EMILY BRONTE

1
EMILY BRONTE WUTHERING HEIGHTS

• Introductory lecture

2
Overview

• Emily Brontes (EB) Life and Background
• Romanticism EB
• Genre
• Themes

3
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.

4
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.

5
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.

6
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.
• gt resp for sense of grim fatalism and acceptance
  of tragedy in life in her novel.

7
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
• gt his daughters sensitivity to social status
  and their ambition perseverance in pursuing a
  writing career.

8
Fathers influence

• he was also a published if unsuccessful writer
• he had written poems and short tales 5 volumes
  in all.
• gt may have influenced his childrens literary
  ambitions.

9
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.
• gtthe Bronte children were better informed about
  current events then many of their more
  conventionally educated contemporaries.

10
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.
• gt influence on how his children viewed religion.
  

11
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.

12
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.

13
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.

14
the Pensionnat Heger

• In 1842, EB went to Brussels to teach and study
  music.
• gt 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.

15

• EBs personality brilliant but uncommunicative,
  inward, shy, reserved girl.
• She never thrived anywhere but at home gt taking
  long walks on the heath and enjoying the company
  of her dogs.

16
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.

17
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.

18
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

19

• 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).

20

• 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

21
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

22
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?

23

• 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.

24

• 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

25

• 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.

26

• 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.

27

• 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.

28
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.

29

• 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

30

• 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.

31

• 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?

32

• 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. gt
  different characters have similar names gt
  destabilises fundamental notions of selfhood and
  responsibility.

33

• Only HC has one name gt 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.
  

34

• 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.

35

• 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

36

• 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

37

• 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.

38

• 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