady and follow a
schedule.
Liberty was the breath of Emilys nostrils. At
home, life was . Secluded but unrestricted and
inartificial to one of disciplined routine.
Charlotte, Memoirs of Ellis Bell
EB was sent home after 3 mths.

the Pensionnat Heger

In 1842, EB went to Brussels to teach and study

music.
=> she was judged unfeminine
M. Heger thought she should have been a man,
given her personality and remarkable, forceful
mind.
She was laughed at for her old-fashioned
clothes, refusal to talk and seeming unconcern
for her students.
EB spoke only when she was interested in the
topic and then defended her opinion in an
unfeminine way. After a year in Brussels, EB
went home and never left Haworth again.

EBs personality: brilliant but

uncommunicative, inward, shy, reserved
girl.
She never thrived anywhere but at home
=> taking long walks on the heath and
enjoying the company of her dogs.

The beginnings of a Literary

career

The 3 sister published their first book of poems

under the pen-names Currer (Charlotte), Ellis
(Emily) and Acton (Anne) bell.
Gained critical attention but not a commercial
success sold only a few copies.
Girls were determined to make a success of
their writing as they could not depend on father
or Branwell for their futures.

Her Death

EB died at age 30 yrs & 5 mths on 1848, a

few months after brother.
Died from consumption tuberculosis which
she got after brother s funeral.
Her sister Anne was to die 5 moths later of
the same disease.

Romanticism and EB

..attitude or intellectual orientation that

characterized many works of literature, painting
etc in Western civilization over a period from
the late 18th to the mid-19th century.
Romanticism emphasized the individual, the
subjective, the irrational, the imaginative, the
personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the
visionary, and the transcendental.
Britannica online

Both EB and CB were great admirers of the

Romantic poets especially Byron and
Wordsworth.
Romantic fiction is highly charged, emotionally
unrestrained and V personal as contrasted
against the neo-classical ideal of balance,
temperance and urbanity in the 18th century and
the realism and naturalism of the later Victorian
novel (later 19th century).

Romantic Writers saw society as a

hypocritical prison house of inauthenticity,
where people are yoked to rules and
customs.
Romanics valued the individuals rights
over societys needs and they often
celebrated the heroic rebel and the
iconoclast

The Romantic Rebel

someone who rebels agst cosmic or social

injustice or tyranny. Rebellion is often hopeless
yet the act of rebelling is seen as heroic.
In Wuthering Heights (WH), Heathcliff (HC)
rebels agst all the laws of God and man
but bcos he is motivated by a great love that
transcends all laws, he is often seen as heroic

HC as Byronic hero

Byronic hero is a a romantic hero bcos of

his passion, his amorality, his iconoclasm,
his homelessness and his desperation.
He is usually dark, mysterious, brooding
and living an immoral life in a vain attempt
to escape unhappy memories.
To what extent does HC exemplify these
traits?

Another characteristic of Romantic Lit is

the description of childhood thoughts as
unique and precious.
Childhood is a time when we see things
as they really are before social
conditioning in the form of education,
prejudice and habit blind us to the truth.
Poets like Wordsworth claim that unless
we hold onto our inner child we will lose
our freedom and power.

WH can also be seen as a lament of lost

childhood freedom and intensity when the
spirit is less restrained by social laws and
customs and even by the body itself.
The entire plot can be said to be
motivated by childhood memories that
Catherine and HC cant forget as only
then were they really living.
NB: Catherine returns as a child in
Lockwoods dream

Romantic LIT aims to change the readers

beliefs not through the intellect but thru the
emotions, to arouse in the reader passions and
sympathies he had not before.
Emily made use of romantic psychology when
describing the minds and thoughts of chracs
during intense moments and states of
excitement.
She also made use of symbolic dreams in her
novel, demonstrating the Romantics fascination
with dreams and visions.

R also believed the relationship btw mind

and nature is a mystical one bcos there is
a transcendent or divine element in nature
that finds a living response within the
heart of people open to receive it.
In WH, EB presents characters who have
an intense relationship with nature.

Both HC & C belong more to the natural

than the human world.
In WH there is a tension between
traditional, patriarchal Christianity and a
more Romantic natural religion that seeks
God in nature; believes that nature itself is
a part of God, filled with and expressing
his spirit.

THEMES

Love
supreme celebration of love. Love which defies
authority, social convention & death.
C-H love is never consummated, deferred and
never translated into the pettiness of daily
transactions.
It is idealised and magnified. Novel both
recognises and explicitly appeals to the desire
for perfect love.

Revenge
Linked to theme of love. In WH, there is a
cycle of revenge perpetuated by Hindley
and Heathcliff. Which destroys or touches
the lives of everyone in particular Cathy
and Hareton

Patriarchal oppression of women

WH does portray women struggling agst
patriarchy. Feelings of imprisonment for women
recur throughout the novel. Both Catherines are
imprisoned first by their fathers then husbands.
Women are enslaved by a legal system highly
injurious to them eg Isabella Linton as abused
wife. Hindley as despotic male.

Morality
-profound moral ambivalence. Who are
the villains &heroes? Is H a hero? Not
easy to distinguish. His romantic hero or
evil villain? ending leads to his
redemption? Love and suffering redeem
him?

Identity or the Self.

Examining the boundaries of the self when C
declares she is H, radical challenge to
conventional notion of selfhood and identity.
Her identification with HC utterly overwhelms her
own discrete personal identity.
Q: what happens to identity when individuality
collides with love? Individual means indivisible
but EB insists on merged or convergent
identities.
Eg the repetitious doubling of names. =>
different characters have similar names =>
destabilises fundamental notions of selfhood
and responsibility.

Only HC has one name => suggests he is of a

primordial nature, a pure uncombined nature.
What that is, is a mystery we know nothing of
his origins he just appears. What he represents
symbolically is also unclear.
Some critics see him as symbolizing the part of
Catherine she has to give up when she is initiated
into womanhood the bite that leads her to TG
the beginning or her physical maturity.

Storm va Calm
Lord David Cecil in an essay published in 1934
established a symbolic reading of the text as
structured on a dialectic binary between 2 living
spiritual principles the principle of the storm
of the harsh, the ruthless, the wild, the dynamic
and the principle of the calm- of the gentle, the
merciful, the passive, the tame.

In the novel they are exemplified by the 2

Houses: WH and Thrushcross Grange.
Separate yet complementary, both houses
live in relative harmony until the
equilibrium is disturbed with the entry of
an external force i.e. Heathcliff
Nature vs Culture
WH = nature TG =culture

Class conflict OR Social criticism / indictment of class

system even capitalism itself.
HC feels C has rejected him bcos he is uneducated and
poor. He returns a gentleman with money. He uses his
class and money to exact a revenge on Hindley and to
seduce Isabella fooled by his ap of class.
Class money and education make him powerful but not
better. Novel implies that no one is made better by these
acquisitions. Critics see it as class struggle and a fable
of the violence and exploitation undergirding civilised
society. Eg civilised TG is protected by vicious dogs and
money is seen as breeding fools and weaklings eg
Linton, Hindley are no match for HC & Hareton brght up
in poverty/servitude

Genre:
It has elements of the gothic, the romance and
the realistic novel (social-realist novel).
The realistic novel is one that deals with
everyday affairs of ord people, does not stray
from the ord world of cause and effect into the
supernatural and does not overemphasise its
symbolism to the point of allegory.

The Romance - a style of heroic prose and

verse narrative that was particularly current in
aristocratic literature of Medieval and Early
Modern Europe, that narrated fantastic stories
about the marvellous adventures of a chivalrous,
heroic knight, king or queen who are unhindered
by worldly circumstances in the pursuit of their
lofty desires and great passions.
The Gothic novel with its elemts of mystery,
suspense and the supernatural. Use of ghosts,
vampires