Love between Catherine and Heathcliff challenges societal Victorian expectation of love, what does Bronte include to counteract this?
- Uses religious discourse as a redemptive force
- Pure love supercedes social convention of religion, but doesn’t completely reject religion
Give a quote a critic in The Victorian times used to describe WH.
- “a fiend of a book.”
How does C.P Sanger described WH?
- “storm and calm structure.”
- Storm = wilderness of Catherine and Heathcliff’s love
- Calm = the passive, the tame social propriety.
How can Catherine being attacked by the dog at The Grange be interpreted?
- Culture associated with violence.
- Defending property.
- Bronte critiquing this?
What is a “structuralist” interpretation of WH?
- Unrelaible narrators used throughout so love presented = inaccurate.
What does deconstructive reading of WH suggest?
- There are layers to narrative.
- Chinese Box Structure (seen through palimpest in ch.3) - Miller.
Broad methods Bronte uses
- Framed narrative.
- Unreliable narrative.
- Multiple narrators.
- Romanticism/ Gothic.
- Pathetic fallacy.
- Cyclial narrative
- Motifs (ie. barriers.)
Heathcliff has many contradictions within him, how is this seen in novel, what have critics said about this?
- He encomapses philosphical opposites ie. love and death.
- Byronic hero but also this monstrous figure (some critics have argued even vampire-like.)
How do feminist vs other critics view notion of Edgar’s femininity?
- Critics argue Edgar is feminine, his illness later on feminisies him (like Linton!)
- Ambigious gender in novel.
- Feminist: more masculine than Heathcliff due to his social power.
Signifiance of Isobella interest in Heathcliff
- Structurally parallels Edgar’s fascination with Catherine.
- She can’t help but think of Heathcliff as typical Byronic lover - critique of this notion?
Cathy being able to do things her mother couldn’t, ie. be with Haerton. What could Bronte’s message be with this?
- Bronte saw the role of women easing in Victorian society, offering more oppourtunities for them in the future.
What phrase have critics used to describe Nelly?
- “servant” of the text. Brings it to life, fleshes out all the events that occur.
How have critics interpreted the theme of nature vs culture?
- Gendered notion.
- Nature (feminine), culture (masucline.)
- Seen through personifying weather as woman ie “female-witch child.”
How have feminist critics interpreted Nelly’s narration?
- More reliable than Lockwood, although having bias.
- Bronte critiquing the notion of male authority in Victorian Literature, revolutionary narrator = Nelly.
- Bias of Nelly, reader rejects her and therefore takes active participation in the book.
How do feminist critics argue that Heathcliff is feminine?
Mad woman in the attic
- Dispossesed of social power.
- Aims to dismantle conventions of class, marriage –> goes against what serves patriarchal culture.
- Contrasts the critics that view him as the epitome of heroic masculinity.
How have feminist critics interpreted Catherine’s name “scratched” on the wall?
- Lack of identity common to women under patriarchy.
Why did Victorian reviewers critique WH in terms of its narrative?
- Confusing structure, multiple narrators, subverting Victorian idea that writer should make their message clear.
- Miller suggests that these layers to narrative add to idea that there is no clear truth to the text.
Features that can be analysed through psychoanalytical reading.
- Dreams (sub-concious of mind.)
- Heathcliff’s traumatic childhood.
- Loss of mother can influence individuals,link to Bronte losing her mother.
Signifiance of unreliable narrators.
- Allows the reader to read between the lines and make own judgements about the text/ relationship between characters.
How is Heathcliff interpreted by some critics to be related to Catherine?
- Mr Earnshaw’s illegitimate son, making them one and the same.
Main feminist critics.
Gilbert and Gubar.
What kind of tale could WH be described as and why?
- Cautionary tale.
- Warning against the destructive love that Heathcliff and Catherine share.
What have Gilbert and Gubar argued on Catherine’s madness?
- Caused by her imprisonment.
- Imprisonment/ mental breakdown –> explored in Gothic/ Romantic genre.
How have feminist critics viewed the gun and whip that that Catherine/ Isobella request?
- Viewed as phallic symbols, linking to power.
