Download light and dark in WH

The forces and figures of darkness are
affiliated with + the value of energy and
– the threat of chaos
HEATHCLIFF
The forces and figures of light are
affiliated with + the value of order and –
the threat of sterility
EDGAR LINTON

Pure darkness makes for destruction and
anarchy

Pure light makes for sterility and stasis

How may this be applied to the
characters in Wuthering Heights?

Heathcliff, dark in nature and cut off
from the light, becomes pure destructive
energy

Linton Heathcliff, light in nature and cut
off from the energy of darkness,
becomes frozen in sterile impotence
Nietzsche called the light and dark the
Apollonian and Dionysian impulses in life.
Psychic integration depends on the
human capacity to blend the Apollonian
and Dionysian into a life of ordered
energy

The Brontës were familiar with the writings
of the major romantic poets and the
novels of Sir Walter Scott (Ivanhoe, Rob
Roy, Heart of Midlothian). When
Charlotte Brontë, for instance, wanted
an evaluation of her writing, she sent a
sample to the romantic poet Southey.

The romantic elements in the Brontës'
writings are obvious. Walter Pater saw in
Wuthering Heights the characteristic spirit of
romanticism, particularly in
› "the figures of Hareton, Earnshaw, of Catherine
Linton, and of Heathcliff–tearing open
Catherine's grave, removing one side of her
coffin, that he may really lie beside her in death–
figures so passionate, yet woven on a
background of delicately beautiful, moorland
scenery, being typical examples of that spirit."

As the details of their lives became
generally known, and as Jane Eyre and
Wuthering Heights received increasingly
favorable critical attention, Charlotte,
Emily, and Anne were cast in the role of
Romantic Rebels.
Origins: Brunty or Branty
 Lived in the rural Yorkshire moors
 Charlotte (1816), Branwell (1817), Emily
(1818), Anne (1820)
 Gypsy connection

WH exhibits childish predilections (Cathy)
 Challenges the basic assumptions of
“romantic” and “gothic”
 Romantic and gothic elements cannot
stand the sunlit world of sanity
 What endures is not the violent,
narcissistic love of Heathcliff and
Catherine, but the plausible love of
Cathy and Hareton

Heathcliff scornfully chastises Isabella for
thinking he is the hero of her imagined
romance
 He is in fact the Byronic hero, though he
testifies that he is free from the fabulous
notions of a hero in a romantic novel.
 P. 147, chapter 14

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Moody
Passionate
Cruelty
Guilt from past crime (usually sexual in nature)
Isolated/alienated
Self-destructive
Arrogant
Intelligent
Cynical
Emotionally conflicted (bipolar disorder)
Heroically defiant
Humanistic opposer of tyranny
A symbol of struggle and hope
 Split
into groups, choose your element
(look at the gothic elements handout),
and find three examples of your gothic
element.
 Write it on the board.
 Share it out and annotate your book.
Robert Kiely raises the question in The Romantic
Novel in England of whether there actually is an
English romantic novel? He skirts answering his
own question by suggesting that some novels are
influenced by Romanticism and incorporate the
same style and themes that appear in Romantic
poetry and drama. In his discussion, the term
Romantic novel is often equated with the
romance, with the Gothic novel, and with the
romantic elements in a novel. Kiely regards
Wuthering Heights as a model of romantic fiction;
it contains these romantic/Gothic elements which
characterize the romantic novel:

The dynamic antagonism or antithesis in the
novel tends to subvert, if not to reject
literary conventions; often a novel verges
on turning into something else, like poetry or
drama. In Wuthering Heights, realism in
presenting Yorkshire landscape and life and
the historical precision of season, dates,
and hours co-exist with the dreamlike and
the unhistorical; Brontë refuses to be
confined by conventional classifications.

The protagonists' wanderings are
motivated by flight from previouslychosen goals, so that often there is a
pattern of escape and pursuit. Consider
Catherine's marriage for social position,
stability, and wealth, her efforts to evade
the consequences of her marriage, the
demands of Heathcliff and Edgar, and
her final mental wandering.

The protagonists are driven by irresistible
passion–lust, curiosity, ambition, intellectual
pride, envy. The emphasis is on their desire
for transcendence, to overcome the
limitations of the body, of society, of time
rather than their moral transgressions. They
yearn to escape the limitations inherent to
life and may find that the only escape is
death. The longings of a Heathcliff cannot
be fulfilled in life.

Death is not only a literal happening or
plot device, but also and primarily a
psychological concern. For the
protagonists, death originates in the
imagination, becomes a "tendency of
mind," and may develop into an
obsession.

As in Gothic fiction, buildings are central
to meaning; the supernatural, wild
nature, dream and madness, physical
violence, and perverse sexuality are set
off against social conventions and
institutions. Initially, this may create the
impression that the novel is two books in
one, but finally Thrushcross Grange and
Wuthering Heights fuse.

Endings are disquieting and unsatisfactory
because the writer resists a definitive
conclusion, one which accounts for all
loose ends and explains away any
ambiguities or uncertainties. The preference
for open-endedness is, ultimately, an effort
to resist the limits of time and of place that
effort helps explain the importance of
dreams and memories of other times and
location, like Catherine's delirious memories
of childhood at Wuthering Heights and
rambles on the moors.