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PART TWO: NINETEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE UNIT FIVE The Victorian Period 1. Setting the scene: - The British Empire - The Industrial Revolution and its consequences - Society, values and culture - The decline of religious faith 2. Main features of the Victorian novel 3, Emily Bronté"s Wuthering Hetehts: bridging the gap from Romantic to Victorian 3.1. The Bronté sisters 3.2. Wuthering Heights Readings Unit Five Emily Bronté's Wuthering Heightsí Cumbres borrascosas Bibliography 0% Abrams, M.H. and Stephen Greenblatt, eds, The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 2 (seventh edition). New York €: London: W.W. Norton and Company, 2000. 9 Canales, Esteban. La inglaterra victoriana. Madrid: Akal, 1999. % David, Deirdre. The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel. New York: Cambridge UP, 2001. % Davies, Stevie. Emily Bronté. Plymouth: Northcote House, 1998. 9 Dennis, Barbara. The Victorian Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000, 9 Gardiner, Juliet. Las hermanas Bronté en Haworth: el munda interior. Barcelona: Odin, 1995. 9 Gilmour, Robin. The Victorian Period. The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature 1830-1890. London: Longman, 1993. Horsfman, Alan. The Victorian Novel. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990. Jenkins, Alice and Juliet John, eds. Rereading Victorian Fiction. New York: Palgrave, 2002. Notes on Emily Bronté*s Wuthering Heights (Study Aid Series). London: Methuen, 1973. Torre del Río, Rosario de la. La Inglaterra victoriana: Politica y sociedad. Madrid: Arco, 1997. Vogter, Taylor. Twentieth-century interpretations of Wuthering Heights, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1968, eoooo> In connection with... 1. Setting the scene THE VICTORIAN AGE The Victorian Age, or Victorian period, is named after Queen Victoria. The period formally begins in 1837 (the year Victoria became Queen) and ends in 1901 (the year of her death). Period dates are never exact, but these are convenient: the Romantic period in Britain is usually considered to end in the early 1830s, which makes the beginning of Victoria's reign a convenient starting point for Victorianism. Similarly, since the Queen's death occurred so suon at the beginning of a new centusy, this provides a useful closing date for the period. + Victoria?s Empire By the end of Victoria's reign, the British empire extended over about one-fifth of the earth's surface and almost a quarter of the world's population at least theoretically owed allegiance to the “queen empress”. This was the largest empire the wortd had ever seen. + The Industrial Revolution The first stage of the industrial Revolution, around 1780-1840, was based on the cotton trade. In the second stage, around 1840-1895, coal, iron and railways replaced water, cotton ánd canals as the major sources of power, raw materials and transport, but the pattern of factory and city growth which transformed Britain from a predominantly rural into an industrial and city economy was set in the early years of the century. industriatisation brought with ¡t new markets, a consumer boom and greater prosperity for one part of the society. Ht also brought rapid, and sometimes chaotic change as towns and cities expanded at a pace which precluded orderly growth. The widening breach between rich and poor, desperately poor housing conditions, long working hours, the ravages of infectious disease and premature death were the inevitable consequence. « The stow march of reform Parliament, which had begun to reform itself with the Reform Act of 1832, slowly legislated for improvements. The pressure for reform in housing, labour conditions, public order, education, prison, and women's rights increased, not only in Parliament but from the growing body of social reformers: concemed, active individuals, and religious, evangelical groups. For women, improvements came slowly. Working-class women were treated, as were children, as a source of cheap labour and their working conditions have to wait upon parliamentary tegislation for improvement. The middle-class woman was idealised as the angel in the house and confined to the domestic sphere where she was expected to exude sweeiness and light, moral rectitude and unfailing fidelity in support of her husband. The law held women of ali classes to be inferior to men and the pressure on them to remain virgin until marriage and “pure” thereafter was reinforced by the socíally imposed bogey of the “fallen” or “ruined” woman, a scorned and despised alternative role into which women were cast. Some reforms occurred in the 19th century, but the “Women Question”, as it was termed, was still being stronely argued in the 20th century when many of the main issues, for example female suffrage, began to be addressed. « The decline of religious faith Compared to the present day, the Victorian era was deeply religious, and social practices were embedded in religion. But scientific discoveries suggested that physical matter, included human beings, operated and developed according to discoverable, mechanical laws. This was also the time of Darwin's evolutionary theories (On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, 1859). All this cast doubt on the existence of God, which created great anxiety for the Victorians. + The nineteenth-century novel Poetry had its main representatives in Alfred Tennyson, Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barret Browning, and Christina Rossetti, among others. But the most popular genre was the novel. The Victorian novel developed out of the elghteenth-century novel, itself an innovatory literary genre. These are some famous nineteenth-century novels, which bear witness to the diversity | of the genre. Match each title with an author from the tist below. . Álice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) . Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) . Frankenstein (1818) . Middlemarch (1872) . Oliver Twist (1838) . Pride and Prejudice (1813) . The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1891) . The Jungle Book (1894) . Vanity Fair (1848) 0. The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) 2 0 0 NO ahun Jane Austen (1775-1817), Wiltiam M. Thackeray (1811-1863), Lewts Carroll (1832-1898), Charles Dickens (1812-1870), Mary Shelley (1797-1851), George Eliot (1819-1880), Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930), Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) | / ] í In connection with... 3.1. The Bronté sisters Charlotte Bronté (1816-55), Emily Bronté (1818-48), Anne Branté (1820-49) Read the text below and then watch A Quick Guide to the Branté Sisters at YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1Y_ocLOmnE El extraño caso de las hermanas Bronte articulo de: Ángeles Caso [http://www.magazinedigital.com/buena-vida/cultura/avance-editorial- extrano-caso-las-hermanas-bronte] En lo más alto de! pueblo de Haworth, al norte de Inglaterra, entre el cementerio y el paisaje rocoso de los páramos, se levanta una casa de ladrillo oscuro con dos hileras de ventanas blancas. Una vivienda firme y sobria, construida a finales del siglo XYH! para ser el hogar de los pastores anglicanos del lugar. Entre 1820 y 1855, en ese edificio discreto ocurrió un hecho excepcional: allí vivieron y crearon sus obras, escondidas del mundo, tres mujeres geniales, las hermanas Bronté: Charlotte, Emily y Anne. Nadie de su entorno lo sospechó. Las Bronté eran raras, desde luego. Tres solteronas, como sin duda las llamarían entonces, a las que muchos recordaban de pequeñas, criándose de una manera un tanto salvaje en compañía de su hermano Branwell. Las hijas del reverendo Patrick Bronté —un irlandés de origen campesino que se había doctorado en Cambridge gracias a una beca- estaban bien educadas y eran corteses y decentes, pero desde niñas tenfan costumbres extrañas. Quizá fuera porque habían perdido muy pronto a su madre y, casi de inmediato, a sus dos hermanas mayores, arrasadas por la tuberculosis, El caso es que, como cachorritos sin dueño, solían pasear solas por los páramos, bajo el sol a bajo la nieve, y algunos afirmaban haberlas visto declamando poemas en lo alto de una roca. Aunque lo más raro de todo era lo que hacían dentro de la casa, donde se pasaban el tiempo leyendo y escribiendo, Leían cualquier cosa: los poemas de Byron o las novelas de Walter Seatt, los clásicos, y también sesudas revistas de literatura y hasta los diarios de Londres, con aquellos complejos asuntos políticos tan poco adecuados para unas muchachas y sobre los que luego ellas se atrevían a expresar sus propias opiniones. Y, para colmo, desde muy pequeñas, escribían sin cesar, quién sabía qué, tal vez poemas e historias semejantes á las que leían en los libros, cosas de guerreros y dontellas seducidas y sangrientas batallas. Cosas que podía permitirse Branwell, el varón, pero no unas Jovencitas que debían dar ejemplo tan sólo de piedad y virtudes domésticas. Branwell tenía talento e inteligencia. Todo el mundo sabía que estaba destinado a hacer Una gran carrera. Dirigido por su propio padre, era un buen estudiante y poseía grandes dotes para la música y la pintura. Seguramente terminaría por marcharse a Londres y convertirse en alguien importante, un pintor famoso, un escritor reconocido, un político de peso. Pero el destino de las chicas era otra cosa. Las hijas de un pastor tan sólo podían hacer dos cosas en la vida: casarse 0, de no lograrlo, dedicarse a la enseñanza de niñas. Una mujer de su clase na podía permitirse ningún trabajo de tipo manual o que la obligase a estar en contacto con el público, exponiendo su honra. En cuanto a las profesiones de prestigio, las que implicaban conocimientos profundos y gran inteligencia y que conllevaban buenas ganancias y renombre, ese era territorio exclusivo de los hombres, absolutamente vedado al género femenino: una mujer no podía ser médica, ni abogada, ni juez, ni política, ni catedrática, ní ingeniera, ni nada que se le pareclese. Ni siquiera podía acceder a la universidad, aunque sólo fuera por placer. Una joven de una familia decente sólo debía prepararse para cumplir con el gran cometido de la vida, ser buena esposa y madre. Pero casarse no era un asunto tan fácil: hacía falta poseer una dote aceptable, a belleza, o al menos un carácter sumiso. Las hermanas Bronté no cumplían ninguno de esos requisitos. Su padre no tenía ni un centavo, salvo su exiguo sueldo de párroco de la Iglesia anglicana. La belleza se había olvidado de detenerse sobre la casa rectora! de Haworth y dejar caer allí un poco de su preciado polvo dorado. Y el carácter de las muchachas, con su tendencía a querer saber de todo y a mantener sus opiniones en voz alta, no parecía hacer de ellas las mejores compañeras para un hombre de bien. A medida que crecían, estaba cada vez más claro que iban a tener que dedicarse a la enseñanza. Al menos, Charlotte y Anne. Emily cra demasiado huraña, dernasiado sensible, y enfermaba gravemente siempre que se alejaba de casa y 5 In connection with... 3.2, Emily Bronté's Wuthering Heights (1847) Wuthering Heights (WH) was first published in 1847 under the pseudonym “Ellis Bell”. After Emily's death, Charlotte edited the manuscript of Wuthering Heights, and arranged for the edited version to be published as a posthumous second edition in 1850, under the author's real name. WH is a novel that seems to be caught between an old way of life and the new world of the Victorians. A new generation emerges at the end of WH, a generation more moderate and disciplined in its behaviour. This, essentially, is the direction in which the world was heading. But, in its representation of the relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff themselves, WH confronts us with an extreme alternative to the new social discipline that characterises early Victorian Britain. When Kathleen Tiltotson sought to characterise the novels of the 1840s, she noted that “the condition of the people” came to be a prevalent theme and the “novel-with-a-purpose” emerged as a common type: “Many novelists in the forties and fifties chose the stony and thorny ground of social and religious controversy”. Simitarly, Raymond Williams claimed that a “new a major generation of novelists appeared in the 18405” and their distinguishing contribution and achievement was “the exploration of community”. WH, which was published in 1847, seems strangely at odds with these generalisations, defying the expectations they engender. Unlike the contemporaneous, industrial novels of Charles Dickens, Elizabeth Gaskell, Benjamin Disraeli and Charles Kingsley, WH shows no engagement with wider social issues, its environment so enormousty detached. Lockwood, the narrator, is a token and disruptive outsider and even the life of the nearest village, Gimmerton, seems remote, unknown and only sketchily reported. The realm of the Heights and the Grange functions as a world unto itself, an exclusive reality for the text, so that when characters leave that world, as Heathcliff and Isabella do, they seem mysteriously to disappear into a void. ff WH seems out of place in its historical moment, it can perhaps be better understood in terms of its relation to earlier works, most notably the Gothic novel of the late eighteenth century and the poetry of the Romantics. . QUOTATIONS = 1. 1801 —| have just returned from a visit to my ltandlord —the solitary neighbour that | shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country! in all England, | do not believe that | could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society. A perfect misanthropist Heaven —and Mr Heathcliff and ! are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation between us. (Chapter 1, the novel*s opening) + 2. WHis a novel about strong passions, uncontrollable, fearsome, and often destructive. Yet the author manages to strike something close to a balance by telling about these ungovemable passions in a story that ts neatly structured. There is something like a wild force on the one hand, and then elements that impose symmetry and order, on the other. EARNSHAW «ge LIN TON Mr Mer Hr HE Lurrsha Ennio Lintor Libor Asitbrr tir E A Sprint 03 el. Avolar PTSD AAcbin 1780 1 r 1 am j 1 1 1 Fumves Eiiwálee Cithierias | Edgar ¿lama? ame di DFGZ IS EedembrriI34 dl AO MA ri STRESS de bapiest. ¿804 ) l e vs i Heather Sa bella 61764 Dintelr6s de Apetiit0z A Juhel737 ! a J Harelon Catherine Coti Lántor do June 107% £ 20 MarcAiteg $. September Fl 30 d Seplember 1903 ! E lo] 2. 1 TiIRBAOSS AS E Wnblrring Hephts > TT understand”. When the dog bites Catherine, Mr Linton (Edgar's father) refers to him as a “littte Lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway" and he is not allowed to enter the house. When Catherine makes friends with Edgar Linton, Heathcliff wishes he had Edgar's “light hair and a fair skin, ... and great blue eyes”. » 10. Catherine and Heathclif”s alliance can be read in terms of power struggtes. In spite of all that makes them different from one another, they have in common the fact that they are both excluded from power, he because he is an orphan (or a bastard) and an outsider, she because she is a woman. But, already as a child, Catherine is rebellious, and not submissive at all; she asks for a whip as a gift, which may be taken as symbolising power or authority, and she gets Heathcliff instead. « 11, [Heathcliff to Nelly] “She's dead!” he said, “P've not waited for you to learn that” [...]. “And | pray one prayer —[ repeat it till my tongue stiffens —Catherine Earmnshaw, may you not rest, as long as | am living! You said | killed you —haunt me then! The murdered do hunt their murderers. | believe —| know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always —take any form— drive me mad! Onty do not leave me in this abyss, where | cannot find you! Oh God! It is unutterablel | cannot live without my tifel | cannot live without my soul!” (Chapter 16) + 12. [Heathcliff to Nelly] My old enemies have not beaten me —now would be the precise time to revenge myself on their representatives —I could do it; and none would hinder me— But where is the use? i don't care for striking. 1 can't take the trouble to raise my hand. That sounds as if 1 had been labouring the whole time, only to exhibit a fine trait of magnanímity. It is far from being the case —1 have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction [...] | have a single wish, and my whole being and faculties are yearning ta attain it. They have yearned towards it so long, and so unwaveringly, that l”m convinced ¡t will be reached —and soon-— because ¡it has devoured my existence. (Chapter 33) + 13, [Conversation between Lockwood and Nelly when he last visits the Heights (Chapter 34)] Lockwoad: “Who will live here (in Wuthering Heights) then?” Nelly: “Why, Joseph will take care of the house, and, perhaps a kad to keep him company. They will live in the kitchen and the rest will be shut up.” Lockwood: “For the use of ghosts as choose to inhabit it,” | observed. + 14. What succeeds in the end is not the violent and narcissistic love of Catherine and Heathcliff (who identify with each other, as fatal twins, rather than individuals), but the easier, more friendly and altogether more plausible love of the second Catherine and Hareton Earnshaw. It is as if the extreme passions and the Gothicism of the Romantic period inevitably gave way, at the end of the novel, to the more moderate and restrained worldview of the Victorians. Sources: Bronié, Emily. Wuthering Heights. Loudon: Penguin Figes, Eva. 1982. “Wutherinyg Heights”. Sex £ Subierfuge. Women Writers to 1850. New York: Persea Books. 139-50. Oates, Joyce Carol. “The Magnanimity of Wuhtering Heights”. Celestial Timepiece: A Joyce Carol Oates Patohwork. Retrieved on 08/09/17 at https://celestialtimepiece.con/2015/01/27/the-magnanimity-of- wutliering-heights/ Wuthering Heights: York Notes Advanced. London: Longman, 2004. 1 
