Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights which has long been one of the most popular and highly respected novels in English literature seemed to hold no promise when it was first published. Even Emily Bronte’s sister Charlotte--the author of Jane Eyre--remained contradiction toward the intense feeling of Emily. Not long after Emily’s death, Charlotte wrote”Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know. I scarcely think it is.” as the preface of this novel.
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This novel narrates a man named Lockwood rents Thrushcross Grange which is a manor house in the isolated moor country. Here, he meets his landlord, Heathcliff, a wealthy but eccentric man who lives in Wuthering Heights, just four miles away. In the wild stormy countryside, Lockwood insists Nelly Dean, the housekeeper, on telling him the story of Heathcliff and about the unusual strangeness of the Wuthering Heights. Lockwood just writes down the recollections of her tale in his diary; and these recollections form the main part of Wuthering Heights.
This novel centers surround the story of Heathcliff. It begins with the vivid physical picture of him; develops with his insidious revenge; and ends with his deplorable death.
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Heathcliff begins his life as a homeless orphan on the streets of Liverpool. At that time, English economy was in a depressed situation, and as in the industrial areas like Liverpool, the survival environment was so appalling that the upper and middle classes both feared violent revolt. Based on this background, Heathcliff seems to represent the upper and middle classes’ anxiety toward the working classes.
Ghosts appear throughout Wuthering Heights, as they do in most other Gothic fiction. But Emily used so special a way to describe it that you can not tell whether it is really existed. But no matter what, they just symbolize the connection between the present and the past; indicate the memory has already infiltrated into people’s daily lives.
I’m so inspired by Heathcliff’s words at the end of the novel:” 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 could hinder me. But where is the use? I don't care for striking; I can't take the trouble to raise my hand!”
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These gloomy words are just the sublimation of the humane spiritual and the humanist of the author.
Yes, where is the use?
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