Chapters 1-2 of Wuthering HeightsBritish LiteratureFebruary 5, 2015

Warm – Up for 2/5/2015 Complete the anticipation

guide on the back of your character family tree.

Anticipation Guide SurveyMake a horse-shoe with the desks. We are going to use Kahoot to

survey the class answers to these thematic statements explored in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. After each round, discuss your

selections.

Happy Thesaurus Thursday! In celebration of Thesaurus

Thursday, we are going to play a vocabulary game to start acquiring these words from the first four chapters of Wuthering Heights. Some of these words you will not

know, but guess. Then, when you learn the correct answer you will have learned a new word! (or started the process of learning a new word)

Introduction to Wuthering Heights

Since it appears you need some convincing… In small groups, read the brief book

review about life lessons from Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. Discuss your favorite books. What

lessons did you learn from these books? We will also discuss the context of the

novel to give you a background to understand the story.

Wuthering Heights: Introduction

Is true love stronger than death?

Wuthering Heights: Introduction

In the late 1700s, Cathy and Heathcliff grow up together at Wuthering Heights, Cathy’s family home on the northern English moors.

Wuthering Heights: Introduction

Heathcliff arrives as a gypsy foundling. Cathy’s father, Mr. Earnshaw, raises him as a son.

Cathy is a strong-willed beauty who shares Heathcliff’s wild nature.

Wuthering Heights: Introduction

Alone together on the moors, Cathy and Heathcliff feel as if they are soul mates.

But to Heathcliff’s despair, outside forces begin to pull them apart.

Wuthering Heights: Introduction

Edgar Linton, the Earnshaws’ neighbor, draws Cathy into the genteel world of Thrushcross Grange.

Wuthering Heights: Introduction

We learn Cathy and Heathcliff’s story in flashbacks.

As the novel begins, Cathy is long dead.

Yet even in death, she has an unbreakable hold on Heathcliff.

Wuthering Heights: Introduction

Heathcliff is now master of Wuthering Heights

and also of Thrushcross Grange.

Wuthering Heights: Introduction

The wild gypsy boy has become a rich man,

and also a cold, cruel, tormented one. How? Why?

Wuthering Heights: Introduction

Wuthering Heights is a romantic tale of intense, tragic love—

the kind of love that leads to madness and destruction.

Does Heathcliff and Cathy’s love also bring hope for redemption?

Wuthering Heights: Background

The landscape of this novel is a raw, powerful force—almost a character in itself.

The novel takes place on the moors of Yorkshire in northern England.

Wuthering Heights: Background

A moor is a large, open area of marshy land.

It often has a top layer of peat, or decayed plant matter.

Peat may be dried and used for fuel.

Wuthering Heights: Background

The Yorkshire moors are covered with wild heath, or heather.

Wuthering Heights: Background

Dark sandstone crags, or cliffs, help create an atmosphere of desolation.

Wuthering Heights: Background

Emily Brontë lived most of her life in Yorkshire.

As children, she and her sisters and brother played on the moors much as Cathy and Heathcliff do in Brontë’s novel.

Wuthering Heights: Background

Not surprisingly, this landscape helped inspire the dark romanticism of Wuthering Heights.

The SettingWuthering Heights is set in three locations:

Wuthering Heights

Thrushcross Grange

The Yorkshire Moors

The Setting: Yorkshire, England

Wuthering HeightsA story of two Households…

Thrushcross Grange

Gimmerton Valley near Thrushcross Park

Looking from the Valley toward the Moors

Thrushcross Grange and the Moors

Wuthering Heights

THE “FRAME NARRATIVE”• Wuthering Heights is highly praised for the unique

narrative technique Emily Bronte used to execute the novel, often referred to as a “frame narrative.”

• The two main narrators are Lockwood and Nelly Dean, but other narrators arise throughout the novel when Nelly quotes what other characters have told her.

• The frame narrative form of the novel adds complexity for the reader. Lockwood is the outer layer and Nelly the inner layer.

• Since the story passes through layers, the reader must question the reliability of all that he or she reads. – Example: Nelly glosses over events to minimize her own guilt.– Example: Lockwood is naïve and lacks good judgment.

Novel StructureWuthering Heights is told in medias res (med-e-us race) Latin for "into the middle of things.”

It usually describes a narrative that begins, not at the beginning of a story, but somewhere in the middle — usually at some crucial point in the action. The purpose in Wuthering Heights is to add a sense of mystery.

Industrial Revolution and Social Class

Wuthering Heights was written in 1847, which was a time when Capitalism and the Industrial Revolution were the dominant forces of the British economy and society.

It was a time of rapid, often confusing, change that led to violence. As a result of the changing economy, the traditional relationships between classes and the social structure began to change.

While wealth had traditionally been measured by land ownership, the eighteenth century had begun a trend toward a cash-based economy.

This created a middle class who were more economically powerful than its landowning superiors (gentry).

The power of yeomen, or the respectable farming class, as well as the traditional power-holding gentry was challenged by the newly wealthy capitalists.

Social Class Evolution

Social Class Representation in Wuthering Heights (record on family tree)

Each of these classes is represented in the novel by various characters.

Hareton is a member of the respectable farming class

The Lintons are members of the gentry

Heathcliff makes his fortune (somewhat mysteriously) as a capitalist

Women’s RightsDuring this time period women’s rights were changing.

Why this is relevant:

Emily Brontë wrote Wuthering Heights during the beginning of the women’s rights movement in England.

The primary concerns of the movement were the lack of women’s right to vote and the lack of married women’s property rights. This property rights issue arises in Wuthering

Heights.

Romanticism, the Gothic novel, and Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights contains elements of Romanticism and the Gothic novel.

Romantic elements: nature as a powerful spiritual force descriptions of the countryside elevated emotional levels and passion a desire to rise above the limitations of ordinary

human existence a strong interest in death a portrayal of opposites – escape and pursuit, life and

death isolation, both emotional and geographical elements of the supernatural

The Gothic novelElements of the Gothic novel

a castle, sometimes ruined or haunted sinister, ruined buildings extreme landscape and weather death and madness omens ancestral curses terrifying events taboo and sensational topics a suggestion of the supernatural a villain or villain-hero (Byronic hero) driven by passion a heroine wooed by both a good and a dangerous suitor revenge

Byronic HeroHeathcliff is regarded as a classic Byronic hero.

The Byronic hero was defined by Lord Byron’s epic narrative poem , Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage in 1812.

Elements of the Byronic hero: a distaste for social institutions and social norms conflicting emotions or moodiness high levels of intelligence and cunning self-criticism mysterious origins and a troubled past self-destructive tendencies a loner, rejected from society

What is it about?

“But here’s the thing: Wuthering Heights isn’t really about Heathcliff as a hero, or Cathy as a heroine. Heathcliff himself cautions against ‘picturing in me a hero’. It’s about love. Transcendent love, operatic love, excessive, abandoned love. It’s unreasonable, this olive. It is angst and probably immature. But tornado love is more appealing than postmodern love.” –Samantha Ellis

Small Group Discussion Questions for Chapters 1 and 2 of Wuthering Heights

How would you describe the narrator, Mr. Lockwood?

Why do you think that Mr. Lockwood is drawn towards Heathcliff?

What is the symbolism of the attack of the dogs?

How would you describe Wuthering Heights (where Mr. Lockwood visits Heathcliff)?

What are your overall questions and reactions?

Homework Read and annotate chapters 3 and 4 of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.