The Most Revolutionary Aspect of "Otherness" in Wuthering Heights (original) (raw)

The Portrayal of Heathcliff's Character in "Wuthering Heights"

Heathcliff is a fictional character in Emily Brontë's novel Wuthering Heights. Owing to the novel's enduring fame and popularity, he is often regarded as an archetype of the tortured romantic hero whose allconsuming passions destroy both him and those around him.His complicated, mesmerizing, consumable, and altogether bizarre nature makes him a rare character, with components of both the hero and villain. Thus, this paper attempts to delineate the ''ThePortrayalofHeathcliff'sCharacter in "Wuthering Heights". The significance of this paper lieson the ThePortrayalofHeathcliff'sCharacter .The study follows the Descriptive Analytical Method. It begins by an introduction forming a background to the study; followed by a summary of the plot, a literature review, a discussion and a conclusion. The findings of this paper revealed that, both Heathcliff and Edgar eventually die of broken hearts, unable to reconcile themselves to Catherine's death. As if to bring the story full circle, Brontë presents us finally with the possibility of true love and happiness within a relationship that between the two cousins, Cathy and Hareton "one loving and desiring to esteem, and the other loving and desiring to be esteemed." There is no grand passion here, but no violence, either. The novel is a stark warning against the former, and, in Hareton and Cathy's reasoned and gentle love, it promotes the latter as the only sane way to live. In this way, the study recommend that, Wuthering Heights can be seen to be not so much a "love story" but, rather, an investigation into romantic love, comprising a discourse on social conventions, blind passion, violence, jealousy, and revenge, together with the notion of good versus evil.

The figure of the VILLAIN in Emily Brontë's WUTHERING HEIGHTS

2014

Wuthering Heights is a Victorian novel written by Emily Brontë, who made an excellent use of her narrative skills to make the reader play an active role in the reading and interpretation of the novel. The figure of the villain in this intense and complicated love story has become a polemic topic discussed by many different critics, whose final conclusions are not always the same. The violent, unexpected and sometimes incomprehensible actions carried out by the mysterious Heathcliff have led many readers and critics to consider him to be the villain par excellence of the novel. However, it should be noted that, despite all his evil actions, there is something that on the other hand turns him into the hero and sufferer of the story: his impossible love for Catherine Earnshaw. The narrator, Ellen Dean, has also been regarded by some critics as the devilish villain of the story, due to her capacity to control the other characters and most of the situations that take place over the cours...

Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights: An Unconventional Victorian Masterpiece

2014

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (1818-1848) is a novel which is windswept and weatherbeaten both in the world outside and in the world inside of human emotion. The total book leaves a deep impression of an intense but dreary romantic view of life and of an unusual mystery and conflict. None of the Victorian novelists has been able to create these traits. Some of Emily's characters appear like creatures of their autonomous, unreal world. This paper shows that the novel is an expression of Emily's rare sense of imagination that is absent in many other contemporary novelists. It also shows that Emily paints an unusual love before which the demonic passion melts. So, this novel stands far apart from other Victorian masterpieces. Not only this, Wuthering Heights does not portray Victorian realism which is the focal point of most of the Victorian great novels.

Heathcliff; a Charming Anti-Hero in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights

2017

This paper seeks to examine how Heathcliff is portrayed as a Charming Anti-hero in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. The focus on the Anti-hero is a departure from the prominence given to the hero in literature. This article explores the concept of the Anti-hero and how the character has been handled in works of literature. It also examines the evolution of the Anti-hero in works of literature and offers an explanation as to why he should be a significant literary figure to study.

Literature Review Survey of Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte and Windward Heights by Maryse Conde

Intertextuality is the meaning of a text with reference to other texts. Julia Kristeva's theory of intertextuality was in response to Saussure's theory of semiotics, and how he states that text derives meaning through the structure it is placed in. She also developed on theory of Mikhail Bakhtin's 'Dialogism' which stated that a word only has meaning when it enters into dialogue with another word. Julia's theory is more evolutionary in nature and very source and reference critical at times. An analogy that comes to mind to understand it better is how a barrier reef is created by layers and layers of coral on top of each other; similarly our ideas, texts and references are all pre-existing. We add onto this repository and literature and ideas progress.

“It is unutterable”: Sexual Transgression in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights

Academia Letters, 2021

When we speak of Gothic texts, it is tempting to do so with reference to gender, categorising texts as either Male Gothic or Female Gothic. However, the definitions of these categories are somewhat nebulous – classification can depend on the gender of the author, the gender of the protagonist, elements of the narrative, or a combination therein. Moreover, this dichotomy largely ignores the prevalent depiction of queerness, here meaning non-normative experiences of sex, gender and sexuality, within Gothic fiction. In 1996, Jean Kennard published an article titled ‘Lesbianism and the Censoring of “Wuthering Heights”’. She contemplates Emily Brontë’s own identity, reading her “masculine” habits, “peculiarities”, and nickname, “the Major”, in the context of early Victorian discourse around gender and sexuality. She then reads Wuthering Heights as a subliminally lesbian narrative, in which Brontë’s ambivalence towards her own identity is encoded in the tumultuous relationship between Cathy and Heathcliff. Surprisingly, very little further work on Wuthering Heights as a queer text has been undertaken in the following quarter of a century. This paper aims to return to this site of critical enquiry, this time examining the text through the lens of the Queer Gothic, an area of study that has gained substantial interest over the past fifteen years. It begins by exploring the ways in which Heathcliff is coded as a sexual Other, drawing on the associations between race and transgression in nineteenth century England, and the ways in which these associations were articulated in Gothic fiction. It then returns to Kennard’s interest in sameness in the novel, exploring the ways in which Cathy and Heathcliff’s identifications with one another transform them into increasingly androgynous and transgressive characters. Finally, it explores Victorian notions of sexual transgression as a sickness, and the way in which the Gothic gave language and form to such notions, tracing instances of illness in the novel in this context. Ultimately, this paper reads Wuthering Heights as a deeply transgressive text that both influenced and was influenced by contemporary discourse around gender and sexuality, situating it within a history of sexuality that continues to bear heavily upon the present.

The Othered Half: Monstrosity, Identity, and Romance in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights

Using various theories of monstrosity, degeneration, and the morphic figure in Gothic studies, this essay explores explicitly the manifestation of Gothic archetypes and tropes in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. The essay further explores figures of the werewolf, the vampire, and the revenant in the general sense, deconstructing the romance of Heathcliff and Cathy, and the interplay of masculinity and femininity, along with a 'natural', atavistic horror, at work in the text.

Sublime of horrific passion in Emily Bronte's 'Wuthering Heights'

Langlit: An international peer reviewed open access journal (ISSN-2349-5189, Impact factor-5.61) UGC APPROVED, 2022

The passion in life is both delightful and destructive. In passionate love men and women unconsciously desire their own demise but this is the sublime. Here sublime is a vision of infinity which dissolves our identity in an agreeable kind of way. The fiction Wuthering Heights though with the use of Gothic elements evoked terror, it, nonetheless conveyed strong sublime effect with a destructive romance. Destructive passion, reflecting irrational and the grotesque associated with Gothicism. The passion of Heathcliff and Catherine is a kind of sublimation which is destructive, dangerous, and awe-inspiring and at the same time presents death, abuse, vengeance, and self-loathing, embody grotesque. Edmund Bruke's description of sublime as ''delightful horror'' that has the implication of raising up to or beyond the limit. Through self-destructive limitless passion their souls lifted up by sublime. This paper explores the sublime of this fiction; especially the destructive passion between two protagonists Catherine and Heathcliff. Heathcliff's love for Catherine which is a sentiment fierce and inhuman; a passion that tormented Catherine by its quenchless and ceaseless ravaging effect. But they elevate the soul to its highest pitch being oneness with each other. It is the life of Eros which is the painful travelling in its provocation for the bliss of extinction.

Wuthering Heights: The Quest for Continuity

ES: Revista de Filología Inglesa 31, 2010

This article explores George Bataille’s notions on eroticism in relation to Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. The main focus of this analysis are the scenes illustrating Heathcliff’s involvement in acts of necrophilia and gradual starvation, as they reflect the Bataillean ideas of continuity and discontinuity in Eroticism: Death and Sensuality, which account for the processes of union and disunion between the protagonists (Catherine and Heathcliff). Just as the French philosopher argues that the human being, despite its finite condition and determinations, seeks to go beyond its limitations and individuality, Brontë shows the different moments of rupture and the final unity of the lovers. In that sense, Heathcliff manifests an ardent desire to overcome the boundaries of his existence by giving his own life and be reunited in an act of selflessness with the body of his beloved. In doing so, he restores the cosmic flow and attains intransience and immutability beyond death.