Dr Abigail Ardelle Zammit, GF Abela Junior College

The thematic focus in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights

 Different forms of love
 Love, attachment and obsession
 Nature and the natural self
 Nature and the supernatural
 Nature vs culture
 Desire and longing
 Good and evil / morality
 Passion and self-expression
 The individual vs society
 Culture and education
 Pride and its effects
 Revenge and cruelty
 Violence and aggression
 Domesticity and the household
 Marriage, relationships and childbirth
 Religion, spirituality and the afterlife
 Identity and the real meaning of home
 Self and selfhood
 Power struggles and the abuse of power
 Paternity and fatherhood
 Death and the afterlife
 Self-destruction and starvation
 Inheritance and the law
 The role of the family
 Sadism and Masochism
 Conflict and the two households
 Social class and economic realities
 Absent mothers and orphaned children
 Children and childhood
 Oppressors and oppressed / victims and victimhood
 Women’s roles
 Males and the patriarchal setup
 Dreams, nightmares and their symbolic significance
 Imprisonment / incarceration and custody
 What constitutes freedom / the longing for freedom
 Outsiders / outcasts
 Exile and spiritual imprisonment
 Rebellion and defiance
 Survival
 Loss
 Pain / mental and emotional anguish
 Unhappiness and distress
 Deceit and betrayal
 Change
 Transience and permanence
 The role of the supernatural
 Dr Abigail Ardelle Zammit, GF Abela Junior College

Stylistic focus in Wuthering Heights

 Setting and atmosphere / mood
 Narrative strategies / narrative perspectives / multiple perspectives / conflicting
perspectives
 The role of the narrators and unreliable narration
 The importance of the second generation story
 Comparing the two generations
 Parallelism and repetition
 Time and narrative sequence
 Imagery and recurrent motifs
 Ambiguity and contradiction / conflicting truths
 Open-endedness and the novel’s conclusion
 The Gothic and its role
 The role of the Byronic hero and the demon lover
 The Romantic influence
 The epistolary form – the role of letters
 The role of letters, diary extracts and inscriptions
 The role played by dialect and direct speech

Characterization in Wuthering Heights

Apart from personality profiles, you need to be able to compare and contrast characters and
their relationships:

o The Lintons vs The Earnshaws

o Nelly and Lockwood as character-narrators
o The first Catherine and her daughter Catherine Linton
o The relationship between Nelly and the two Catherines
o The relationship between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff
o The relationship between Catherine Earnshaw and Edgar Linton
o The two Catherines vs Isabella
o Heathcliff vs Edgar Linton
o Heathcliff vs Hareton
o Heathcliff vs Linton Heathcliff
o Heathcliff and Isabella
o Heathcliff vc Catherine Linton
o Hareton vs Linton Heathcliff
o Edgar Linton vs Linton Heathcliff
o Mr Earnshaw, Hindley Earnshaw, Heathcliff, Edgar Linton in their role as fathers
o The servants: Joseph, Nelly and Zillah
o Cathy and Heathcliff’s bond vs Catherine Linton and Hareton’s love
o Catherine Linton and Linton Heathcliff vs Catherine Linton and Hareton Earnshaw
o Hindley Earshaw, Heathcliff, and Edgar Linton in their role as husbands