Destructiveness_of_a_Love_in_Wuthering_Heights

Destructiveness of a Love in Wuthering Heights

Abstract:

Catherine and Heathcliff’s passion for one another seems to be the center of Wuthering Heights, given that it is stronger and more lasting than any other emotion displayed in the novel, and that it is the source of most of the major conflicts that structure the novel’s plot. class status often crucially inform the characters’ motivations in Wuthering Heights.

Key Words: passion conflicts class status revenge 1. Introduction 1.1 Background

1.1.1England in the early of 19 Century

The story happened in the early 19 century,when UK was a classic patriarchy society with a strong sense of hierarchy and class contradiction,divided human into seceral levels.Their working people not only were exploited and oppressed by the corrupt landed aristocracy ,but also ruled by the emerging bourgeois nobles.Meanwhile women and proletariates were oppressed too ,whoes personal rights had been deprived.

\"At law women were equal to male criminals,madman and minors,in whichever class they were\". The middle class were in worse condition ,because their wives and daughters were not regarded as the symbol of estate or status,who had to cling to man--farther,husband,brother or son for life and became other's dolls.As far as they were concerned ,marriage was the best home they turned to ,on which their all success or failure depended. But \"women were equivalent of jetton that was used for consolidating their rank of families and promoting their families wealth.It was the woor's wealth and status that decided the success or failure of one’s marriage,which should be well-matched rather than allowed by families.

If the marriage was opposed by families, it was more likely to be failure .To elope with his/her lover was the last choice for youth who loved each other so much and wouldn't abandon each other forever.While elopement means lost everything ,they not only had to break with their own families and gave up the right of inheriting the rank of families and wealth,but also they had to bear heavy society pressure.

In Victoria times,elopement and adultery were regarded as ashameful thing,which would be condemned by society.As a result,they had to live a incognito life,struggling to themselves against the ruthless and furious life. Family owned so many right on marriage that man shoul pay more attention to it.The rich yunth would better not to proposal when he took a fancy to the woman under lower class ,unless he would be expeled out of family.In that times,though marriage was not arranged but not free too..

1.1.2 The Introduce of Emily Brontë

Emily Brontë was an English novelist and poet, now best remembered for her novel Wuthering Heights, a classic of English literature.Emily Brontë lived an eccentric, closely guarded life. She was born in 1818, two years after Charlotte and a year and a half before her sister Anne, who also became an author. Her father worked as a church rector, and her aunt, who raised the Brontë children after their mother died, was deeply religious. Emily Brontë did not take to her aunt’s Christian fervor; the character of Joseph, a caricature of an evangelical, may have been inspired by her aunt’s religiosity. The Brontës lived in Haworth, a Yorkshire village in the midst of the moors. These wild, desolate expanses—later the setting of Wuthering Heights—made up the Brontës’ daily environment, and Emily lived among them her entire life. She died in 1848, at the age of thirty.

1.2 Summary

The book Wuthering Heights told us a story about love and revenge: the abandoned boy Heathdiff was adopted by Mr Eamshaw and lived with Mr Earnshaw’s son Hindley and daughter Cathiner. Hindley disliked Heathdiff. He insulted and maltreated Heathdiff in every possible way after Mr Earnshaw’s death. At the same time, peculiar emotion occurred between Cathiners and Heathdiff. Because of vanity and ignorance, Cathiner decided to mary Linton. Heathdiff left with anger. Three years later, Heathdiff returned to revenge. Heathcliff 's destructive force is unleashed, and his first victim is Catherine, who dies giving birth to a girl, another Catherine. Isabella Linton, Edgar's sister, whom he had married, flees to the south. Their son Linton and Catherine are married, but always sickly Linton dies. Hareton, Hindley's son, and the young widow became close. Increasingly isolated and alienated from daily life, Heathcliff experiences visions, and he longs for the death that will reunite him with Catherine.

2 .Analysis of Major Characters 2.1 Character of Heathcliff

Heathcliff, however, defies being understood, and it is difficult for readers to resist seeing what they want or expect to see in him. The novel teases the reader with the possibility that Heathcliff is something other than what he seems—that his cruelty is merely an expression of his frustrated love for Catherine, or that his sinister behaviors serve to conceal the heart of a romantic hero. We expect Heathcliff’s character to contain such a hidden virtue because he resembles a hero in a romance novel. Traditionally, romance novel heroes appear dangerous, brooding, and cold at first, only later to emerge as fiercely devoted and loving. One hundred years before Emily Brontë wrote Wuthering Heights, the notion that “a reformed rake makes the best husband” was already a cliché of romantic literature, and romance novels center

around the same cliché to this day.

However, Heathcliff does not reform, and his malevolence proves so great and long-lasting that it cannot be adequately explained even as a desire for revenge against Hindley, Catherine, Edgar, etc. As he himself points out, his abuse of Isabella is purely sadistic, as he amuses himself by seeing how much abuse she can take and still come cringing back for more. Critic Joyce Carol Oates argues that Emily Brontë does the same thing to the reader that Heathcliff does to Isabella, testing to see how many times the reader can be shocked by Heathcliff’s gratuitous violence and still, masochistically, insist on seeing him as a romantic hero.

2.2Character of Catherine

The location of Catherine’s coffin symbolizes the conflict that tears apart her short life. She is not buried in the chapel with the Lintons. Nor is her coffin placed among the tombs of the Earnshaws. Instead, as Nelly describes in Chapter XVI, Catherine is buried “in a corner of the kirkyard, where the wall is so low that heath and bilberry plants have climbed over it from the moor.” Moreover, she is buried with Edgar on one side and Heathcliff on the other, suggesting her conflicted loyalties. Her actions are driven in part by her social ambitions, which initially are awakened during her first stay at the Lintons’, and which eventually compel her to marry Edgar. However, she is also motivated by impulses that prompt her to violate social conventions—to love Heathcliff, throw temper tantrums, and run around on the moor.

3.Theme

3.1 The Destructiveness of a Love That Never Changes

Themes in Wuthering Heights Good versus Evil-- (also love and hate) The power of good is stronger than the power of evil and good will someday dominate. Also that all our striving here on earth amounts to nothing, and it is not until we are dead and face to face with our creator that we shall find our happiness or doom. Bront is most interested in the spiritual feelings for her characters, making contact with an existence beyond this life on earth. The difference between that feeling that Catherine has for Heathcliff and the one she feels for Linton is that Heathcliff is a part of her nature while Edgar is only a part of her superficial love. It is a spiritual love rather than a physical one that binds Heathcliff and Catherine together. Revenge-- This is the most dominant theme of the second half of the novel, although in the last chapter Heathcliff abandons his plan for revenge. Heathcliff first believes that if he can avenge the death of Catherine that he will somehow grow closer to her. However, the exact opposite occurs. When Heathcliff gives up on his plan for revenge, he is soon reunited with Catherine in eternal bliss. Crime and Punishment-- All the characters have sinned in one way or another and in the end they are all punished for their crimes. However, Cathy and Hareton are not corrupt in any way and they are the ones who finally

destroy the evil between their families in the next generation. Passion versus Rational Love-- Passion is what divided Catherine from Edgar. Catherine's passion for

Heathcliff ruined the lives of so many people at Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. The whole story revolved around the passion that Catherine and Heathcliff felt for each other. Edgar, on the other hand, felt a more reasonable love for Catherine. Catherine was devoted to Edgar, yet was in love with Heathcliff. Ignorance versus Education-- From the beginning, the reader can deduce that the Lintons are at a higher social status than the residents at Wuthering Heights. This is partly due to the fact that the Lintons are better educated than the laborers at the Heights. Young Cathy's love for reading has a direct effect on Hareton Earnshaw's pursuits at becoming literate. Selfishness-- The selfishness was first introduced when Mr. Earnshaw brought home Heathcliff and presented him to the family. Because he took a fancy to this young waif, the rest of the generations following Mr. Earnshaw's life will suffer. Heathcliff was probably the most selfish person in all of Wuthering Heights. He ruined

Catherine's life when he disappeared for three years. He also ruined Isabella's life by marrying her only for revenge. Heathcliff forced young Cathy to marry Linton and then later killed the poor sickly boy through neglect. These are only the major actions that show Heathcliff's selfishness. Catherine's selfish character was depicted when she wanted both Edgar and Heathcliff at the same time. Catherine wanted Edgar for his life and Heathcliff for his soul. She didn't want to choose between the two of them, and therefore she never did. Thus, she caused pain for Heathcliff and Edgar.

3.2The Precariousness of Social Class

As members of the gentry, the Earnshaws and the Lintons occupy a somewhat precarious place within the hierarchy of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British society. At the top of British society was the royalty, followed by the aristocracy, then by the gentry, and then by the lower classes, who made up the vast majority of the population. Although the gentry, or upper middle class, possessed servants and often large estates, they held a nonetheless fragile social position. The social status of aristocrats was a formal and settled matter, because aristocrats had official titles. Members of the gentry, however, held no titles, and their status was thus subject to change. A man might see himself as a gentleman but find, to his embarrassment, that his neighbors did not share this view. A discussion of whether or not a man was really a gentleman would consider such questions as how much land he owned, how many tenants and servants he had, how he spoke, whether he kept horses and a carriage, and whether his money came from land or “trade”—gentlemen scorned banking and commercial activities.

Considerations of class status often crucially inform the characters’ motivations in Wuthering Heights. Catherine’s decision to marry Edgar so that she will be “the greatest woman of the neighborhood” is only the most obvious example. The Lintons are relatively firm in their gentry status but nonetheless take great pains to prove this status through their behaviors. The Earnshaws, on the other hand, rest on much shakier ground socially. They do not have a carriage, they have less land, and their house, as Lockwood remarks with great puzzlement, resembles that of a “homely, northern farmer” and not that of a gentleman. The shifting nature of social status is

demonstrated most strikingly in Heathcliff’s trajectory from homeless waif to young gentleman-by-adoption to common laborer to gentleman again (although the status-conscious Lockwood remarks that Heathcliff is only a gentleman in “dress and manners”).

4.Conclusion

Today, Wuthering Heights has a secure position in the canon of world literature, and Emily Brontë is revered as one of the finest writers—male or female—of the nineteenth century. Like Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights is based partly on the Gothic tradition of the late eighteenth century, a style of literature that featured supernatural encounters, crumbling ruins, moonless nights, and grotesque imagery, seeking to create effects of mystery and fear. But Wuthering Heights transcends its genre in its sophisticated observation and artistic subtlety. The novel has been studied, analyzed, dissected, and discussed from every imaginable critical perspective, yet it remains unexhausted. As a shattering presentation of the doomed love affair between the fiercely passionate Catherine and Heathcliff, it remains one of the most haunting love stories in all of literature.

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