Unit 4: Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
Antía Lorenzo San José, 2019
UNIT 5: WUTHERING HEIGHTS, EMILY BRONTË
1. Emily Brontë (1818-1848)
She was born at Thornton, Yorkshire, a place that is very difficult to access. She only lived
for 30 years, and had two sisters: Anne and Charlotte Brontë, who were also writers. She
wrote in 1846 Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, set in Gondal, an imaginary Country.
Then she wrote in 1847 Whutering Heights, under the pseudonym of Ellis Bell: this book
can’t present a solution to a beautiful love story that takes places between two people of
different social class (differs from Emma, which has a solution). She presents some tabus
in her book, such as extra-matrimonial relationships. It was widely criticised for its violent
passions, improper for a woman.
2. Setting and relevance of nature: Haworth Moors
The major events take place in Yorkshire:
Romantic attachment to nature and landscape: this is a romantic novel that has a lot to do with
nature, which reflects the characters’ passions.
Opposition established between nature (moors) and civilization (houses, especially Trushcross Grange): wild
related to Withering Heights and civilization related to Grange: they represent civility,
manners, education… It is represented by the Liston family. Actually, the novel is
about the relation between these two different families: the one that lives in the
Whutering Heights and the one that lives in Trushcross Grange.
Mockery of Romantic attitude of communion with nature and isolation: Lockwood (“a perfect
misanthropist’s heaven): the narrator wants to be isolated from society, in connection with
nature, etc. He wants to be Wordsworth. However, he also wants to have all the
commodities of his life in London (hypocrisy).
Nature unbound: relates to the characters’ passional/restrained behaviour.
3. Wuthering Heights: narrative genre
This book deals with different narrative conventions:
1. Family saga: it has similarities with this genre because the narrator tells us the story of a
family through different generations.
It deals with the life of two very different families, the Linton and the Earnshaw, in a
long period of time:
-Linton: educated, civilization.
-Earnshaw: nature.
The action of the novel cover a period of time of 30 years, more or less, and it has to do
with two family generations. There are always a boy and a girl as sons, in order to
accentuate the opposition. The union between he families is between Catherine and
Edgar.
2. Bildungsrroman or novel of education: it narrates the evolution of different characters.
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