Encyclopedia Britannica logo

ArticleMediaAdditional Info

Home

Literature

Novels & Short Stories

Novelists A-K

Emily Brontë

British author

Iingun

WRITTEN BY

Joyce M.S. Tompkins

Reader in English, University of London, 1948–65. Author of The Popular Novel in England, 1770–1800.

See Article History

Alternative Titles: Ellis Bell, Emily Jane Brontë

Emily Brontë, in full Emily Jane Brontë, pseudonym Ellis Bell, (born July 30, 1818, Thornton, Yorkshire,
England—died December 19, 1848, Haworth, Yorkshire), English novelist and poet who produced but
one novel, Wuthering Heights (1847), a highly imaginative work of passion and hate set on the Yorkshire
moors. Emily was perhaps the greatest of the three Brontë sisters, but the record of her life is extremely
meagre, for she was silent and reserved and left no correspondence of interest, and her single novel
darkens rather than solves the mystery of her spiritual existence.

Emily Brontë

QUICK FACTS

Emily Brontë

View Media Page

BORN
July 30, 1818

Thornton, England

DIED

December 19, 1848 (aged 30)

Haworth, England

NOTABLE WORKS

“Wuthering Heights”

“Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell”

NOTABLE FAMILY MEMBERS

Sister Charlotte Brontë

Sister Anne Brontë

Life

Her father, Patrick Brontë (1777–1861), an Irishman, held a number of curacies: Hartshead-cum-Clifton,
Yorkshire, was the birthplace of his elder daughters, Maria and Elizabeth (who died young), and nearby
Thornton that of Emily and her siblings Charlotte, Patrick Branwell, and Anne. In 1820 their father
became rector of Haworth, remaining there for the rest of his life.

Emily Brontë

Emily Brontë

Emily Brontë, oil painting by Branwell Brontë, 1833; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London

TOP QUESTIONS

What was Emily Brontë famous for?

What were Emily Brontë’s siblings’ names?

What was Emily Brontë’s childhood like?

What did Emily Brontë write?

After the death of their mother in 1821, the children were left very much to themselves in the bleak
moorland rectory. The children were educated, during their early life, at home, except for a single year
that Charlotte and Emily spent at the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire. In 1835,
when Charlotte secured a teaching position at Miss Wooler’s school at Roe Head, Emily accompanied
her as a pupil but suffered from homesickness and remained only three months. In 1838 Emily spent six
exhausting months as a teacher in Miss Patchett’s school at Law Hill, near Halifax, and then resigned.

To keep the family together at home, Charlotte planned to keep a school for girls at Haworth. In
February 1842 she and Emily went to Brussels to learn foreign languages and school management at the
Pension Héger. Although Emily pined for home and for the wild moorlands, it seems that in Brussels she
was better appreciated than Charlotte. Her passionate nature was more easily understood than
Charlotte’s decorous temperament. In October, however, when her aunt died, Emily returned
permanently to Haworth.

Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content.

Subscribe Now

In 1845 Charlotte came across some poems by Emily, and this led to the discovery that all three sisters—
Charlotte, Emily, and Anne—had written verse. A year later they published jointly a volume of verse,
Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, the initials of these pseudonyms being those of the sisters; it
contained 21 of Emily’s poems, and a consensus of later criticism has accepted the fact that Emily’s
verse alone reveals true poetic genius. The venture cost the sisters about £50 in all, and only two copies
were sold.

By midsummer of 1847 Emily’s Wuthering Heights and Anne’s Agnes Grey had been accepted for joint
publication by J. Cautley Newby of London, but publication of the three volumes was delayed until the
appearance of their sister Charlotte’s Jane Eyre, which was immediately and hugely successful.
Wuthering Heights, when published in December 1847, did not fare well; critics were hostile, calling it
too savage, too animal-like, and clumsy in construction. Only later did it come to be considered one of
the finest novels in the English language.

Soon after the publication of her novel, Emily’s health began to fail rapidly. She had been ill for some
time, but now her breathing became difficult, and she suffered great pain. She died of tuberculosis in
December 1848.
Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë’s work on Wuthering Heights cannot be dated, and she may well have spent a long time on
this intense, solidly imagined novel. It is distinguished from other novels of the period by its dramatic
and poetic presentation, its abstention from all comment by the author, and its unusual structure. It
recounts in the retrospective narrative of an onlooker, which in turn includes shorter narratives, the
impact of the waif Heathcliff on the two families of Earnshaw and Linton in a remote Yorkshire district at
the end of the 18th century. Embittered by abuse and by the marriage of Cathy Earnshaw—who shares
his stormy nature and whom he loves—to the gentle and prosperous Edgar Linton, Heathcliff plans a
revenge on both families, extending into the second generation. Cathy’s death in childbirth fails to set
him free from his love-hate relationship with her, and the obsessive haunting persists until his death; the
marriage of the surviving heirs of Earnshaw and Linton restores peace.

Sharing her sisters’ dry humour and Charlotte’s violent imagination, Emily diverges from them in making
no use of the events of her own life and showing no preoccupation with a spinster’s state or a
governess’s position. Working, like them, within a confined scene and with a small group of characters,
she constructs an action, based on profound and primitive energies of love and hate, which proceeds
logically and economically, making no use of such coincidences as Charlotte relies on, requiring no rich
romantic similes or rhetorical patterns, and confining the superb dialogue to what is immediately
relevant to the subject. The sombre power of the book and the elements of brutality in the characters
affronted some 19th-century opinion. Its supposed masculine quality was adduced to support the claim,
based on the memories of her brother Branwell’s friends long after his death, that he was author or part
author of it. While it is not possible to clear up all the minor puzzles, neither the external nor the
internal evidence offered is substantial enough to weigh against Charlotte’s plain statement that Emily
was the author.

Joyce M.S. Tompkins

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

LEARN MORE in these related Britannica articles:

Nicolaus Copernicus: heliocentric system

English literature: The Brontës

Emily Brontë united these diverse traditions still more successfully in her only novel, Wuthering...…

Aeschylus

tragedy: A new vehicle: the novel

The English novelist Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847), in its grim Yorkshire setting, reflects...…

Charlotte Brontë

Charlotte Brontë: Life

…for the remaining three girls—Charlotte, Emily, and Anne—and a boy, Branwell. Their upbringing was
aided...…

newsletter icon

HISTORY AT YOUR FINGERTIPS

Sign up here to see what happened On This Day, every day in your inbox!

Email address

Email address

By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Notice.

Inspire your inbox – Sign up for daily fun facts about this day in history, updates, and special offers.

Enter your email

Enter your email

By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia
Britannica.

Click here to view our Privacy Notice. Easy unsubscribe links are provided in every email.

About Us & Legal Info

Partner Program

Contact Us

Privacy Notice

Terms of Use

©2021 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Emily-Bronte

World Biography
Search...

World Biography

Br-Ca

Emily Brontë Biography

Emily BrontË Biography

Born: August 20, 1818

Thornton, Yorkshire, England

Died: December 19, 1848

Haworth, Yorkshire, England

English novelist

Emily Brontë was one of three English sisters who had books published in the mid-1800s. Her only major
work, Wuthering Heights, is considered one of the greatest novels in the history of literature.

Early years and imaginary worlds

Emily Brontë was born in Thornton in Yorkshire, England, on August 20, 1818, the daughter of Patrick
and Maria Branwell Brontë. Her father had been a schoolteacher and tutor before becoming an Anglican
minister. She grew up in Haworth in the bleak West Riding area of Yorkshire. Except for an unhappy year
at a religious school (described by her sister Charlotte as the Lowood Institution in Jane Eyre ), Emily's
education was provided at home by her father, who let his children read freely and treated them as
intellectual equals. The early death of their mother and two older sisters drew the remaining children
close together.

Living in an isolated village, separated socially and intellectually from the local people, the Brontë sisters
(Charlotte, Emily, and Anne) and their brother Patrick Branwell spent the majority of their time in made-
up worlds. They described these imaginary worlds in poems and tales and in "magazines" written in
miniature script on tiny pieces of paper. As the children grew older, their personalities changed. Emily
and Anne created the realm of Gondal. Located somewhere in the north, it was, like West Riding, a land
of wild moors (open, grassy areas unsuitable for farming). Unlike Charlotte and Patrick's dream world
called Angria, Gondal's laws reflected those of the real world. But this did not mean that Emily found it
any easier than her sister to live

Emily Brontë.

Emily Brontë.

happily as a governess or schoolteacher, which seemed to be their only options for the future.

When, at the age of seventeen, Emily attempted formal schooling for the second time, she suffered a
breakdown after three months. She began a teaching position the following year but had to give that up
as well. In 1842 she accompanied her sister Charlotte to Brussels, Belgium, for a year to study languages.
During this time she impressed the professor as having a finer, more powerful mind than her sister. In
October of that year, however, the death of an aunt brought the sisters back home to Haworth. Emily
would spend the rest of her life there.

Back home and writing

Emily Brontë did not mind the isolation of Haworth, as being outdoors in the moors gave her a feeling of
freedom. Here she experienced the world in terms of forces of nature that cannot be considered good
or evil. She believed in the presence of supernatural powers (such as ghosts or spirits) and began to
express her feelings in poems such as "To Imagination," "The Prisoner," "The Visionary," "The Old Stoic,"
and "No Coward Soul."

After Emily Brontë and her sisters discovered that they had all been writing poetry, the three of them
put together a collection of poems written under pseudonyms (fake names) that was published in 1846.
It did not attract any attention. The sisters then decided to each write a novel and submit all three jointly
to publishers. Emily's Wuthering Heights was published in 1847. Set in the moors, it is a story of love and
revenge involving a character named Heathcliff, who was abandoned by his parents as an infant, and his
effect on two neighboring families. Critical reaction was negative, at least partly due to the many errors
in the first printing. Later Wuthering Heights came to be considered one of the great novels of all time.
Emily Brontë died of tuberculosis at Haworth on December 19, 1848. Refusing all medical attention, she
struggled to perform her household tasks until the end.

For More Information

Chitham, Edward. A Life of Emily Brontë. New York: B. Blackwell, 1987.

Frank, Katherine. A Chainless Soul: A Life of Emily Brontë. Boston: Houghton Mufflin, 1990.

User Contributions:

1correctionAug 14, 2012 @ 2:05 pm

emily bronte was born july 30th 1818 not august 20th

Comment about this article, ask questions, or add new information about this topic:

Your Name...

Your E-mail...

Show my email publicly

Public Comment: (50-4000 characters)

Your comment...

Emily Brontë Biography forum

Brontë, Charlotte Brooks, Gwendolyn

© 2021 Advameg, Inc.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.notablebiographies.com/amp/Br-Ca/Bront-Emily.html
Skip to content

British Literature Wiki

MENU

British Literature Wiki

Emily Brontë

WH.jpeg

A Declaration of Catherine and Heathcliff’s Love

The Life of Emily Brontë

Biographical Information:

Emily Brontë was born on July 30th 1818 in Thornton, Yorkshire, which is located in England. She was
born to her mother, Maria Branwell Brontë and her father, Patrick Brontë and was the fifth of six
children. Unfortunately, Emily and her family lost her mother early on, just shortly after her younger
sister Anne, who eventually became a writer too, was born. As a result of losing her mother, Emily’s
maternal aunt, Elizabeth Branwell, took on the responsibility as mother and caretaker of the family and
came to assist the family. Both Patrick and Elizabeth Branwell were Methodists and this is where she got
some of her religious education. Tragedy struck the Brontë family once again when Emily was seven
when her two older sisters, Elizabeth and Maria died from tuberculosis (Brownson). After this, Emily’s
father made the decision to keep his daughters at home instead of sending them back to school. It is
perhaps this turn of events that helped Emily and her two sisters become writers since most of their free
time was now spent at home reading and brainstorming and exchanging stories between siblings. Emily,
her two sisters Charlotte and Anne, her brother and even her father are all said to have had great
imaginations and creativity. Though Emily had many deaths in her family her upbringing was reported as
surprisingly normal. (Brownson)

Emily went on to write almost 200 poems in her life but only a small fraction were published in her life
time (Brownson). Her only novel,Wuthering Heights, is one of her most famous works. Emily was often
seen as a very strange woman who never was able to leave this isolation. This made her seem even
more mysterious and created many myths about her. Not much is known about the last the last couple
of years of Emily’s life except for the fact that her family continued to be cursed with sickness. This
included her father becoming nearly blind and her brother dying from consumption (also known as
tuberculosis) in September 1848. She became sick with consumption and refused medical attention in
October 1848. Emily sadly died at the age of 30 only a few months later on December 9 (Brownson).
Throughout the Victorian Era, social class was an important topic of debate and that can be seen
throughout Wuthering Heights. This topic clearly influences Emily’s work since society was very
concerned with one’s social class as well as the restricted rights for women, despite a women’s social
class status. Emily describes how one’s social class affects his or her character rather than discussing the
issue as a satire. Throughout her work, Emily displays afocus on the fact that actions have consequences
and that the characteristics that one displays is very important to their overall character as a person. Her
focus on the issues of conduct also helps to contribute to make Wuthering Heights a realistic novel.
During this time period there was also a loss of optimism and a sense of uncertainty in what was to
come. This may be reflected in Emily’s work as Wuthering Heights constantly has people dying rather
unexpected and most of the people end up living pretty miserable lives.

Assessment of Wuthering Heights

Family Connections

BronteSisters-large.jpg

The Brontë sisters

Emily wrote Wuthering Heights, but it was Charlotte who edited and published the novel after Emily’s
death, in addition to penning the preface to the work (it was originally published in 1847, a year before
Emily died and three years before Charlotte’s edition was published). Charlotte additionally added a
Biographical Notice, publicly admitting for the first time that the mysterious authors Currer, Ellis, and
Action Bell were in fact three women (Ref 2). Charlotte takes the preface as a chance to both praise her
sister’s work and express doubt on the inclusion of some of the controversial elements.

The Preface reveals that, while Charlotte admired her sister’s work, she was not afraid to point to its
“faults,” or to debate the controversial elements of Wuthering Heights. She discusses the great loss that
many readers will experience, as anyone unfamiliar with the passions and wildness of northern England
will not be able to appreciate Emily’s skill in representing these qualities. She also acknowledges that
Emily–a woman not inclined to converse with the people around her yet knew much about them by
listening–may have had a darker view of people than most; as Charlotte claims, when all one knows of
people is facts about them, the mind clings to “tragic and terrible traits,” which stick out in memory.
Charlotte also expresses doubt that it is “right or advisable” for her sister to have written a character as
dark as Heathcliff; however, she notes that it hardly matters, because the writer is “not always master”
of her art, and “little deserve[s] blame” if her creative product is unattractive (Ref 3). Even having
pointed to these faults, though, Charlotte herself does not even hint at the contention that any of these
elements make Wuthering Heights of lesser quality. In fact, she ends her Preface first on the concept
that Emily–or an author, for that matter–is not necessarily responsible for the controversial elements of
the novel, at least the ones that she addresses in the Preface. She also notes that, despite all this,
Wuthering Heights is an impressive work, and ends her Preface on that note.

Themes

Race/Social Class

Wuthering Heights mainly follows characters Heathcliff and Catherine. Healthcliff comes from a gypsy
background, and is adopted into the Earnshaw family. Both the father and the daughter, Catherine, are
very welcoming to Heathcliff. Hindley Earnshaw however, is not very welcoming. Much like the
Wuthering Heights society, Heathcliff isconsidered a beast because of both his ethnicity and also his
poor economic background.

The way that Heathcliff is treated reflects the moral intent of Wuthering Heights, which is to criticize
society and the definition of civilization. Following the in the tradition of other famous Victorian
novelists, Wuthering Heights fiercely criticizes certain elements of society. Emily Brontë’s writing implies
that the concept of civilization promotes selfishness, that organized religion is hypocritical, and that the
basis for family life is not love, but greed. Each of these criticisms are typical of Victorian writing; all can
easily be found in Emily’s sister’s writing, or even in Dickens’ novels. Heathcliff’s family, the Earnshaws,
are the vehicles for many of these criticisms. Mrs. Earnshaw’s desire to be rid of Heathcliff, in particular,
reflects a selfishness seen as acceptable within the world of the novel. Additionally, the behavior of the
Earnshaw family demonstrates the contention that family life in the society of the time was built around
the desire for wealth or power. Brontë moves outside the family in order to criticize organized religion.
The character Joseph is hypocritical in typical Victorian fashion (Robert Browning takes the same
approach in “Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister”): he sees everyone damned but himself, but any outside
observer can tell that he is truly selfish and worse than those he condemns.

Love

Despite these social differences Catherine and Heathcliff fall in love. As a child Catherine is described as
being wicked, and she did whatever she pleased. Heathcliff would have followed her anywhere. Yet, as
they grew older their love became overshadowed by social status. Heathcliff knows that Catherine
would never marry him without having any prospects. He leaves to make something of himself to
impress Catherine. When Heathcliff returns he discovers that Catherine had already married a man
named Linton. Linton came from a wealthy family with high social status. Both Catherine and Heathcliff
know that Catherine married merely for money and class. Upon learning of her marriage Healthcliff tries
in a doomed attempt to convince Catherine to be with him. He explains “if he loved with all the powers
of puny being, he couldn’t love much as in eighty years as I could in a single day.”

Catherine even tells Nelly “My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff’s miseries, and I
watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and
he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe
would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it.—My love for Linton is like the foliage in
the woods: time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff
resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am
Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to
myself, but as my own being. So don’t talk of our separation again: it is impracticable.” (Bronte, 79)

Unfortunately, Catherine chooses vanity and wealth above the love that they share. She later dies with
regret wishing that she had spent her life with Heathcliff.

Revenge

Throughout most of the novel Heathcliff is constantly looking for revenge. He does everything he can to
hurt those who are related to Catherine and Edgar. Healthcliff marries Edgars sister in order to spite him
and Catherine. Throughout their marriage he treats his wife with hate because she is not Catherine. He
also holds distaste for his own son because of his Isabel. Healthcliffs last act of revenge was hiring
Catherine’s daughter to work for him. He treats her horribly because she reminds him of Catherine, he
believes the birth killed Catherine, and because he wasn’t her father.

Supernatural

The ghost of Catherine haunts Heathcliff constantly. Her ghost drives him insane, but he would rather be
insane than live in a world without Catherine in it. At the end of the novel Heathcliff is found dead in the
Moors after walking with Catherines ghost.

Symbols

Ghosts
Catherines ghost drives Healthcliff to insanity. Her ghost reminds him of the pain of not being able to be
with her.

Yet, it also brings him peace. Knowing that Catherines spirit never left him makes him feel whole.

Upon Heathcliffs death he is seen happy and smiling with Catherines ghost. He died happy and at peace
because he was with Catherine.

Catherine’s ghost represents Heathcliffs longing but also his peace

The Moors

moors.jpg

Example of Moors

The Moors symbolizes youth and freedom. This was the place Heathcliff and Catherine would run away
together as children.

It represented hope and contrasted with Wuthering Heights where they could not be together and had
to uphold to social expectations.

In comparison to society, the Moors were wild and unpredictable. It was a place for Catherine and
Healthcliff to dream. Meanwhile, once back in society those dreams are crushed.

Other Works

Emily Brontë’s canon is not as extensive as that of other Victorian writers, in part due to her early death.
Additionally, Wuthering Heights is by far the most famous of her works. However, she did have a history
of talented writing, and was also a poet in addition to being novelist. Her poetry was published in the
volume Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846) under the pen name Ellis Bell.

This might be helpful

https://sites.udel.edu/britlitwiki/files//2018/06/Emily20Bronte20Biography.pdf

Works Cited

E‍‍ditors, Biography.com. Emily Brontë. 23 10 2015. 20 4 2017.

<http://www.biography.com/people/emily-bronte-9227381>.
Heathcliff and Catherine Image:
https://sites.udel.edu/britlitwiki/files//2018/06/il_340x270.1105653303_r6sx.jpg

Moors Image: https://sites.udel.edu/britlitwiki/files//2018/06/wensleydale_yorkshire_dales_0.jpg

Family Image: https://sites.udel.edu/britlitwiki/files//2018/06/BronteSisters-large-1.jpg

Brownson, Siobhan Craft. “Emily Brontë.” Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, n.d. Web. 23 Apr.
2017. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/emily-bronte>‍‍

Shapiro, Arnold. “Wuthering Heights as a Victorian Novel.” DISCovering Authors, Gale, 2003. Student
Resources in Context, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/EJ2101202067/SUIC?u=lblesd&xid=e1927b23.
Accessed 28 Apr. 2017.

Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights. 1847. New York: Penguin Books, 2003.

Contributors

Heather McAdams

Alyssa Ainsworth

Kaitlyn Kaczka

Lauren Heiges

Search for:

Search …

SEARCH

Medieval and Renaissance Literature

The Restoration and the 18th Century

The Romantics

The Victorians

The Twentieth Century

British Literature Wiki Proudly powered by WordPress

https://sites.udel.edu/britlitwiki/emily-bronte/

Skip to main content

EXPLORE

English Literature, 19th cent.: Biographies

Emily Bronte

Brontë, Emily

Views 1,855,037

Updated May 21 2018

Emily Brontë

BORN: 1818, Yorkshire, England

DIED: 1848, Yorkshire, England

NATIONALITY: British

GENRE: Fiction, poetry

MAJOR WORKS:

Wuthering Heights (1847)

Overview

Emily Brontë is considered one of the most important yet elusive figures in nineteenth-century English
literature. Although she led a brief and sheltered life, she left behind some of the most passionate and
inspired writing in Victorian literature. Today, her reputation rests primarily

on her only novel, Wuthering Heights, which has attracted generations of readers and critics and is a
literary classic.

Works In Biographical And Historical Context

Early Tragedies Emily Jane Brontë was born on July 30, 1818, at the parsonage at Thorton in Yorkshire,
England, the fifth child and fourth daughter of the Reverend Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell Brontë.
She was raised by her father and maternal aunt at his new parson-age in Haworth following her
mother's death in 1821. In 1825, she was sent to the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge, but she
returned home when her sisters Maria and Elizabeth became ill at the institution and died.

Literary Life at Haworth In 1826, Patrick Brontë bought a set of wooden toy soldiers for his children,
which opened up a rich fantasy world for Emily and her siblings Charlotte, Branwell, and Anne. Emily and
Anne later invented a romantic legend centered upon the imaginary Pacific Ocean island of Gondal. The
realm of Gondal became a lifelong interest for Brontë and, according to many scholars, was a major
imaginative source for her writings. Beginning in 1826, Brontë also began making drawings and sketches
of natural subjects such as birds to which she was drawn for the remainder of her life. Her close
observations of birds, animals, plants, and the changing skies over Haworth formed a significant part of
the poetry she began writing at an early age.

Although Brontë was intellectually precocious, she also was painfully shy. She briefly attended a school
in East Yorkshire in 1835 and worked as an assistant teacher at a school around 1838, but living away
from home was too difficult for her. She returned home, writing poetry and attending to household
duties until 1842, when she and Charlotte, hoping to acquire the language skills needed to establish a
school of their own, took positions at a school in Brussels. There were limited career opportunities for
British women of this time period, with teaching being one of the few options. The death of Brontë's
aunt later that year, however, forced Brontë to return to Haworth again, where she lived for the rest of
her life.
Brontë's Poetry In 1845, Charlotte discovered one of Emily's private poetry notebooks. At Charlotte's
urging, Emily reluctantly agreed to publish some of her poems in a volume that also included writings by
her sisters. Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, reflecting the pseudonyms adopted by Charlotte,
Emily, and Anne, was published in May 1846. While only two copies of the book were sold, at least one
commentator, Sydney Dobell, praised Emily's poems, singling her out in the Athenaeum as a promising
writer and the best poet among the “Bell” family.

Her poetry is difficult to evaluate and interpret, as it was not written for publication, though she did
revise much of her early work in 1844. Some of what has been preserved can be discounted as
immature early drafts. Much of it deals with the fantasy world of Gondal, which is a barrier to the proper
appreciation of the poetry.

Completed Only Novel Wuthering Heights Brontë had been working on Wuthering Heights (1847), which
was published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell in an edition that also included Anne's first novel, Agnes
Grey. Brontë's masterpiece was poorly received by contemporary critics who, repelled by the vivid
portrayal of malice and brutality in the book, objected to the “degrading” nature of her subject. In the
nineteenth century, as women began writing and publishing more fiction, critics often gave negative
assessments of their works based solely on the author's gender. Such critics believed women lacked the
worldly experience, critical judgment, and rationality to write works of value despite a rapid rise in
works written by women and for an expanding female audience.

LITERARY AND HISTORICAL CONTEMPORARIES

Brontë's famous contemporaries include:

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848): Sixth president of the United States; established the Monroe Doctrine,
stating that foreign governments were not allowed to interfere with U.S. affairs and that America in turn
would stay neutral toward Europe, as long as no military actions were taken in the Americas.

George, Lord Byron (1788–1824): English Romantic poet with a famously scandalous life; his 1812–1816
poem Childe Harold's Pilgrimage established the Byronic hero as romantic and tortured.
Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850): French novelist and playwright, considered one of the creators of
realism in French literature; his characters are multidimensional and complex, rather than simply good
or bad.

Mary Shelley (1797–1851): British writer, married to Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley; her best-
known work is the 1818 novel Frankenstein.

Nat Turner (1800–1831): American slave, who led a bloody rebellion in Virginia against white
Southerners before being caught and hanged; in the aftermath, Virginia debated abolishing slavery but
narrowly decided to continue it.

Brontë worked on revising her poetry after publishing Wuthering Heights, but her efforts were soon
interrupted. Her brother Branwell died in September 1848, and Emily's own health began to decline
shortly afterward. She was suffering from tuberculosis, an airborne infectious disease that attacks the
lungs. The slow-killing

disease was common in the nineteenth century, especially in England and the United States, because of
close quarters often created by intense industrialization and urbanization. In accordance with what
Charlotte described as her sister's strong-willed and inflexible nature, Brontë apparently refused medical
attention and died of the disease on December 19, 1848, at the age of thirty.

Works In Literary Context

In her writings, Brontë's exploration of the self, the imagination, and the visionary associate her more
closely with Romantic poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth than with
Victorian writers such as Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Robert Browning. She was a serious poet, who, like
her peer Emily Dickinson, wrote dozens of poems with no intention of publishing or even showing them
to her family.

Antiromance Many of Brontë's Gondal poems as well as her novel are viewed as being antiromantic.
Unlike the Romantic poets William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Lord Bryon, Brontë's idea of love
does not enforce eternity but ruthlessly refuses it. In Wuthering Heights, the setting is cold, dreary, and
barren, and the protagonist Heathcliff is curiously mean and calculating, unlike John Milton's Satan in
Paradise Lost or the heroes of Lord Byron's works.
Critic Helen Brown was one of the first to point out the influence of George Gordon, Lord Byron, on
Brontë's Gondal characters and their isolation, passions, dark crimes, and darker thoughts. The influence
of Sir Walter Scott and Percy Bysshe Shelley on Brontë's poetry is also clear.

Works In Critical Context

Even though Brontë is more distinguished as a novelist than as a poet, scholars regard her poetry as a
significant part of her work. Critical assessment of Brontë is divided over the question of whether to
assess her poems separately from the Gondal mythology or to retain the Gondal context in order to
clarify obscure references and provide dramatic and thematic unity. While Wuthering Heights was met
with general perplexity upon its original publication, by the early twentieth century Brontë was hailed as
one of the most important women novelists of the nineteenth century. The novel was considered one of
the most powerful and original works in Victorian literature, incorporating elements of the Gothic novel,
the Romantic novel, and the social criticism found in a Victorian novel.

Importance of Poetry In particular, lacking firsthand information concerning Brontë's life and opinions,
commentators have looked to the poems as a source of insight into Brontë's personality, philosophy,
and imagination. Critics have attempted to reconstruct a coherent Gondal “epic” from Brontë's poems
and journal entries. In addition, critics have consequently noted many similarities between the
passionate characters and violent motifs of Gondal and Wuthering Heights, and today, a generous body
of criticism exists supporting the contention that the Gondal poems served as a creative forerunner of
the novel.

Wuthering Heights Initially, critics failed to appreciate Emily Brontë's literary significance. While
commentators acknowledged the emotional power of Wuthering Heights, they also rejected the
malignant and coarse side of life that it depicted. Charlotte Brontë responded to this latter objection in
1850, defending the rough language and manners in her sister's novel as realistic, but apologizing for the
dark vision of life in the book, which she attributed to Emily's reclusive habits.

This focus on Brontë's aloofness, combined with the mystical aspects of her poetry and the supernatural
overtones of Wuthering Heights, created an image of the writer as a reclusive mystic that dominated
Brontë criticism into the twentieth century. Writing about the novel in 1900, William Dean Howells of
Harper's Bazaar saw slightly more to the work, commenting that Brontë “bequeathed the world at her
early death a single book of as singular power as any in fiction; and proved herself, in spite of its
defective technique a great artist, of as realistic motive and ideal as any who have followed her.”
COMMON HUMAN EXPERIENCE

Though Wuthering Heights is a story about love and passion, the theme of revenge is equally important,
as Heathcliff returns to carry out a vengeful plan. Here are some other classic works that include the
theme of revenge:

Elektra (c. 425 b.c.e.), a play by Sophocles. This play focuses on an extreme example of family
misfortune. Electra convinces her brother Orestes to avenge their father's murder by killing their
mother, Clytemnestra.

The Count of Monte Cristo (1844), a novel by Alexandre Dumas. The novel is a romantic tale of power,
adventure, and revenge, as its protagonist, Edmond Dantès, seeks justice against those who betrayed
him.

“The Cask of Amontillado” (1946), a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. This well-known short story features
a protagonist who is verbally insulted and avenges his honor by killing a man in a macabre way.

Hamlet (1601 or 1602), a play by William Shakespeare. In this revenge play, the readers wait for Hamlet
to gather enough evidence before he avenges his father's murder.

Charles Percy Sanger's 1926 monograph was one of the first modern studies to bring Brontë's
craftsmanship to light. As a result, scholars discovered the sophistication and complexity of her images,
characterizations, themes,

and techniques in Wuthering Heights. Psychological aspects also gained attention in the late twentieth
century as Brontë continued to be regarded as an influential novelist.

Responses To Literature

After reading Wuthering Heights, hold a discussion about Heathcliff and his actions. How does his social
class influence his actions?
Little is known about Emily Brontë's life, and some scholars try to get hints from her poetry. Read several
of Brontë's poems and discuss what you think the poems reveal about her.

Create a chart that lists examples of both Romantic and Gothic elements in Wuthering Heights.

Using the Internet and/or your library's resources, conduct research on Emily's sisters Charlotte and
Anne. Review their main works and compare them with Emily's Wuthering Heights.

Emily Brontë created an imaginary world—the island of Gondal—a world she used in her writing. With a
partner, create an original story about Gondal. Who lives there? What do they do? What does the island
look like?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Barker, Juliet. The Brontës. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995.

Cecil, David. Early Victorian Novelists. London:Constable, 1934.

Eagleton, Terry. Myths of Power. London: Macmillan, 1975.

Gérin, Winifred. Emily Brontë. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971.

Leavis, F. R., and Q. D. Leavis. Lectures in America. London: Chatto & Windus, 1969.

Sanger, C. P. The Structure of “Wuthering Heights”. London: Hogarth Press, 1926.

Smith, Anne, ed. The Art of Emily Brontë. London: Vision Press, 1976.

Periodicals

Allott, Miriam. “Wuthering Heights. The Rejection of Heathcliff?” Essays in Criticism 8 (1958): 27–47.
Brown, Helen. “The Influence of Byron on Emily Brontë.” Modern Language Review 34 (July 1939): 374–
81.

Howells, William Dean. “Heroines of Nineteenth-Century Fiction: The Two Catherines of Emily Brontë.”
Harper's Bazaar. (December 29, 1900).

Web Sites

Bronte Parsonage Museum. The Brontë Parsonage Museum and Brontë Society. Retrieved April 11,
2008, from http://www.bronte.info/

Gale Contextual Encyclopedia of World Literature

Brontë, Emily

Views 3,918,146

Updated May 21 2018

Emily BrontË

Born: August 20, 1818

Thornton, Yorkshire, England

Died: December 19, 1848

Haworth, Yorkshire, England

English novelist

Emily Brontë was one of three English sisters who had books published in the mid-1800s. Her only major
work, Wuthering Heights, is considered one of the greatest novels in the history of literature.

Early Years And Imaginary Worlds

Emily Brontë was born in Thornton in Yorkshire, England, on August 20, 1818, the daughter of Patrick
and Maria Branwell Brontë. Her father had been a schoolteacher and tutor before becoming an Anglican
minister. She grew up in Haworth in the bleak West Riding area of Yorkshire. Except for an unhappy year
at a religious school (described by her sister Charlotte as the Lowood Institution in Jane Eyre ), Emily's
education was provided at home by her father, who let his children read freely and treated them as
intellectual equals. The early death of their mother and two older sisters drew the remaining children
close together.

Living in an isolated village, separated socially and intellectually from the local people, the Brontë sisters
(Charlotte, Emily, and Anne) and their brother Patrick Branwell spent the majority of their time in made-
up worlds. They described these imaginary worlds in poems and tales and in "magazines" written in
miniature script on tiny pieces of paper. As the children grew older, their personalities changed. Emily
and Anne created the realm of Gondal. Located somewhere in the north, it was, like West Riding, a land
of wild moors (open, grassy areas unsuitable for farming). Unlike Charlotte and Patrick's dream world
called Angria, Gondal's laws reflected those of the real world. But this did not mean that Emily found it
any easier than her sister to live happily as a governess or schoolteacher, which seemed to be their only
options for the future.

When, at the age of seventeen, Emily attempted formal schooling for the second time, she suffered a
breakdown after three months. She began a teaching position the following year but had to give that up
as well. In 1842 she accompanied her sister Charlotte to Brussels, Belgium, for a year to study languages.
During this time she impressed the professor as having a finer, more powerful mind than her sister. In
October of that year, however, the death of an aunt brought the sisters back home to Haworth. Emily
would spend the rest of her life there.

Back Home And Writing

Emily Brontë did not mind the isolation of Haworth, as being outdoors in the moors gave her a feeling of
freedom. Here she experienced the world in terms of forces of nature that cannot be considered good
or evil. She believed in the presence of supernatural powers (such as ghosts or spirits) and began to
express her feelings in poems such as "To Imagination," "The Prisoner," "The Visionary," "The Old Stoic,"
and "No Coward Soul."

After Emily Brontë and her sisters discovered that they had all been writing poetry, the three of them
put together a collection of poems written under pseudonyms (fake names) that was published in 1846.
It did not attract any attention. The sisters then decided to each write a novel and submit all three jointly
to publishers. Emily's Wuthering Heights was published in 1847. Set in the moors, it is a story of love and
revenge involving a character named Heathcliff, who was abandoned by his parents as an infant, and his
effect on two neighboring families. Critical reaction was negative, at least partly due to the many errors
in the first printing. Later Wuthering Heights came to be considered one of the great novels of all time.

Emily Brontë died of tuberculosis at Haworth on December 19, 1848. Refusing all medical attention, she
struggled to perform her household tasks until the end.

For More Information

Chitham, Edward. A Life of Emily Brontë. New York: B. Blackwell, 1987.

Frank, Katherine. A Chainless Soul: A Life of Emily Brontë. Boston: Houghton Mufflin, 1990.

UXL Encyclopedia of World Biography

Emily Brontë

Views 2,910,215

Updated Jun 11 2018

Emily Brontë

The English novelist Emily Brontë (1818-1848) wrote only one novel, "Wuthering Heights." A unique
achievement in its time, this work dramatizes a vision of life controlled by elemental forces which
transcend conventional categories of good and evil.

Emily Brontë was born in Thornton on Aug. 20, 1818, the daughter of an Anglican minister. She grew up
in Haworth in the bleak West Riding of Yorkshire. Except for an unhappy year at a charity school
(described by her sister Charlotte as the Lowood Institution in Jane Eyre), her education was directed at
home by her father, who let his children read freely and treated them as intellectual equals. The early
death of their mother and two older sisters drove the remaining children into an intense and private
intimacy.
Living in an isolated village, separated socially and intellectually from the local people, the Brontë sisters
(Charlotte, Emily, and Anne) and their brother Branwell gave themselves wholly to fantasy worlds, which
they chronicled in poems and tales and in "magazines" written in miniature script on tiny pieces of
paper. As the children matured, their personalities diverged. She and Anne created the realm of Gondal.
Located somewhere in the north, it was, like the West Riding, a land of wild moors. Unlike Charlotte and
Branwell's emotional dreamworld Angria, Gondal's psychological and moral laws reflected those of the
real world. But this did not mean that she found it any easier than her sister to submit herself to the
confined life of a governess or schoolmistress to which she seemed inevitably bound. When at the age
of 17 she attempted formal schooling for the second time, she broke down after 3 months, and a
position as a teacher the following year proved equally insupportable despite a sincere struggle. In 1842
she accompanied Charlotte to Brussels for a year at school. During this time she impressed the master as
having the finer, more powerful mind of the two.

The isolation of Haworth meant for Brontë not frustration as for her sister, but the freedom of the open
moors. Here she experienced the world in terms of elemental forces outside of conventional categories
of good and evil. Her vision was essentially mystical, rooted in the experience of a supernatural power,
which she expressed in poems such as "To Imagination," "The Prisoner," "The Visionary," "The Old
Stoic," and "No Coward Soul."

Brontë's first publication consisted of poems contributed under the pseudonym Ellis Bell to a volume of
verses (1846) in which she collaborated with Anne and Charlotte. These remained unnoticed, and
Wuthering Heights (1847) was unfavorably received. Set in the moors, it is the story of the effect of a
foundling named Heathcliff on two neighboring families. Loving and hating with elemental intensity, he
impinges on the conventions of civilization with demonic power.

Brontë died of consumption on Dec. 19, 1848. Refusing all medical attention, she struggled to perform
her household tasks until the end.

Further Reading

Elizabeth Gaskell, The Life of Charlotte Brontë (2 vols., 1857), is a basic source. Charles W. Simpson,
Emily Brontë (1929), is reliable and incorporates subsequently revealed material. See also Muriel Spark
and Derek Stanford, Emily Brontë: Her Life and Work (1953). □

Encyclopedia of World Biography

Brontë, Emily

Views 1,964,373

Updated Jun 08 2018

EMILY BRONTË

(1818 - 1848)

(Also wrote under the pseudonym of Ellis Bell) English novelist and poet.

EMILY BRONTË: INTRODUCTION

EMILY BRONTË: PRINCIPAL WORKS

EMILY BRONTË: PRIMARY SOURCES

EMILY BRONTË: GENERAL COMMENTARY

EMILY BRONTË: TITLE COMMENTARY

EMILY BRONTË: FURTHER READING

Feminism in Literature: A Gale Critical Companion

Brontë, Emily

Views 2,773,108

Updated May 23 2018

Brontë, Emily (1818–48) English novelist and poet. Like her sisters, Anne Brontë and Charlotte Brontë,
Emily wrote under a male pseudonym ( Ellis Bell). Her love for her native Yorkshire moors and insight
into human passion are manifested in her poetry and her only novel, Wuthering Heights (1847).

World Encyclopedia

More From encyclopedia.com

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Charlotte Bronte

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Matthew Arnold

Rupert Brooke

W.h. Auden

ABOUT THIS ARTICLE

Emily Bronte

Updated Aug 13 2018

About encyclopedia.com content

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Brontë, Anne

A Nocturnal Reverie

Lord Tennyson, Alfred

Rossetti, Christina

What The Poets Could Have Been

Beat Movement

Beat Movement

Women's Literature From 1900 To 1960: Overviews

NEARBY TERMS

Emily Blackwell

Emily

Emiliani, Jerome, St.

Emilian

Emilia Of Orange (1569–1629)

Emile Zola

Emile Michel Hyacinthe Lemoine

Emile Gagnan

Emile Berliner

Emile

Emil Kraepelin

Emil Heinrich Du Bois-Reymond

Emil G. Racovita

Emil Artin

Emil And The Detectives

Emil Adolphe Von Behring

Emil Adolf Von Behring

Émigré Literature

Emigration And Colonies

Emigrate

Emigrants

Emigrant Woman Saying Goodbye

Emigrant Savings Bank

Emigrant Aid Movement

Emigrant Aid Company

Emily Bronte

Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights

Emily's List

Emims

Emin Foundation
Emin Pasha

Emincé

Eminem 1972–

Éminence Grise

Eminent

Eminent Domain (Update)

Eminent Victorians

Emiot, Israel

Emir

Emir (Amir)

Emirates Of The South, Federation Of The

Emirians

Emirians (United Arab Emirates)

Emirzyan, Sirvard (1966–)

Emissaries Of Divine Light

Emissary

Emissary Veins

Emission Control, Power Plant

Emission Rights

Emission Standards

Emissions Standards

Footer menu

HOMEABOUT US

HELP

SITE FEEDBACK
PRIVACY & COOKIE POLICY

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

DAILY

© 2019 Encyclopedia.com | All rights reserved.

AN ELITE CAFEMEDIA PUBLISHER

https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/english-literature-19th-cent-
biographies/emily-bronte

HomeAbout UsAcknowledgements

crossref-it.info

Wuthering Heights

The context of Wuthering Heights

Educational context

Contents

Guide

Recent

Educational context

Education in Victorian England

Emily Brontë’s education

Education in Victorian England

Education was not universal during Emily Brontë’s lifetime. Many people, particularly in the new
industrial slums, received little or no formal education and were unable to read or write:

Long established schools such as Eton and Winchester had existed for hundreds of years, but were only
accessible to the wealthy and powerful, and this period saw the establishment of many more of these
public schools
There were also old grammar schools, usually in towns and cities, which offered education to some
poorer students, but places were limited and they were accessible only to boys

There were elementary schools (i.e., junior and infant schools), often set up by either the Church of
England or Nonconformist churches

There were also various kinds of charity school, established for particular kinds of pupils, such as the
daughters of poor or deceased clergymen

Other schools were established as small-scale private charities

Trades unions and other organizations also set up various kinds of educational establishments, aimed at
improving the education of adult members of the working classes

Some educational provisions were included in the Factory Acts of the 1830s and 1840s.

It was not until 1870, twenty-two years after Emily Brontë’s death, that the Education Act was passed
and made a significant start on the provision by the government of universal elementary education, a
process which was completed by the Act of 1902.

Emily Brontë’s education

Roe Head School plaqueEmily Brontë enjoyed three short periods of formal or semi-formal education:

1824-25 at Cowan Bridge School

1835 at Roe Head School

1842 at the Pensionnat Heger in Brussels.

In addition, she made a short stay (1838-9) at Law Hill School, Halifax as a teacher. At the first two of
these schools, she would have learnt mathematics, grammar, history, geography, drawing, needlework
and some French. At the Pensionnat Heger, she studied French.

The most important part of her education, however, took place at Haworth Parsonage:

Her father was well-educated and well-read and allowed her the free run of his library – here, she could
read history, philosophy, and theology as well as fiction, poetry and drama

She and her sisters were able to borrow further books from local libraries and institutions
She benefited not only from her father’s conversation but also from the company of two sisters and a
brother who were equally enthusiastic about reading and writing.

Though the biggest influence on Wuthering Heights is Emily’s surroundings, it is possible to see the
effect of her reading in the novel (See Literary Context) and she shows us the importance of reading, as
well as its limitations. (See Imagery: Books)

Scan and go

Scan on your mobile for direct link.

Copyright © crossref-it.info 2021 - All rights reserved

https://crossref-it.info/textguide/wuthering-heights/35/2461

Awards and Citation

Skip to Content

POETRY FOUNDATION

POEMS

POETS

PROSE

COLLECTIONS

LISTEN

LEARN

VISIT

POETRY MAGAZINE

ABOUT US

Newsletter

Search
Search by Poem or Poet

Emily Brontë

1818–1848

Painting of Emily Bronte

DIT Archive / Alamy Stock Photo

The only poems by Emily Brontë that were published in her lifetime were included in a slim volume by
Brontë and her sisters Charlotte and Anne titled Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846), which
sold a mere two copies and received only three unsigned reviews in the months following its
publication. The three notices were positive, however, especially with respect to the contributions of
Ellis Bell—Emily Brontë. The writer of the review in the 4 July 1846 Athenaeum, for example, noted
her "fine quaint spirit" and asserted that she had "things to speak that men will be glad to hear,—and
an evident power of wing that may reach heights not here attempted." It seemed in 1848, the year of
Emily's death, as if this potential were never to be realized. However, Brontë's twenty-one
contributions to Poems represented only a fraction of the nearly two hundred poems collected by C.
W. Hatfield in his noteworthy edition, The Complete Poems of Emily Jane Brontë (1941). Several
factors combined to delay the publication of a complete, accurately edited collection of Brontë's
poems: her sister Charlotte, who in her heavy-handed revision of seventeen unpublished poems by
Brontë to accompany the 1850 edition of Wuthering Heights, first published in 1847, went so far as to
add lines and whole stanzas; the wide dispersal of Brontë's manuscripts after their sale in 1895 by
Charlotte's widower, Arthur Bell Nicholls; and finally the difficulty in reading the manuscripts, some of
which Brontë wrote in a tiny, crabbed script on irregular bits of paper. Ranging from 1836 to 1846—
fortunately, Brontë dated all but about a dozen of her poems—these verses reveal that she had
indeed reached the heights attempted in the poems in the 1846 volume.

Unfortunately the student of Brontë's biography cannot rely on the signposts she left on her
manuscripts and must try to reconstruct her life from a scarcity of material. The plays and stories she
wrote with her sister Anne about the imaginary land of Gondal have not survived. Her other prose
consists of seven essays in French, a few notes, and four birthday letters she exchanged with Anne.
Much of what we know about Brontë is seen at a remove, through Charlotte's writings about her or
Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of Charlotte. Myths about the family abound, but Brontë seems to be
the most mysterious figure of all of them. She is alternately the isolated artist striding the Yorkshire
moors, the painfully shy girl-woman unable to leave the confines of her home, the heterodox creator
capable of conceiving the amoral Heathcliff, the brusque intellect unwilling to deal with normal
society, and the ethereal soul too fragile to confront the temporal world. There is probably an
element of truth as well as hyperbole in each of these views. Again, the fault lies in part with
Charlotte, who in her effort to assuage the critical charge of "coarseness" aimed at the author of
Wuthering Heights wrote a "Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell" to accompany the 1850
edition of that novel and Anne's Agnes Grey. Of Brontë she wrote, "Under an unsophisticated culture,
inartificial tastes, and an unpretending outside, lay a secret power and fire that might have informed
the brain and kindled the veins of a hero; but she had no worldly wisdom; her powers were
unadapted to the practical business of life. An interpreter ought always to have stood between her
and the world." The real identity of the poet who created the fierce queens of Gondal and the
visionaries of the subjective poetry lies somewhere between the shadowy myths about Brontë and
the documented facts.

Emily Brontë was born on 30 July 1818 in the parsonage at Thornton in Yorkshire to the Reverend
Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell Brontë, the fifth of their sixth children after Maria, Elizabeth,
Charlotte, and Branwell and the only daughter to be given a middle name. Both parents displayed
literary ambitions; Patrick Brontë's The Cottage in the Wood, an Evangelical tale supporting Sunday
schools and castigating the evils of drinking, was published in 1815, and during the same year Maria
Branwell wrote an apparently unpublished piece titled "The Advantages of Poverty, in Religious
Concerns," a sincere and pious essay exhorting the faithful to care for the poor. In the year of Emily's
birth Patrick's novella The Maid of Killarney was also published. Though Brontë continued throughout
her life to observe her father's writing of sermons, articles, fiction, and poetry, she lost the example of
her bright and vivacious mother shortly after the family's move to Haworth in 1820. Weakened by the
birth of six children in as many years (Anne was born 17 January 1820), Maria Branwell was unable to
fight off illness and died of cancer on 15 September 1821. Her sister, Elizabeth Branwell, moved into
the parsonage that same month to help Patrick care for his young family.

That Yorkshire played an important role in Brontë's life and art is indisputable. Except for several brief
absences, she chose to spend her remaining years at the parsonage. However, many of the myths
surrounding her life arise from the time immediately after her mother's death, including the isolation
of Haworth, the harsh eccentricities of her father, the dour Methodism of Aunt Branwell, and the
abnormal upbringing of the Brontë children. Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857),
while admirable in many ways, was responsible for some of these errors. Recent biographies,
especially Juliet Barker's The Brontës (1995), have sought to correct these misconceptions. Barker
points out that Haworth was a "busy, industrial township," that Patrick was an involved and caring
father who was ordained in the Church of England and was heavily influenced by the Evangelical and
Methodist teachings he encountered while studying in Cambridge, that Aunt Branwell's upbringing as
a Wesleyan Methodist brought her closer to the gentler Church of England than to severe Calvinist
beliefs, and that the six Brontë children enjoyed a "perfectly normal childhood" filled with games,
lessons, religious education, and walks on the moors. Close in age and temperament, they provided
each other with plenty of diversions. The Brontës' nursemaid, Sarah Garrs, reported that the
children's games "were founded upon what Maria read to them from the newspapers, and the tales
brought forth from the father's mines of tradition, history, and romance." Emily's participation in the
playacting and daily walks would later significantly influence both her poetry and her fiction.
In 1824 several important changes occurred in the Brontë household. First, Sarah Garrs and her sister
Nancy left the family, and Tabitha Aykroyd was engaged. Tabby remained with the Brontës until her
death in 1855 and was accorded a place in the Haworth parsonage that far exceeded that of a mere
servant. One of the few recorded incidents from Brontë's childhood also occurred during this year and
illustrates the normalcy of the Brontë children's upbringing as well as the interest of their father in
their development. Patrick Brontë, in helping Gaskell collect appropriate information for her
biography of Charlotte, wrote her in a 30 July 1855 letter that he had used a mask to elicit honest
responses from his children to his individual queries, "thinking that they knew more than I had yet
discovered." He gave each one the mask and "told them all to stand and speak boldly." He asked
Brontë, then aged about six, what he should do with her brother, Branwell, "who was sometimes a
naughty boy." She answered, "Reason with him, and when he won't listen to reason, whip him." This
answer seems to have arisen more from Emily's experience as a member of a large, active, and noisy
set of siblings than from a quiet, doleful, and studious group.

More importantly, 1824 was the year that Patrick sent all of his daughters except Anne to Cowan
Bridge School, a "School for Clergymen's Daughters." Patrick, though in possession of a perpetual
curacy at Haworth, owned no land or inheritance and therefore had few options for providing for the
future of his children. As in most Victorian families the bulk of the family income would be spent on
the son's education. Yet Patrick knew he needed to enable his daughters to seek livings, most
probably as teachers or governesses, and hence they needed to be educated. Miss Evans, the
superintendent of the new school, called Brontë a "darling child" and "little petted Em," and the
admissions register referred to her as "quite the pet nursling of the school." Tragically for the Brontë
sisters, during the time they attended Cowan Bridge School it closely resembled the fictional Lowood
School presented by Charlotte in Jane Eyre (1847). The staff at Cowan Bridge School was careless with
respect to food preparation, and during the winter the rooms were often cold. The Brontë sisters had
always been susceptible to coughs and colds, and the difficult physical conditions at Cowan Bridge
most likely hastened Maria's and Elizabeth's contraction of consumption. They were sent home to die
in 1825; after Patrick saw how ill Elizabeth was, he went to Cowan Bridge to collect Charlotte and
Brontë himself. According to most biographers the deaths of their elder sisters most profoundly
affected Charlotte, who had more complete memories of their deceased mother and now had also
lost the sisters who had filled the maternal role. As Barker notes, all of Charlotte's heroines were
orphans, and nearly all of the children in Wuthering Heights also become motherless. In her poetry
many of Brontë's Gondal characters are also motherless, orphaned, or the children of parents who
abandon them.

Between 1826 and 1829 Emily began music lessons, completed samplers, and made drawings and
sketches of the natural subjects such as birds to which she was drawn for the remainder of her life.
Her close observations of birds, animals, plants, and the changing skies over Haworth form a
significant part of her poetry. During this time Branwell acquired several sets of toy figures such as
soldiers, Turkish musicians, and Indians. These toys were the impetus for the founding of the
imaginary lands of Angria and Gondal. The children began to write plays about the figures, with Emily
and Charlotte composing "bed plays" that they kept secret from the adults as well as from Branwell
and Anne. In "Tales of the Islanders" (1829) Charlotte gave a history of the early plays, underscoring
Emily's early affiliation with the works of Sir Walter Scott, for she chose the Isle of Arran for her island
and Scott for her "cheif [sic] man." This affinity grew with Aunt Branwell's 1828 New Year's gift to "her
dear little nephew and nieces," a copy of Scott's The Tales of a Grandfather (1827-1829). In addition to
Scott's works the Brontë children drew material for their plays from the family library of Aesop's
Fables, The Arabian Nights' Entertainment, and wood-engraver Thomas Bewick's History of British
Birds. Their most important influence during these early years was most likely Blackwood's Magazine,
whose satires, political commentaries, and extensive book reviews provided them with a wealth of
detail that seeded their imaginations throughout their early years of creativity.

In 1831, after Charlotte left for Roe Head School, Emily and Anne began to concentrate their energies
exclusively on the Gondal saga, distinct from the Angrian fantasies of their brother and sister, a
special form of imaginative play in which the two younger sisters alone engaged for the remainder of
their lives. Emily's first mention of Gondal occurs in her diary paper for 24 November 1834, a series of
notes written by Emily and Anne about every four years and the earliest piece of Brontë's writing to
have survived. The first paragraph of the entry reads, "Taby said just now Come Anne pilloputate (i.e.
pill a potato) Aunt has come into the kitchen just now and said where are you feet Anne Anne
answered On the floor Aunt papa opened the parlour door and gave Branwell a letter saying here
Branwell read this and show it to your Aunt and Charlotte--The Gondals are discovering the interior of
Gaaldine Sally Mosley is washing in the back kitchen." In addition to noting the astonishing absence of
punctuation conventions in the sixteen-year-old Emily's diary entry, critics uniformly point to her
seamless fit of the imaginary Gondal into the fabric of everyday events in the Brontë kitchen.

Scholars such as W. D. Paden in An Investigation of Gondal (1958) have deftly recovered much of the
history of Gondal despite Charlotte's destruction of the plays and prose after her sisters' deaths, from
the birthday notes, the undated lists of character names Anne wrote, the list of place names she
wrote into a copy of J. Goldsmith's A Grammar of General Geography (1819), and Emily's and Anne's
Gondal poems. Most recognize, however, their own creative responsibility in such a reconstruction,
for while Brontë wrote almost seventy poems that are undoubtedly part of the Gondal story, the
majority of her poems cannot always be attributed to Gondal, and many are clearly more personal
lyrics. Scholars therefore find Fannie Ratchford's Gondal's Queen: A Novel in Verse (1955), an attempt
to fit the whole of Brontë's poetic output into the Gondal fantasy, an interesting but far-fetched
effort. What can be determined is that Gondal, according to Anne, was "a large island in the North
Pacific" and that Gaaldine was "a large island newly discovered in the South Pacific." The rigorous
scenery of these islands derives much from Scott's fiction and is filled with mountains, heather, and
snow. The Gondal stories concern impetuous royalty, political intrigue, love thwarted and abandoned,
wars, murders, and assassinations. In a noteworthy article in 1939 Helen Brown was one of the first
critics to point out the influence of George Gordon, Lord Byron, on Brontë's Gondal characters and
their isolation, passions, dark crimes, and darker thoughts. The main character in Brontë's Gondal
poems, the speaker of at least fourteen and the subject of many others, is the passionate, dark-haired
queen Augusta G. Almeda, or A.G.A., perhaps based on Mary, Queen of Scots and the young Queen
Victoria, in whose accession to the throne Brontë took a good deal of interest. A secondary character
is Julius Brenzaida, king of Almedore in Gaaldine.

Critical reception of the Gondal poems has been uneven. Some critics reject them for their
melodrama, formulaic qualities, and simplistic meters and rhymes. Recently, however, feminist critics
have taken special note of the prominent role played by the queen, A.G.A. Christine Gallant, for
example, calls attention to the fact that Gondal is "a mythic world emphatically excluding the real
world" known to Victorian women, controlled by a "dominating presence of female figures." Teddi
Lynn Chichester believes that Brontë was continually working through her own loss of significant
female figures, that "through Augusta, Brontë could explore, in private, her need to create a powerful,
even indestructible" woman, and that A.G.A. "ultimately reinforced the disturbing connection
between mortality and the feminine" that is such a potent undercurrent in Western literature.
Richard Benvenuto points out that without the years Brontë spent "developing her Gondal
imagination, the mature imagination she did attain would have been a considerably different mode of
vision." While a knowledge of the facts of Gondal can deepen the reader's understanding of Brontë's
creative life, we can still appreciate the poems for their merits apart from their place in the Gondal
saga. In writing the Gondal poems Brontë took on different voices and personae, and the themes of
imprisonment and death that inform her better-known poetry were first explored therein. The dark
and overpowering emotions first manifested in these poems certainly fed her invention of Catherine
and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights.

The luxury Brontë enjoyed of freely flowing from domestic responsibilities at the parsonage to the
world of Gondal and the mental and emotional sustenance she found therein was cut short in July
1835, when she accompanied Charlotte, now a teacher, to Roe Head. For Brontë--removed from her
routine for the first time since she was six years old, extremely reticent and impatient with the other
pupils in the school--the experiment was unhappy and unsuccessful. Moreover, because her daily
schedule was now rigidly proscribed, she had no time to engage in the intellectually sustaining
creation of the Gondal stories, and she was no longer living with Anne, her partner in the fantasy.
Charlotte later recalled her firm belief that Brontë "would die if she did not go home, and with this
conviction obtained her recall." Charlotte understood only too well the void caused by the absence of
"sources purely imaginary": she too grieved for her inability to interact with her visions of Angria. The
combination of homesickness and creative deprivation forced Brontë home in October 1835, but her
dependence on Yorkshire to free her poetic originality should not be overstated. She forced herself to
leave home again two more times, to teach at Law Hill and to study in Brussels, and these journeys
broadened rather than stultified her inventive abilities.

Brontë spent the three years following her return from Roe Head at home, and since Anne had
replaced her at the school, she became responsible for many of the domestic duties at the parsonage,
especially after Tabby broke her leg. Brontë found time, however, to continue the Gondal saga and,
more importantly, to practice her poetic craft. Though traumatic, her brief time at Roe Head and
subsequent return to Haworth evidently intensified a new resolve to concentrate on her poetry. Her
first extant poems are from 1836 and display some of the treatments of nature and death she was to
concentrate on for the remainder of her life. For example, in "Will the day be bright or cloudy?" and
"High waving heather 'neath stormy blasts ending," a poem Stevie Davies calls a "precocious bravura
piece," Brontë adapts her close observation of natural phenomena to poems that examine and accept
the two-faceted essence of the day's evolution and the changing weather. In "Start not upon the
minster wall" she explores the comforting rather than threatening affinity of the living and the dead.

Brontë's diary paper of 26 June 1837 records Anne's writing of a poem, her own work on a volume of
Augusta Almeda's life, Queen Victoria's accession to the throne, and her corresponding interest in the
coronation of the emperors and empresses of Gondal and Gaaldine. She wonders where she and her
siblings will be in four years and expresses three times the hope that whether they are in "this
drawing room comfortable" or "gone somewhere together comfortable" that all will be for the best.
The note is observant and cheerful and perhaps reflects the satisfaction Brontë took in her extensive
composition of poetry during the year. Poems such as "The night of storms has passed," "A.G.A. to
A.E.," "Now trust a heart that trusts in you," and "Song by Julius Angora" reveal a poetic exploration
of Gondal corresponding to her Gondal prose. Her other poems from this period are somewhat
problematic for critics in that, as Derek Roper says, they "plainly deal with fictional situations" yet do
not belong to the Gondal cycle. Throughout her poetic career Brontë assumed personae who did not
necessarily speak for her, and while it is difficult to assign certain poems to her own voice, it is
important to be wary of attaching too much significance to the thoughts and feelings expressed in this
fictional poetry. However, a poem from 1837 underscores in what seems to be Brontë's voice her
need to express herself in poetry. The speaker asks heaven why it has denied the "glorious gift to
many given / To speak their thoughts in poetry" and wonders why she cannot transmute her visions,
available to her since "careless childhood's sunny time," into poetry. An aspect of this need can also
be found in "I'll come when thou art saddest," a poem written in 1837, in which the speaker is the
imagination, what Barker calls "the great comforter," upon which all of the Brontës relied for
sustenance and consolation.
Brontë continued her poetic productivity throughout 1838, from which twenty-one dated poems have
survived. Also surviving from this time are fragments of her translation of Virgil's Aeneid and notes on
Greek tragedies, evidence that tends to contradict the fallacy that Brontë's was an uneducated mind
from which sprang an amazing quantity of poetry and the remarkable Wuthering Heights. Sometime
in the autumn of 1838 she made the surprising decision to accept a teaching position at Law Hill, a
girls' school outside Halifax, a fact recorded in a letter from Charlotte to Ellen Nussey that, though
dated October 1836, Edward Chitham revealed was postdated October 1838. Benvenuto speculates
that Brontë went to Law Hill because she felt guilty enjoying the pleasures of home while her sisters
were laboring at Roe Head. Though Charlotte wrote to Ellen Nussey that Brontë's duties at Law Hill
constituted "slavery," Barker points out that Brontë had time to write what she calls "three
outstanding poems." One of these was "A little while, a little while," a poem in which Brontë
synchronizes the "dungeon bars" of her duties at school and her disparate choices of imagining during
her "hour of rest" either the comforts of Hawthorn, the "spot 'mid barren hills," or Gondal with its
"distant, dreamy dim blue chain / Of mountains circling every side." Charlotte was correct in surmising
that Brontë would "never stand" the "hard labour" at Law Hill--she left the school in March or April
1839, worn out by homesickness and the lack of time she could devote to poetry and Gondal. Her
return home again freed her from the "dungeon bars"; though she apparently wrote no poetry during
the first three months of 1839, she left twenty-nine dated poems from the remainder of the year. She
revisits some of her favorite natural subjects in poems such as "Mild the mist upon the hill" and "The
starry night shall tidings bring," though often nature is unable to give solace to grief-stricken speakers.
Brontë takes a more philosophical approach in "I am the only being whose doom," in which the
speaker despairs to find "the same corruption" in "my own mind" as she has seen in all of "mankind,"
and "There was a time when my cheek burned," in which the speaker finds that her ardent devotion
to truth, right, and liberty are misplaced, for the "same old world will go rolling on" unaffected by her
passion or her indifference.

In her 30 July 1841 birthday note Brontë, though pleased that she and her family are all "stout and
hearty," expressed her wish that four years hence she and her sisters will no longer be "dragging on"
but will have carried out their "scheme" for setting up a school of their own. Though ultimately the
plan was never realized, Emily and Charlotte attempted to improve their teaching prospects by
studying French with Constantin Heger at the Pensionnat Heger, a boarding school for girls in Brussels,
arriving in February 1842. After he recognized the sisters' intellectual strengths and their aptitude for
French, Heger personally tutored them, having them read and analyze works in French and then
compose their own essays based on these models. Though Brontë was unable to complete any poems
while she was in Brussels, her composition of a prose allegory, "Le Palais de la Mort," influenced the
second of the two poems she began, "Self-Interrogation." Both essay and poem personify Death, and
in the poem Death logically convinces the human speaker in the dialogue that his life has been empty
and that he has nothing left to live for. As Janet Gezari points out, "despite the ray of hope in the last
two lines, this poem is among Brontë's glummest," its bitterness surely reflective of Aunt Branwell's
November 1842 death, which caused Brontë and Charlotte to depart the Pensionnat for Haworth.
Though Charlotte returned to Brussels in January 1843, Brontë remained in Yorkshire for the
remainder of her life.

In February 1844 Brontë began to copy her poems into two notebooks, one titled "Gondal Poems,"
the other left untitled. Though early critics such as Winifred Gérin distinguished Gondal poems from
"personal" poems on the basis of Brontë's division, later critics such as Roper and Barker caution
against rigidity in approaching the poetry in this way. The act of copying itself suggests that Brontë
took her poetry seriously and wanted to have a more permanent structure for it than scraps of paper
allowed, even if at this point she did not even contemplate publication. In the autumn of 1845,
however, a momentous discovery occurred. Charlotte recalled, "I accidentally lighted on a MS. volume
of verse in my sister Emily's handwriting." Despite Brontë's anger and sense of betrayal at her sister's
"unlicensed" intrusion, its "taking hours to reconcile her to the discovery" Charlotte had made and
"days to persuade her that such poems merited publication," Brontë eventually was won over to the
idea of sending her work out to publishers along with some by Charlotte and Anne. The sisters spent
the remainder of the year selecting and revising their poetry, Brontë choosing poems largely written
in 1844 and 1845 and being careful to delete any references to the private Gondal. They took the
pseudonyms Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell and agreed to publish Poems at their own expense with the
publishing company of Aylott and Jones in 1846.

Many critics agree that Brontë's poetry from Poems is her strongest. Lawrence J. Starzyk, for example,
calls attention to the "beautiful lyrics" of "A Day Dream," where the "sustained dialogue of the mind
with itself is masterfully executed as the despondent narrator converses with the joyous spirit of
nature." Davies refers to "To Imagination" as "that classic, rational and balanced defence of
imagination as an alternative faculty to reason." Barker believes that "The Prisoner," originally a
Gondal poem, is "rightly one of Emily's most famous, as it includes the powerful and intensely
emotional description of the captive's vision." Perhaps because Derek Stanford thinks that Brontë
wrote only six major poems, his reading of "Death" and the "vertiginous and vertical excitement that
seems to give this poem wings" is particularly striking. In one of the few stylistic analyses of Brontë's
poetry C. Day Lewis finds that the effect of the rhythm in "Remembrance" is "extremely powerful,
extremely appropriate" and that "it is the slowest rhythm I know in English poetry, and the most
sombre." Roper concludes simply that "the selection that Emily made for 1846 includes some of her
best poems."

Other than a long narrative Gondal poem from late 1846 and a shorter incomplete revision of the
same from May 1848, Emily's last poem, much anthologized and perhaps the most commented upon,
was "No Coward Soul Is Mine," written in January 1846. Tom Winnifrith calls it a "fitting culmination
of Emily's poetic work," admiring the fineness of its "pantheistic vision"; Starzyk finds that the
contradiction in the poem "represents a profound insight into the nature of the universe and man's
attempt at finding permanence therein." This creation of a minister's daughter is indeed astonishing
for its blunt rejection of orthodox religion--

Vain are the thousand creeds

That move men's heart, unutterably vain

Worthless as withered weeds

Or idlest froth amid the boundless main

--coupled with its embrace of a truer and more sustaining omnipresence of God:
With wide-embracing love

Thy spirit animates eternal years

Pervades and broods above,

Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears.

Brontë reveals her ability to actually know the supreme being who is the Alpha and Omega of whom
she learned in the Bible when she was but a small child:

Though Earth and moon were gone

And suns and universes ceased to be

And thou were left alone

Every existence would exist in thee.

Barker points out that "No Coward Soul Is Mine" is the "only statement of its kind in all of Brontë's
extant writings," and so readers should not be quick to assume that the speaker is Brontë herself.
However, the immediacy of the poem and the authenticity of the voice suggest that Brontë was not
taking on a persona but indeed sharing her deeply felt relationship with God. We will unfortunately
never know if she intended to continue to write poetry in this vein. Whether she was too dismayed by
the lack of response to Poems or too distracted by the composition of Wuthering Heights, Brontë
devoted little of her remaining two years to writing poetry.

In a 6 April 1846 letter Charlotte wrote to Aylott and Jones that "C., E., and A. Bell are now preparing
for the press a work of fiction, consisting of three distinct and unconnected tales": Charlotte's The
Professor (1857), Emily's Wuthering Heights, and Anne's Agnes Grey. Thomas Newby eventually
consented to publish the latter two novels, which came out in December 1847. The first reviewers
were mystified and puzzled by the strangeness and savagery of Wuthering Heights, although nearly all
recognized the seductive power of the novel and the original vision of its author. Twentieth-century
critics have recognized the ways in which the Gondal poetry, with its isolated and terrifying scenery,
its passionate and grief-stricken characters, provided Emily with a wide stage on which to rehearse
the similar scenery of Wuthering Heights and the characters of Cathy and Heathcliff in the novel.
However, the critic who perhaps most perceptively synthesized the poetic and fictional halves of
Emily's creative aptitude wrote at the end of the nineteenth century. A fellow poet, Algernon
Swinburne, referred to Wuthering Heights in a 16 June 1883 article as "essentially and definitely a
poem in the fullest and most positive sense of the term."

Little is known of the last two years of Emily's life, although her family endured some severe trials.
Patrick was nearly blinded by cataracts, and Branwell, who had never realized his artistic potential,
had returned home dependent on alcohol and disgraced because of an affair with his employer's wife.
Branwell became ill with what probably was consumption in early September 1848 and died later that
month. Emily Brontë fell ill with consumption in October 1848 and refused all medical help, claiming
that even homeopathy "was only another form of quackery." She steadily grew weaker and died on
19 December 1848. She was thirty years old.
The student of Emily Brontë's poetry must sort through various contradictions in order to approach
her work with even a little confidence. She wrote most of her poetry during what is technically the
Victorian period, but her exploration of the self, the imagination, and the visionary associate her more
closely with Romantic poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth than with
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Robert Browning. She was a woman poet who did not bemoan the lack of
"literary grandmothers," as Elizabeth Barrett Browning did, and seemed to have little familiarity with
female predecessors such as Felicia Hemans and Letitia Elizabeth Landon. She was a serious poet who,
like her peers Emily Dickinson, John Clare, and, later, Gerard Manley Hopkins, wrote dozens of poems
with no intention of publishing or even showing them to her family. She is far better known for her
one mind-searing novel than for her poetry, but since early in the twentieth century few years have
passed without some article, book, or new edition devoted to her verse. Her life remains an enigma;
her poetry refuses easy classification. Yet Brontë's fierce willingness to confront in her poetry the
most profound intellectual, theological, and emotional challenges to the human spirit assures her a
continuing place in the minds of readers who seek guidance through those obstacles in poetry.

— Siobhan Craft Brownson, Winthrop University

POEMS BY EMILY BRONTË

Ah! Why, Because the Dazzling Sun

Fall, leaves, fall

I Am the Only Being Whose Doom

See All Poems by Emily Brontë

RELATED CONTENT

RELATED COLLECTIONS

Love Poems

Poetry and Feminism

An Introduction to the Victorian Era

RELATED ARTICLES

Painted Ladies

See All Related Content

MORE ABOUT THIS POET

School/Period:

Ah! Why, Because the Dazzling Sun

Fall, leaves, fall

I Am the Only Being Whose Doom

[Long Neglect Has Worn Away]

Love and Friendship

The night is darkening round me

No Coward Soul Is Mine

['Often rebuked, yet always back returning']

Plead for Me

Remembrance

Shall earth no more inspire thee

from Silent is the House

Poetry Foundation Children

Poetry Magazine

CONTACT US

NEWSLETTERS

PRESS

PRIVACY POLICY

POLICIES

TERMS OF USE

POETRY MOBILE APP

61 West Superior Street,

Chicago, IL 60654

Hours:

Monday-Friday 11am - 4pm

© 2021 Poetry Foundation

See a problem on this page?

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/emily-bronte

Skip to Content

POETRY FOUNDATION

POEMS

POETS

PROSE

COLLECTIONS

LISTEN

LEARN

VISIT

POETRY MAGAZINE

ABOUT US

Newsletter

Search

Search by Poem or Poet

Emily Brontë

1818–1848

Painting of Emily Bronte

DIT Archive / Alamy Stock Photo

The only poems by Emily Brontë that were published in her lifetime were included in a slim volume by
Brontë and her sisters Charlotte and Anne titled Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846), which
sold a mere two copies and received only three unsigned reviews in the months following its
publication. The three notices were positive, however, especially with respect to the contributions of
Ellis Bell—Emily Brontë. The writer of the review in the 4 July 1846 Athenaeum, for example, noted
her "fine quaint spirit" and asserted that she had "things to speak that men will be glad to hear,—and
an evident power of wing that may reach heights not here attempted." It seemed in 1848, the year of
Emily's death, as if this potential were never to be realized. However, Brontë's twenty-one
contributions to Poems represented only a fraction of the nearly two hundred poems collected by C.
W. Hatfield in his noteworthy edition, The Complete Poems of Emily Jane Brontë (1941). Several
factors combined to delay the publication of a complete, accurately edited collection of Brontë's
poems: her sister Charlotte, who in her heavy-handed revision of seventeen unpublished poems by
Brontë to accompany the 1850 edition of Wuthering Heights, first published in 1847, went so far as to
add lines and whole stanzas; the wide dispersal of Brontë's manuscripts after their sale in 1895 by
Charlotte's widower, Arthur Bell Nicholls; and finally the difficulty in reading the manuscripts, some of
which Brontë wrote in a tiny, crabbed script on irregular bits of paper. Ranging from 1836 to 1846—
fortunately, Brontë dated all but about a dozen of her poems—these verses reveal that she had
indeed reached the heights attempted in the poems in the 1846 volume.

Unfortunately the student of Brontë's biography cannot rely on the signposts she left on her
manuscripts and must try to reconstruct her life from a scarcity of material. The plays and stories she
wrote with her sister Anne about the imaginary land of Gondal have not survived. Her other prose
consists of seven essays in French, a few notes, and four birthday letters she exchanged with Anne.
Much of what we know about Brontë is seen at a remove, through Charlotte's writings about her or
Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of Charlotte. Myths about the family abound, but Brontë seems to be
the most mysterious figure of all of them. She is alternately the isolated artist striding the Yorkshire
moors, the painfully shy girl-woman unable to leave the confines of her home, the heterodox creator
capable of conceiving the amoral Heathcliff, the brusque intellect unwilling to deal with normal
society, and the ethereal soul too fragile to confront the temporal world. There is probably an
element of truth as well as hyperbole in each of these views. Again, the fault lies in part with
Charlotte, who in her effort to assuage the critical charge of "coarseness" aimed at the author of
Wuthering Heights wrote a "Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell" to accompany the 1850
edition of that novel and Anne's Agnes Grey. Of Brontë she wrote, "Under an unsophisticated culture,
inartificial tastes, and an unpretending outside, lay a secret power and fire that might have informed
the brain and kindled the veins of a hero; but she had no worldly wisdom; her powers were
unadapted to the practical business of life. An interpreter ought always to have stood between her
and the world." The real identity of the poet who created the fierce queens of Gondal and the
visionaries of the subjective poetry lies somewhere between the shadowy myths about Brontë and
the documented facts.
Emily Brontë was born on 30 July 1818 in the parsonage at Thornton in Yorkshire to the Reverend
Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell Brontë, the fifth of their sixth children after Maria, Elizabeth,
Charlotte, and Branwell and the only daughter to be given a middle name. Both parents displayed
literary ambitions; Patrick Brontë's The Cottage in the Wood, an Evangelical tale supporting Sunday
schools and castigating the evils of drinking, was published in 1815, and during the same year Maria
Branwell wrote an apparently unpublished piece titled "The Advantages of Poverty, in Religious
Concerns," a sincere and pious essay exhorting the faithful to care for the poor. In the year of Emily's
birth Patrick's novella The Maid of Killarney was also published. Though Brontë continued throughout
her life to observe her father's writing of sermons, articles, fiction, and poetry, she lost the example of
her bright and vivacious mother shortly after the family's move to Haworth in 1820. Weakened by the
birth of six children in as many years (Anne was born 17 January 1820), Maria Branwell was unable to
fight off illness and died of cancer on 15 September 1821. Her sister, Elizabeth Branwell, moved into
the parsonage that same month to help Patrick care for his young family.

That Yorkshire played an important role in Brontë's life and art is indisputable. Except for several brief
absences, she chose to spend her remaining years at the parsonage. However, many of the myths
surrounding her life arise from the time immediately after her mother's death, including the isolation
of Haworth, the harsh eccentricities of her father, the dour Methodism of Aunt Branwell, and the
abnormal upbringing of the Brontë children. Elizabeth Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857),
while admirable in many ways, was responsible for some of these errors. Recent biographies,
especially Juliet Barker's The Brontës (1995), have sought to correct these misconceptions. Barker
points out that Haworth was a "busy, industrial township," that Patrick was an involved and caring
father who was ordained in the Church of England and was heavily influenced by the Evangelical and
Methodist teachings he encountered while studying in Cambridge, that Aunt Branwell's upbringing as
a Wesleyan Methodist brought her closer to the gentler Church of England than to severe Calvinist
beliefs, and that the six Brontë children enjoyed a "perfectly normal childhood" filled with games,
lessons, religious education, and walks on the moors. Close in age and temperament, they provided
each other with plenty of diversions. The Brontës' nursemaid, Sarah Garrs, reported that the
children's games "were founded upon what Maria read to them from the newspapers, and the tales
brought forth from the father's mines of tradition, history, and romance." Emily's participation in the
playacting and daily walks would later significantly influence both her poetry and her fiction.

In 1824 several important changes occurred in the Brontë household. First, Sarah Garrs and her sister
Nancy left the family, and Tabitha Aykroyd was engaged. Tabby remained with the Brontës until her
death in 1855 and was accorded a place in the Haworth parsonage that far exceeded that of a mere
servant. One of the few recorded incidents from Brontë's childhood also occurred during this year and
illustrates the normalcy of the Brontë children's upbringing as well as the interest of their father in
their development. Patrick Brontë, in helping Gaskell collect appropriate information for her
biography of Charlotte, wrote her in a 30 July 1855 letter that he had used a mask to elicit honest
responses from his children to his individual queries, "thinking that they knew more than I had yet
discovered." He gave each one the mask and "told them all to stand and speak boldly." He asked
Brontë, then aged about six, what he should do with her brother, Branwell, "who was sometimes a
naughty boy." She answered, "Reason with him, and when he won't listen to reason, whip him." This
answer seems to have arisen more from Emily's experience as a member of a large, active, and noisy
set of siblings than from a quiet, doleful, and studious group.

More importantly, 1824 was the year that Patrick sent all of his daughters except Anne to Cowan
Bridge School, a "School for Clergymen's Daughters." Patrick, though in possession of a perpetual
curacy at Haworth, owned no land or inheritance and therefore had few options for providing for the
future of his children. As in most Victorian families the bulk of the family income would be spent on
the son's education. Yet Patrick knew he needed to enable his daughters to seek livings, most
probably as teachers or governesses, and hence they needed to be educated. Miss Evans, the
superintendent of the new school, called Brontë a "darling child" and "little petted Em," and the
admissions register referred to her as "quite the pet nursling of the school." Tragically for the Brontë
sisters, during the time they attended Cowan Bridge School it closely resembled the fictional Lowood
School presented by Charlotte in Jane Eyre (1847). The staff at Cowan Bridge School was careless with
respect to food preparation, and during the winter the rooms were often cold. The Brontë sisters had
always been susceptible to coughs and colds, and the difficult physical conditions at Cowan Bridge
most likely hastened Maria's and Elizabeth's contraction of consumption. They were sent home to die
in 1825; after Patrick saw how ill Elizabeth was, he went to Cowan Bridge to collect Charlotte and
Brontë himself. According to most biographers the deaths of their elder sisters most profoundly
affected Charlotte, who had more complete memories of their deceased mother and now had also
lost the sisters who had filled the maternal role. As Barker notes, all of Charlotte's heroines were
orphans, and nearly all of the children in Wuthering Heights also become motherless. In her poetry
many of Brontë's Gondal characters are also motherless, orphaned, or the children of parents who
abandon them.

Between 1826 and 1829 Emily began music lessons, completed samplers, and made drawings and
sketches of the natural subjects such as birds to which she was drawn for the remainder of her life.
Her close observations of birds, animals, plants, and the changing skies over Haworth form a
significant part of her poetry. During this time Branwell acquired several sets of toy figures such as
soldiers, Turkish musicians, and Indians. These toys were the impetus for the founding of the
imaginary lands of Angria and Gondal. The children began to write plays about the figures, with Emily
and Charlotte composing "bed plays" that they kept secret from the adults as well as from Branwell
and Anne. In "Tales of the Islanders" (1829) Charlotte gave a history of the early plays, underscoring
Emily's early affiliation with the works of Sir Walter Scott, for she chose the Isle of Arran for her island
and Scott for her "cheif [sic] man." This affinity grew with Aunt Branwell's 1828 New Year's gift to "her
dear little nephew and nieces," a copy of Scott's The Tales of a Grandfather (1827-1829). In addition to
Scott's works the Brontë children drew material for their plays from the family library of Aesop's
Fables, The Arabian Nights' Entertainment, and wood-engraver Thomas Bewick's History of British
Birds. Their most important influence during these early years was most likely Blackwood's Magazine,
whose satires, political commentaries, and extensive book reviews provided them with a wealth of
detail that seeded their imaginations throughout their early years of creativity.

In 1831, after Charlotte left for Roe Head School, Emily and Anne began to concentrate their energies
exclusively on the Gondal saga, distinct from the Angrian fantasies of their brother and sister, a
special form of imaginative play in which the two younger sisters alone engaged for the remainder of
their lives. Emily's first mention of Gondal occurs in her diary paper for 24 November 1834, a series of
notes written by Emily and Anne about every four years and the earliest piece of Brontë's writing to
have survived. The first paragraph of the entry reads, "Taby said just now Come Anne pilloputate (i.e.
pill a potato) Aunt has come into the kitchen just now and said where are you feet Anne Anne
answered On the floor Aunt papa opened the parlour door and gave Branwell a letter saying here
Branwell read this and show it to your Aunt and Charlotte--The Gondals are discovering the interior of
Gaaldine Sally Mosley is washing in the back kitchen." In addition to noting the astonishing absence of
punctuation conventions in the sixteen-year-old Emily's diary entry, critics uniformly point to her
seamless fit of the imaginary Gondal into the fabric of everyday events in the Brontë kitchen.

Scholars such as W. D. Paden in An Investigation of Gondal (1958) have deftly recovered much of the
history of Gondal despite Charlotte's destruction of the plays and prose after her sisters' deaths, from
the birthday notes, the undated lists of character names Anne wrote, the list of place names she
wrote into a copy of J. Goldsmith's A Grammar of General Geography (1819), and Emily's and Anne's
Gondal poems. Most recognize, however, their own creative responsibility in such a reconstruction,
for while Brontë wrote almost seventy poems that are undoubtedly part of the Gondal story, the
majority of her poems cannot always be attributed to Gondal, and many are clearly more personal
lyrics. Scholars therefore find Fannie Ratchford's Gondal's Queen: A Novel in Verse (1955), an attempt
to fit the whole of Brontë's poetic output into the Gondal fantasy, an interesting but far-fetched
effort. What can be determined is that Gondal, according to Anne, was "a large island in the North
Pacific" and that Gaaldine was "a large island newly discovered in the South Pacific." The rigorous
scenery of these islands derives much from Scott's fiction and is filled with mountains, heather, and
snow. The Gondal stories concern impetuous royalty, political intrigue, love thwarted and abandoned,
wars, murders, and assassinations. In a noteworthy article in 1939 Helen Brown was one of the first
critics to point out the influence of George Gordon, Lord Byron, on Brontë's Gondal characters and
their isolation, passions, dark crimes, and darker thoughts. The main character in Brontë's Gondal
poems, the speaker of at least fourteen and the subject of many others, is the passionate, dark-haired
queen Augusta G. Almeda, or A.G.A., perhaps based on Mary, Queen of Scots and the young Queen
Victoria, in whose accession to the throne Brontë took a good deal of interest. A secondary character
is Julius Brenzaida, king of Almedore in Gaaldine.
Critical reception of the Gondal poems has been uneven. Some critics reject them for their
melodrama, formulaic qualities, and simplistic meters and rhymes. Recently, however, feminist critics
have taken special note of the prominent role played by the queen, A.G.A. Christine Gallant, for
example, calls attention to the fact that Gondal is "a mythic world emphatically excluding the real
world" known to Victorian women, controlled by a "dominating presence of female figures." Teddi
Lynn Chichester believes that Brontë was continually working through her own loss of significant
female figures, that "through Augusta, Brontë could explore, in private, her need to create a powerful,
even indestructible" woman, and that A.G.A. "ultimately reinforced the disturbing connection
between mortality and the feminine" that is such a potent undercurrent in Western literature.
Richard Benvenuto points out that without the years Brontë spent "developing her Gondal
imagination, the mature imagination she did attain would have been a considerably different mode of
vision." While a knowledge of the facts of Gondal can deepen the reader's understanding of Brontë's
creative life, we can still appreciate the poems for their merits apart from their place in the Gondal
saga. In writing the Gondal poems Brontë took on different voices and personae, and the themes of
imprisonment and death that inform her better-known poetry were first explored therein. The dark
and overpowering emotions first manifested in these poems certainly fed her invention of Catherine
and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights.

The luxury Brontë enjoyed of freely flowing from domestic responsibilities at the parsonage to the
world of Gondal and the mental and emotional sustenance she found therein was cut short in July
1835, when she accompanied Charlotte, now a teacher, to Roe Head. For Brontë--removed from her
routine for the first time since she was six years old, extremely reticent and impatient with the other
pupils in the school--the experiment was unhappy and unsuccessful. Moreover, because her daily
schedule was now rigidly proscribed, she had no time to engage in the intellectually sustaining
creation of the Gondal stories, and she was no longer living with Anne, her partner in the fantasy.
Charlotte later recalled her firm belief that Brontë "would die if she did not go home, and with this
conviction obtained her recall." Charlotte understood only too well the void caused by the absence of
"sources purely imaginary": she too grieved for her inability to interact with her visions of Angria. The
combination of homesickness and creative deprivation forced Brontë home in October 1835, but her
dependence on Yorkshire to free her poetic originality should not be overstated. She forced herself to
leave home again two more times, to teach at Law Hill and to study in Brussels, and these journeys
broadened rather than stultified her inventive abilities.

Brontë spent the three years following her return from Roe Head at home, and since Anne had
replaced her at the school, she became responsible for many of the domestic duties at the parsonage,
especially after Tabby broke her leg. Brontë found time, however, to continue the Gondal saga and,
more importantly, to practice her poetic craft. Though traumatic, her brief time at Roe Head and
subsequent return to Haworth evidently intensified a new resolve to concentrate on her poetry. Her
first extant poems are from 1836 and display some of the treatments of nature and death she was to
concentrate on for the remainder of her life. For example, in "Will the day be bright or cloudy?" and
"High waving heather 'neath stormy blasts ending," a poem Stevie Davies calls a "precocious bravura
piece," Brontë adapts her close observation of natural phenomena to poems that examine and accept
the two-faceted essence of the day's evolution and the changing weather. In "Start not upon the
minster wall" she explores the comforting rather than threatening affinity of the living and the dead.

Brontë's diary paper of 26 June 1837 records Anne's writing of a poem, her own work on a volume of
Augusta Almeda's life, Queen Victoria's accession to the throne, and her corresponding interest in the
coronation of the emperors and empresses of Gondal and Gaaldine. She wonders where she and her
siblings will be in four years and expresses three times the hope that whether they are in "this
drawing room comfortable" or "gone somewhere together comfortable" that all will be for the best.
The note is observant and cheerful and perhaps reflects the satisfaction Brontë took in her extensive
composition of poetry during the year. Poems such as "The night of storms has passed," "A.G.A. to
A.E.," "Now trust a heart that trusts in you," and "Song by Julius Angora" reveal a poetic exploration
of Gondal corresponding to her Gondal prose. Her other poems from this period are somewhat
problematic for critics in that, as Derek Roper says, they "plainly deal with fictional situations" yet do
not belong to the Gondal cycle. Throughout her poetic career Brontë assumed personae who did not
necessarily speak for her, and while it is difficult to assign certain poems to her own voice, it is
important to be wary of attaching too much significance to the thoughts and feelings expressed in this
fictional poetry. However, a poem from 1837 underscores in what seems to be Brontë's voice her
need to express herself in poetry. The speaker asks heaven why it has denied the "glorious gift to
many given / To speak their thoughts in poetry" and wonders why she cannot transmute her visions,
available to her since "careless childhood's sunny time," into poetry. An aspect of this need can also
be found in "I'll come when thou art saddest," a poem written in 1837, in which the speaker is the
imagination, what Barker calls "the great comforter," upon which all of the Brontës relied for
sustenance and consolation.

Brontë continued her poetic productivity throughout 1838, from which twenty-one dated poems have
survived. Also surviving from this time are fragments of her translation of Virgil's Aeneid and notes on
Greek tragedies, evidence that tends to contradict the fallacy that Brontë's was an uneducated mind
from which sprang an amazing quantity of poetry and the remarkable Wuthering Heights. Sometime
in the autumn of 1838 she made the surprising decision to accept a teaching position at Law Hill, a
girls' school outside Halifax, a fact recorded in a letter from Charlotte to Ellen Nussey that, though
dated October 1836, Edward Chitham revealed was postdated October 1838. Benvenuto speculates
that Brontë went to Law Hill because she felt guilty enjoying the pleasures of home while her sisters
were laboring at Roe Head. Though Charlotte wrote to Ellen Nussey that Brontë's duties at Law Hill
constituted "slavery," Barker points out that Brontë had time to write what she calls "three
outstanding poems." One of these was "A little while, a little while," a poem in which Brontë
synchronizes the "dungeon bars" of her duties at school and her disparate choices of imagining during
her "hour of rest" either the comforts of Hawthorn, the "spot 'mid barren hills," or Gondal with its
"distant, dreamy dim blue chain / Of mountains circling every side." Charlotte was correct in surmising
that Brontë would "never stand" the "hard labour" at Law Hill--she left the school in March or April
1839, worn out by homesickness and the lack of time she could devote to poetry and Gondal. Her
return home again freed her from the "dungeon bars"; though she apparently wrote no poetry during
the first three months of 1839, she left twenty-nine dated poems from the remainder of the year. She
revisits some of her favorite natural subjects in poems such as "Mild the mist upon the hill" and "The
starry night shall tidings bring," though often nature is unable to give solace to grief-stricken speakers.
Brontë takes a more philosophical approach in "I am the only being whose doom," in which the
speaker despairs to find "the same corruption" in "my own mind" as she has seen in all of "mankind,"
and "There was a time when my cheek burned," in which the speaker finds that her ardent devotion
to truth, right, and liberty are misplaced, for the "same old world will go rolling on" unaffected by her
passion or her indifference.

In her 30 July 1841 birthday note Brontë, though pleased that she and her family are all "stout and
hearty," expressed her wish that four years hence she and her sisters will no longer be "dragging on"
but will have carried out their "scheme" for setting up a school of their own. Though ultimately the
plan was never realized, Emily and Charlotte attempted to improve their teaching prospects by
studying French with Constantin Heger at the Pensionnat Heger, a boarding school for girls in Brussels,
arriving in February 1842. After he recognized the sisters' intellectual strengths and their aptitude for
French, Heger personally tutored them, having them read and analyze works in French and then
compose their own essays based on these models. Though Brontë was unable to complete any poems
while she was in Brussels, her composition of a prose allegory, "Le Palais de la Mort," influenced the
second of the two poems she began, "Self-Interrogation." Both essay and poem personify Death, and
in the poem Death logically convinces the human speaker in the dialogue that his life has been empty
and that he has nothing left to live for. As Janet Gezari points out, "despite the ray of hope in the last
two lines, this poem is among Brontë's glummest," its bitterness surely reflective of Aunt Branwell's
November 1842 death, which caused Brontë and Charlotte to depart the Pensionnat for Haworth.
Though Charlotte returned to Brussels in January 1843, Brontë remained in Yorkshire for the
remainder of her life.

In February 1844 Brontë began to copy her poems into two notebooks, one titled "Gondal Poems,"
the other left untitled. Though early critics such as Winifred Gérin distinguished Gondal poems from
"personal" poems on the basis of Brontë's division, later critics such as Roper and Barker caution
against rigidity in approaching the poetry in this way. The act of copying itself suggests that Brontë
took her poetry seriously and wanted to have a more permanent structure for it than scraps of paper
allowed, even if at this point she did not even contemplate publication. In the autumn of 1845,
however, a momentous discovery occurred. Charlotte recalled, "I accidentally lighted on a MS. volume
of verse in my sister Emily's handwriting." Despite Brontë's anger and sense of betrayal at her sister's
"unlicensed" intrusion, its "taking hours to reconcile her to the discovery" Charlotte had made and
"days to persuade her that such poems merited publication," Brontë eventually was won over to the
idea of sending her work out to publishers along with some by Charlotte and Anne. The sisters spent
the remainder of the year selecting and revising their poetry, Brontë choosing poems largely written
in 1844 and 1845 and being careful to delete any references to the private Gondal. They took the
pseudonyms Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell and agreed to publish Poems at their own expense with the
publishing company of Aylott and Jones in 1846.

Many critics agree that Brontë's poetry from Poems is her strongest. Lawrence J. Starzyk, for example,
calls attention to the "beautiful lyrics" of "A Day Dream," where the "sustained dialogue of the mind
with itself is masterfully executed as the despondent narrator converses with the joyous spirit of
nature." Davies refers to "To Imagination" as "that classic, rational and balanced defence of
imagination as an alternative faculty to reason." Barker believes that "The Prisoner," originally a
Gondal poem, is "rightly one of Emily's most famous, as it includes the powerful and intensely
emotional description of the captive's vision." Perhaps because Derek Stanford thinks that Brontë
wrote only six major poems, his reading of "Death" and the "vertiginous and vertical excitement that
seems to give this poem wings" is particularly striking. In one of the few stylistic analyses of Brontë's
poetry C. Day Lewis finds that the effect of the rhythm in "Remembrance" is "extremely powerful,
extremely appropriate" and that "it is the slowest rhythm I know in English poetry, and the most
sombre." Roper concludes simply that "the selection that Emily made for 1846 includes some of her
best poems."

Other than a long narrative Gondal poem from late 1846 and a shorter incomplete revision of the
same from May 1848, Emily's last poem, much anthologized and perhaps the most commented upon,
was "No Coward Soul Is Mine," written in January 1846. Tom Winnifrith calls it a "fitting culmination
of Emily's poetic work," admiring the fineness of its "pantheistic vision"; Starzyk finds that the
contradiction in the poem "represents a profound insight into the nature of the universe and man's
attempt at finding permanence therein." This creation of a minister's daughter is indeed astonishing
for its blunt rejection of orthodox religion--

Vain are the thousand creeds

That move men's heart, unutterably vain

Worthless as withered weeds

Or idlest froth amid the boundless main

--coupled with its embrace of a truer and more sustaining omnipresence of God:

With wide-embracing love

Thy spirit animates eternal years

Pervades and broods above,

Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears.

Brontë reveals her ability to actually know the supreme being who is the Alpha and Omega of whom
she learned in the Bible when she was but a small child:

Though Earth and moon were gone

And suns and universes ceased to be

And thou were left alone

Every existence would exist in thee.

Barker points out that "No Coward Soul Is Mine" is the "only statement of its kind in all of Brontë's
extant writings," and so readers should not be quick to assume that the speaker is Brontë herself.
However, the immediacy of the poem and the authenticity of the voice suggest that Brontë was not
taking on a persona but indeed sharing her deeply felt relationship with God. We will unfortunately
never know if she intended to continue to write poetry in this vein. Whether she was too dismayed by
the lack of response to Poems or too distracted by the composition of Wuthering Heights, Brontë
devoted little of her remaining two years to writing poetry.

In a 6 April 1846 letter Charlotte wrote to Aylott and Jones that "C., E., and A. Bell are now preparing
for the press a work of fiction, consisting of three distinct and unconnected tales": Charlotte's The
Professor (1857), Emily's Wuthering Heights, and Anne's Agnes Grey. Thomas Newby eventually
consented to publish the latter two novels, which came out in December 1847. The first reviewers
were mystified and puzzled by the strangeness and savagery of Wuthering Heights, although nearly all
recognized the seductive power of the novel and the original vision of its author. Twentieth-century
critics have recognized the ways in which the Gondal poetry, with its isolated and terrifying scenery,
its passionate and grief-stricken characters, provided Emily with a wide stage on which to rehearse
the similar scenery of Wuthering Heights and the characters of Cathy and Heathcliff in the novel.
However, the critic who perhaps most perceptively synthesized the poetic and fictional halves of
Emily's creative aptitude wrote at the end of the nineteenth century. A fellow poet, Algernon
Swinburne, referred to Wuthering Heights in a 16 June 1883 article as "essentially and definitely a
poem in the fullest and most positive sense of the term."

Little is known of the last two years of Emily's life, although her family endured some severe trials.
Patrick was nearly blinded by cataracts, and Branwell, who had never realized his artistic potential,
had returned home dependent on alcohol and disgraced because of an affair with his employer's wife.
Branwell became ill with what probably was consumption in early September 1848 and died later that
month. Emily Brontë fell ill with consumption in October 1848 and refused all medical help, claiming
that even homeopathy "was only another form of quackery." She steadily grew weaker and died on
19 December 1848. She was thirty years old.

The student of Emily Brontë's poetry must sort through various contradictions in order to approach
her work with even a little confidence. She wrote most of her poetry during what is technically the
Victorian period, but her exploration of the self, the imagination, and the visionary associate her more
closely with Romantic poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth than with
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and Robert Browning. She was a woman poet who did not bemoan the lack of
"literary grandmothers," as Elizabeth Barrett Browning did, and seemed to have little familiarity with
female predecessors such as Felicia Hemans and Letitia Elizabeth Landon. She was a serious poet who,
like her peers Emily Dickinson, John Clare, and, later, Gerard Manley Hopkins, wrote dozens of poems
with no intention of publishing or even showing them to her family. She is far better known for her
one mind-searing novel than for her poetry, but since early in the twentieth century few years have
passed without some article, book, or new edition devoted to her verse. Her life remains an enigma;
her poetry refuses easy classification. Yet Brontë's fierce willingness to confront in her poetry the
most profound intellectual, theological, and emotional challenges to the human spirit assures her a
continuing place in the minds of readers who seek guidance through those obstacles in poetry.

— Siobhan Craft Brownson, Winthrop University

POEMS BY EMILY BRONTË

Ah! Why, Because the Dazzling Sun

Fall, leaves, fall

I Am the Only Being Whose Doom

See All Poems by Emily Brontë

RELATED CONTENT

RELATED COLLECTIONS

Love Poems

Poetry and Feminism

An Introduction to the Victorian Era

RELATED ARTICLES

Painted Ladies

See All Related Content

MORE ABOUT THIS POET

School/Period:

Ah! Why, Because the Dazzling Sun

Fall, leaves, fall

I Am the Only Being Whose Doom

[Long Neglect Has Worn Away]

Love and Friendship

The night is darkening round me

No Coward Soul Is Mine

['Often rebuked, yet always back returning']

Plead for Me

Remembrance

Shall earth no more inspire thee

from Silent is the House

Poetry Foundation Children

Poetry Magazine

CONTACT US

NEWSLETTERS

PRESS

PRIVACY POLICY

POLICIES

TERMS OF USE

POETRY MOBILE APP

61 West Superior Street,

Chicago, IL 60654

Hours:

Monday-Friday 11am - 4pm

© 2021 Poetry Foundation

See a problem on this page?

Time and Date of Publication

You love us on Instagram and Twitter, now check us out on TikTok!

Menu

Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë

Study Guide

Summary

Characters

Main Ideas

Quotes

Further Study

Writing Help

Teacher's Handbook

Main Ideas

Key Facts

Main Ideas Key Facts

Full Title Wuthering Heights

Author Emily Brontë

Type Of Work Novel

Genre Gothic novel (designed to both horrify and fascinate readers with scenes of passion and cruelty;
supernatural elements; and a dark, foreboding atmosphere); also realist fiction (incorporates vivid
circumstantial detail into a consistently and minutely thought-out plot, dealing mostly with the
relationships of the characters to one another)

Language English (including bits of Yorkshire dialect)

Time And Place Written In 1846–1847, Emily Brontë wrote Wuthering Heights in the parsonage of the
isolated village of Haworth, in Yorkshire.

Date Of First Publication 1847

Publisher Thomas C. Newby

Narrator Lockwood, a newcomer to the locale of Wuthering Heights, narrates the entire novel as an
entry in his diary. The story that Lockwood records is told to him by Nelly, a servant, and Lockwood
writes most of the narrative in her voice, describing how she told it to him. Some parts of Nelly’s story
are narrated by other characters, such as when Nelly receives a letter from Isabella and recites its
contents verbatim.

Point Of View Most of the events of the novel are narrated in Nelly’s voice, from Nelly’s point of view,
focusing only on what Nelly can see and hear, or what she can find out about indirectly. Nelly frequently
comments on what the other characters think and feel, and on what their motivations are, but these
comments are all based on her own interpretations of the other characters—she is not an omniscient
narrator.

Tone It is not easy to infer the author’s attitude toward the events of the novel. The melodramatic
quality of the first half of the novel suggests that Brontë views Catherine and Heathcliff’s doomed love
as a tragedy of lost potential and wasted passion. However, the outcome of the second half of the novel
suggests that Brontë is more interested in celebrating the renewal and rebirth brought about by the
passage of time, and the rise of a new generation, than she is in mourning Heathcliff and Catherine.
Tense Both Lockwood’s and Nelly’s narrations are in the past tense.

Setting (Time) The action of Nelly’s story begins in the 1770s; Lockwood leaves Yorkshire in 1802.

Setting (Place) All the action of Wuthering Heights takes place in or around two neighboring houses on
the Yorkshire moors—Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange.

Protagonists Heathcliff, Catherine

Major Conflicts Heathcliff’s great natural abilities, strength of character, and love for Catherine
Earnshaw all enable him to raise himself from humble beginnings to the status of a wealthy gentleman,
but his need to revenge himself for Hindley’s abuse and Catherine’s betrayal leads him into a twisted life
of cruelty and hatred; Catherine is torn between her love for Heathcliff and her desire to be a
gentlewoman, and her decision to marry the genteel Edgar Linton drags almost all of the novel’s
characters into conflict with Heathcliff.

Rising Action Heathcliff’s arrival at Wuthering Heights, Hindley’s abusive treatment of Heathcliff, and
Catherine’s first visit to Thrushcross Grange set the major conflicts in motion; once Heathcliff hears
Catherine say it would “degrade” her to marry him, the conversation between Nelly and Catherine,
which he secretly overhears, drives him to run away and pursue his vengeance.

Climax Catherine’s death is the culmination of the conflict between herself and Heathcliff and removes
any possibility that their conflict could be resolved positively; after Catherine’s death, Heathcliff merely
extends and deepens his drives toward revenge and cruelty.

Falling Action Heathcliff destroys Isabella and drives her away, takes possession of young Linton, forces
Catherine and Linton to marry, inherits Thrushcross Grange, then loses interest in the whole project and
dies; Hareton and young Catherine are to be engaged to be married, promising an end to the cycle of
revenge.
Themes The destructiveness of a love that never changes; the precariousness of social class

Motifs Doubles, repetition, the conflict between nature and culture

Symbols The moors, ghosts

Foreshadowing Lockwood’s initial visit to Wuthering Heights, in which the mysterious relationships and
lurking resentments between the characters create an air of mystery; Lockwood’s ghostly nightmares,
during the night he spends in Catherine’s old bed, prefigure many of the events of the rest of the novel.

Previous section

Symbols

Popular pages: Wuthering Heights

Character List

CHARACTERS

Heathcliff: Character Analysis

CHARACTERS

Quotes by Theme

QUOTES

Themes

MAIN IDEAS

Review Quiz

FURTHER STUDY

Take a Study Break

Every Shakespeare Play Summed Up in a Quote from The Office

Every Marvel Movie Summed Up in a Single Sentence

60 YA Movie Adaptations, Ranked

QUIZ: Are You a Hero, a Villain, or an Anti-Hero?

QUIZ: Can You Guess the Book from a Bad One-Sentence Summary?

Pick 10 Books and We'll Guess Whether You're an Introvert or an Extrovert

11 Quotes That Sum Up the Entire Book

Sign up for our latest news and updates!

By entering your email address you agree to receive emails from SparkNotes and verify that you are over
the age of 13. You can view our Privacy Policy here. Unsubscribe from our emails at any time.

Sign up for updates

The #1 FREE study site for students

Most Popular No Fear Shakespeare Literature Guides Other Subjects SparkNotes Blog

More Help About Contact Us How to Cite SparkNotes Advertise

Find Us On
Copyright © 2021 SparkNotes LLC

Terms of Use | Privacy | Cookie Policy Do Not Sell My Personal Information

https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/wuthering/facts/

British Library

探索英国文学 Discovering Literature

EN

Search... Menu

Emily Brontë ‘s Wuthering Heights

Published: 1847 Period: Victorian Genre: Victorian literature

Published in 1847, Wuthering Heights is Emily Brontë’s (1818-1848) only novel. Blending realism,
romance and the Gothic, some early reviewers thought it immoral and abhorrent; others praised its
originality and ‘rugged power’. The house at the Heights is situated in bleak moorland, and the wild
setting is a powerful presence as the story unfolds. The text has multiple narrative viewpoints. The main
perspectives come from Lockwood, a southerner who finds Yorkshire an alien place; and a servant, Nelly
Dean, who moves between the Heights and Brontë’s contrasting location of Thrushcross Grange.

Emily Brontë

Born: 30 July 1818

Died: 19 December 1848

Period: Victorian

Occupation: Poet, Novelist

Discover more

Who is Heathcliff?

Heathcliff is a dark, enigmatic and brooding. He is sometimes called a ‘Byronic hero’, but he is much
more complex and ambivalent character than this.

The passionate intensities of Wuthering Heights create a world of revenge without law or justice, in
which Heathcliff is the dominant, overbearing presence, both outsider and insider, starving orphan and
cruel landlord. Like the book itself, he is both remarkably self-disciplined and completely wild.

<PreviousNext>

In 1850, after her sister’s death, Charlotte Brontë wrote a preface to the novel in which she wrongly
describes Heathcliff as ‘unredeemed; never once swerving in his arrow-straight course to perdition’,
someone who only once shows human feeling, in his treatment of Hareton Earnshaw. His love for
Catherine, writes Charlotte, is ‘a sentiment fierce and inhuman: a passion such as might boil and glow in
the bad essence of some evil genius; a fire that might form the tormented centre–the ever-suffering soul
of a magnate of the infernal world.’ This misrecognises the dramatic complexity of the novel, which
never encourages its readers to fall into such simple moral or religious judgements.

Like a great novelist, Heathcliff is a brilliant constructor of plots involving other people, which bring
them (and us) into the presence of the most raw and deep emotions.

<PreviousNext>

Heathcliff’s origins

Heathcliff‘s origins are deeply mysterious: we know that he is picked up on the streets of Liverpool by
Mr Earnshaw but little else for certain. Liverpool was both a major port for Ireland (where the Brontë
family originated and which suffered a terrible famine in the 1840s, the decade the novel was published)
and of the slave trade. But the way that Emily chose to write the novel with interlocking and inset
narrators means that we can never be certain about Heathcliff, nor is it ever clear what our feelings
should be. Our response to Heathcliff, like that of the characters of the novel, is constantly in motion.

<PreviousNext>

The landscape of Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë lived not in a mythical moorland fastness but in a rapidly industrialising world. Her home,
Haworth Parsonage, looked down on a small Yorkshire mill town and backed onto the moors. The
bleakly beautiful West Yorkshire moors have often helped to define in important ways how readers and
critics have interpreted Wuthering Heights – as a strange and wild book about a remote and unfamiliar
landscape. Yet it is important to remember that Haworth was a modern working town, with several mills
and a good deal of industrial unrest. Although it might have seemed distant from London, it was not so
far from Manchester (the ‘shock city of the age’) and the bustling metropolis of Leeds. It was part of a
world in rapid motion that witnessed the dramatic mid-Victorian transformation of nature and work in
both town and country, changes powered by the railways (for which Branwell Brontë worked) and by
the mills that surrounded them.

But this was not simply a change of landscape. As Terry Eagleton writes:

It was not just a question of cotton mills, rural enclosures, hunger and class-struggle, but of the
crystallising of a whole new sensibility, one appropriate to an England which was becoming for the first
time a largely urban society. It was a matter of learning new disciplines and habits of feeling, new
rhythms of time and organisation of space, new forms of repression, deference and self-fashioning. A
whole new mode of human subjectivity was in the making … both aspiring and frustrated, rootless and
solitary yet resourceful and self-reliant. [1]

This new world, and the landscapes and townscapes it brought with it were decisive presences in Emily
and her sisters’ lives and writing.

A world of passionate intensities

Wuthering Heights creates a world of passionate intensities, in which particular events are burned on
the characters’ and readers’ memories, beyond reason, measure or reserve. Terror stalks the book and
defines so many of its central relationships, concerned as it is with the ecstatic, eerie and mad. The book
plays with death, courts death, stages death, even jokes with death, as we see when the dying Catherine
is haunted by the face in the ‘black press’ (ch. 12) or when Heathcliff breaks through the side of
Catherine’s coffin or hangs his wife Isabella’s dog from a hook in the garden. The book is fascinated by
what lies at the limits of the human and is haunted by the forces of death and the diabolical, by
compulsive modes of behaviour, by infantile and sublimely powerful emotions, by the force of
irresistible will, and by the terrible consequences done to human beings by radical evil. The book is full
of animals, spirits and ghosts, and those, like Heathcliff, about whom we can never be sure.

<PreviousNext>

The extraordinary within the real

Wuthering Heights is also a highly organised and rationally planned novel, with a complex time scheme
and several interlocking narrators. It sets its extraordinary actions in a vividly realised family history and
landscape. It is fascinated by the power of fantasy, particularly erotic fantasy, in people’s lives – Isabella
thinks of Heathcliff as ‘“a hero of romance”’ (ch. 14) until she learns the truth of his brutality – but those
fantasies take their place within a carefully plotted story about inheritance, intermarriage and theft. The
erotic is not separated from the economic, or from the passage of power and land across generations.
Emily Brontë was fascinated by extreme emotions, radically opposing mental and social forces, and the
creation of moments of moral revelation and transformation that were typical both of Gothic fiction and
Victorian melodrama, but she could control, ironize and discipline those energies to serious purpose.
Through the care she took to implant her writing in a particular history, landscape and material world,
through complex time-schemes and inset narrators, through making Gothic into a mode of psychic
exploration, she decisively extended the range and affective power of the English novel.

Poetry

Emily Bronte is one of the very few authors to be an important poet as well as a major novelist, and
there is a close relationship between the two bodies of work. Many of her poems appeared first in
stories of the ‘Gondal’ world that she created with her sister Anne; she collected them in a manuscript
notebook (now in the British Library) entitled ‘Gondal Poems’ although when she published six of them
in the collection Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846), she removed all references to Gondal. So
the poems do not depend on an underlying narrative context for their power; like other great Victorian
poems, they dramatize questions of identity and self through different personae in impassioned
utterance and often extreme situations. Like Wuthering Heights, they are drawn to emotional extremity
and passion, to scenes of loss and oblivion, and to the affirmation of desire in the face of death.
Footnote

Terry Eagleton, Myths of Power: A Marxist Study of the Brontës: Anniversary Edition(Hampshire:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. xiii.

Contributor：John Bowen

John Bowen is a Professor of 19th century literature at the University of York. His main research area is
19th-century fiction, in particular the work of Charles Dickens, but he has also written on modern poetry
and fiction, as well as essays on literary theory.

The text in this article is available under the terms of a Creative Commons License.

Share this article WeChat Weibo Douban URL Email

Related articles

Works

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre

Charlotte Brontë's 1847 novel, Jane Eyre, secured her status as one of the greatest Victorian novelists. It
tells the story of an orphan girl turned governess who overcomes hardships and setbacks to marry her
beloved employer, Mr Rochester.

Articles

‘… [A]s much soul … and full as much heart’: Translation and Reception of the Brontë Sisters in China

This article tells the story of the Brontë sisters in China since the first translation of Jane Eyre was
published in 1925. It charts the rise, fall and rise of their literary fortunes in China, where they are now
read, studied and beloved as if they were the Chinese very own.

Back to top

Themes
Works

Articles

Events

About

bl.uk

Privacy

Terms

EN

WeChat

Weibo

Instagram

Facebook
Twitter

© The British Library

https://www.britishlibrary.cn/en/works/emily-bronte-s-wuthering-heights/

Background of fru

Background

Wuthering Heights was published 1847, the only novel written by Emily Bronte. It was published under
the 'pen name' of Ellis Bell. Her life had been largely confined to the village of Haworth, Yorkshire, where
her father was a local vicar. Mrs. Bronte died when the children were quite young and were reared by
maiden aunts and housekeepers. Very little formal education was experienced by the Brontes until they
decided on careers. All three sisters became published writers. Charlotte; "Jane Eyre", Anne; "The
Tenant of Wildfell Hall" and Emily; "Wuthering Heights". The novel was written between 1845 and 1847
and its first edition succeeded in selling only 7 copies. The death of Emily in 1949 prompted Charlotte to
write a preface to the second edition, published in 1951. As Charlotte was a well known author in this
height, the book gained popularity and by the 20th century, the love story of Heathcliff and Catherine
became a classic of literature. The novel was influenced by the two styles of the late 18th and early 19th
centuries. The late 18th century was dominated by the Gothic novel, in which the supernatural played
the role. This reached its highest point with the publication of "Dracula" by Brahm Stoker. This also
influenced Mary Shelly to write "Frankenstein". The early 19th century was dominated by the novels of
Sir Walter Scott and Jane Austin. These novelists were influenced by the romantic movement of
Wordsworth and Colderidge. Both of these influences are seen in "Wuthering Heights", where the house
itself and its inhabitants, the servants and the dogs are typical of the Gothic novel, where Thrushcross
Grange by contrast is more typical of the world of Jane Austin. Therefore Wuthering Heights can be
interpreted as a compendium as both the Gothic and romantic novels of the periods immediately
proceeding 1847. Emily Bronte herself was the youngest of six children. Her father was born Patrick
Prunty on the 17 March 1777 in Co. Down. He was ambitious and won a place at Cambridge, a
magnificent achievement for the son of a story-teller. He changed the spelling of his name to Bronte in
about 1799, after Nelson was created Duke of Bronte. When he left Cambridge he became a Church of
England clergyman and he married Marie Branwell in 1812. She was from Penzance in Cornwall, they
had 6 children, 5 girls and 1 boy, Branwell. In 1820, the family moved to Haworth Parsonage in
Yorkshire, which was located on the edge of the Yorkshire moors, the family lived there until he died in
1861. In 1821, tragedy struck the family with the death of Marie, and the task of raising the family was
then taken on by the mother's sister. Her personality is reproduced in the character of Joseph in
Wuthering Heights. In 1824, 4 of the girls were sent to Cowanbridge Boarding School, to begin their
education, within a month 2 were dead due to the inhumane regime. The others, Emily and Charlotte,
returned home to be educated by their father. He had inherited his fathers story-telling talents and he
entertained his children in the Parsonage. In 1826, Branwell received a present of a box of toy soldiers,
the children gave each soldier a name, invented a land where these characters would live, called Angria,
while Emily and Anne in turn invented another place called, Gondal, a practice then began of the
children writing chronicles of their own fabled country. In 1835, Emily was again sent to the school of
RoeHead, where Charlotte was a teacher, however she returned home after 3 months. In 1837, she
spent 6 months as a teacher in Halifax. Charlotte was of the opinion that the sisters should open their
own school, so in 1842, they went to Brussels to approve their proficiencies in European languages,
however they soon had to return home for the funeral of their aunt and Emily never left Haworth again.
Charlotte then published a collection of their poems which sold only two copies. The sisters then each
decided to write a novel, Emily's Wuthering Heights seemed to be both a commercial and literature
failure when it was published in 1847. Meanwhile , their brother Branwell died in September 1848 and
while attending his funeral, Emily caught a chill and it developed into consumption, she refused all
medical aid and died on 19 December 1848. In 1850, Charlotte published a second edition of Wuthering
Heights to which she had written a preface, on this occasion it met with both critical and commercial
success, and by the end of the century it was regarded as one of the greatest novels ever written.

Home : Catherine Earnshaw : Cathy Linton : Edgar Linton : Hareton : Heathcliff : Narrative Techniques :
Heathcliff The Revenger : Themes of the Novel : Weather Quotations

http://homepage.eircom.net/~splash/Wback.html

You love us on Instagram and Twitter, now check us out on TikTok!

Menu

Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë

Study Guide

Summary

Characters

Main Ideas

Quotes

Further Study

Writing Help

Teacher's Handbook

Further Study
Context

Further Study Context

Wuthering Heights, which has long been one of the most popular and highly regarded novels in English
literature, seemed to hold little promise when it was published in 1847, selling very poorly and receiving
only a few mixed reviews. Victorian readers found the book shocking and inappropriate in its depiction
of passionate, ungoverned love and cruelty (despite the fact that the novel portrays no sex or
bloodshed), and the work was virtually ignored. Even Emily Brontë’s sister Charlotte—an author whose
works contained similar motifs of Gothic love and desolate landscapes—remained ambivalent toward
the unapologetic intensity of her sister’s novel. In a preface to the book, which she wrote shortly after
Emily Brontë’s death, Charlotte Brontë stated, “Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like
Heathcliff, I do not know. I scarcely think it is.”

Emily Brontë lived an eccentric, closely guarded life. She was born in 1818, two years after Charlotte and
a year and a half before her sister Anne, who also became an author. Her father worked as a church
rector, and her aunt, who raised the Brontë children after their mother died, was deeply religious. Emily
Brontë did not take to her aunt’s Christian fervor; the character of Joseph, a caricature of an evangelical,
may have been inspired by her aunt’s religiosity. The Brontës lived in Haworth, a Yorkshire village in the
midst of the moors. These wild, desolate expanses—later the setting of Wuthering Heights—made up
the Brontës’ daily environment, and Emily lived among them her entire life. She died in 1848, at the age
of thirty.

As witnessed by their extraordinary literary accomplishments, the Brontë children were a highly creative
group, writing stories, plays, and poems for their own amusement. Largely left to their own devices, the
children created imaginary worlds in which to play. Yet the sisters knew that the outside world would
not respond favorably to their creative expression; female authors were often treated less seriously than
their male counterparts in the nineteenth century. Thus the Brontë sisters thought it best to publish
their adult works under assumed names. Charlotte wrote as Currer Bell, Emily as Ellis Bell, and Anne as
Acton Bell. Their real identities remained secret until after Emily and Anne had died, when Charlotte at
last revealed the truth of their novels’ authorship.

Today, Wuthering Heights has a secure position in the canon of world literature, and Emily Brontë is
revered as one of the finest writers—male or female—of the nineteenth century. Like Charlotte Brontë’s
Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights is based partly on the Gothic tradition of the late eighteenth century, a
style of literature that featured supernatural encounters, crumbling ruins, moonless nights, and
grotesque imagery, seeking to create effects of mystery and fear. But Wuthering Heights transcends its
genre in its sophisticated observation and artistic subtlety. The novel has been studied, analyzed,
dissected, and discussed from every imaginable critical perspective, yet it remains unexhausted. And
while the novel’s symbolism, themes, structure, and language may all spark fertile exploration, the bulk
of its popularity may rest on its unforgettable characters. As a shattering presentation of the doomed
love affair between the fiercely passionate Catherine and Heathcliff, it remains one of the most haunting
love stories in all of literature.

Next section

Full Book Quiz

Test your knowledge

Take the Context Quick Quiz

Take a study break

Every Shakespeare Play Summed Up in a Quote from The Office

Take a study break

Every Marvel Movie Summed Up in a Single Sentence

Popular pages: Wuthering Heights

Character List

CHARACTERS

Heathcliff: Character Analysis

CHARACTERS

Quotes by Theme

QUOTES

Themes

MAIN IDEAS

Review Quiz
FURTHER STUDY

Take a Study Break

Every Shakespeare Play Summed Up in a Quote from The Office

Every Marvel Movie Summed Up in a Single Sentence

60 YA Movie Adaptations, Ranked

QUIZ: Are You a Hero, a Villain, or an Anti-Hero?

QUIZ: Can You Guess the Book from a Bad One-Sentence Summary?

Pick 10 Books and We'll Guess Whether You're an Introvert or an Extrovert

11 Quotes That Sum Up the Entire Book

Sign up for our latest news and updates!

By entering your email address you agree to receive emails from SparkNotes and verify that you are over
the age of 13. You can view our Privacy Policy here. Unsubscribe from our emails at any time.

Sign up for updates

The #1 FREE study site for students

Most Popular No Fear Shakespeare Literature Guides Other Subjects SparkNotes Blog

More Help About Contact Us How to Cite SparkNotes Advertise

Find Us On
Copyright © 2021 SparkNotes LLC

Terms of Use | Privacy | Cookie Policy Do Not Sell My Personal Information

https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/wuthering/context/

Skip to main content

Login News Calendar Contact

Search formSearch

Main menuHOME RESULT PORTAL STUDENT LIFE ACADEMICS ADMISSIONS PARENTS & GUARDIANS
LEARN FROM HOME GALLERIES

You are here

introduction to the Wuthering Height, author’s background setting on plot

Submitted by bonaventure on Wed, 20/05/2020 - 12:07pm

WEEK 1

SUBJECT - LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

CLASS – SS2
TOPIC–

WEEK 1

SUBJECT - LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

CLASS – SS2

TOPIC– introduction to the Wuthering Height, author’s background setting on plot

SpecificObjective- By the end of the lesson the students should be able to:

Identify the another of the WutheringHeight

State the settle of the pose

Narrate the story in the pose

Background of the author

The author, Emily Jane Blonte, was bornin 1818 in England. She was the daughter of the Curate of
Haworth in West Yorkshire. Emily was the third eldest child of her father. She was an English novelist
and poet who was best known for her English novel, "Wuthering Heights". At the age of seventeen,
Emily began her education at Roe Head Girls' school but later left the school due to horrfesickness. Her
sudden development of sickness resulting from tuberculosis cost her life in 1848.

SETTING OF THE POSE WUTHERING HEIGHT

The novel "Wuthering Heights" was set in the Yorkshire Moors in New England. The time frame was in
the late 18th century. The novelist makes use of the gothic landscape and setting to paint the
environmental pictures of the wild farm house called Wuthering Heights and the decent and habitable
mansion known as Thrushcross Grange. The setting of the novel brings to light certain characters who
are influenced by the sad and depressing Wuthering Heights. The occupants are only happy when they
move out of the Heights and relax in the Moor which sqemsto be lively and colourful.

EVALUATION

Who is the author of the pose Wuthering Heights

Comment on the settling of the pose

Narrate the story in the pose.

ASSIGNMENT

Summaries the whole novel in one page

WEEK 2

SUBJECT - LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

CLASS – SS2

TOPIC – SUMMERING OF CHAPTER ONE TO ELEVEN

Specific Objective:By the student should able to

State how the novel reveal the intensity of love exiting between Cathrine and Heathcliff

Summaries the event in each chapter

Discuss to what extent the life of Heathcillff and Edgar depict cruetly and malicious hartred?

SUMMARIES OF CHAPTERS ONE TO ELEVEN

It was in the year 1808 when Mr, Lockwood the narrator tells the story of his visit to his new landlord
called Mr. Heathcliff. Lockwood, a hater, is rentiny Thrush Cross Grange in order to hide away from the
society because of his encountered failure in love with the goddess he has loved. On meeting Heathcliff,
Lockwood is so happy that he has met a man who is more sociable than him especially at the way he is
given him a warm reception. At the Wuthering Heights which is the name of Heathcliff's residence,
Lockwood realized that Wuthering means stormy and windy environment. He also sees a carved name
near the door bearing "HarethonEarnshaw". Inside the Wuthering Height, where Heathcliff and his old
servant Joseph and his cook live, Lockwood is threatened by barking dogs living in the old fashioned
rooms. When he calls for help, the landlord, Heathcliff thinks that Lockwood has tried to steal
something. Despite his rudeness and embarrassment,

Lockwood still finds himself relaxed with Heathcliff whom he describes as an intelligent, proud but a
morose, unlikely farmer. He offers Lockwood some wines and invites him to come again. Inside his mind,
he sees the invitation as insincere but decides to return the visit due to the way the landlord arouses his
mind.

CHAPTER TWO

Lockwood is annoyed at the type of housework being done in the Grange. He pays his second visit to
Wuthering Heights when snow is falling causing cold weather. After shouting at the old servant Joseph
to open the door, Lockwood is let in as another young man opens the entrance. The kitchen is warm and
Lockwood thinks that the young, beautiful woman he meets there is Heathcliff's wife. The young lady
scornfully refuses to converse with him even when he tries to talk with her. Lockwood fells embarrassed
and worst still, she refuses to make tea for him unless Heathcliff says so. When Lockwood and the young
man sit for tea, he discovers that the young man is suspecting him of making advances to the girl by the
way he behaves. There also, Heathcliff's savagely makes demand for tea which makes Lockwood not to
really like him. Lockwood gets more confused by taking the lady as Heathcliff's wife or the wife of the
young man whom he takes to be Heathcliff's son. But her husband is dead and she is as Heathcliff's wife.
Lockwood is rudely corrected as he comes to understand that the lady is Heathcliff's daughter-in-law.
The young man is HaretonEarnshaw. Due to heavy snowfall, Lockwood demands for a guide so that he
can return home safely, but it is denied to him. Heathcliff sees it as more important that Hareton takes
care of the horses than going out. Joseph, being a religious fanatic, argues with the girl who pretends to
be a witch. At the end, Lockwood is left stranded and ignored by all. When he tries to take a lantern,
Joseph accuses him of stealing it and sets dogs on him. Lockwood is humiliated and Heathcliff and
Hareton laugh at him. He is taken in by cook, Zilla who asks him to spend the night with them.

CHAPTER THREE

Having been ushered into a chamber by Zilla, she discovers that Lockwood does not like it. Being left
alone, Lockwood sees some names like Catherine Linton, and Catherine Heathcliff written over the
window edge. Readingthrough some old books packed inside the room, he comes across Catherine's
childhood diary. He reads some write iSps which show the time when Catherine and Heathcliff were
playmates livjng together as brother and sister. The diary also reveals how Joseph bullied them and her
older brother, Hindley. Heathcliff by his history was a vagabond (wahderer) rescued by Catherine's
father and raised as one of the family members. Unfortunately when the father died, Hindley made him
a servant and threaten to send him out which Catherine never likes.

After a while, Lockwood falls asleep while reading a religious book. He dreamt about a religious fanatic
leading a vidtent mob. He had his second dream where a little ice-cold hand grabbed his arm and begs
him to let him in. The voice introduces herself as Catherine Linton and that she comes home because
she lost her way to the Moor. Therein, Lockwood sees a child's face and feels afraid. His efforts to draw
the child in through the glass window wound the child's wrist such that the blood stains the sheet
before he wakes up screaming. When Heathcliff comes in looking disturbed and confused not knowing
that Lockwood is there. He tells Heathcliff what happens and the dream in which Catherine's name is
mentioned. The name worries Heathcliff and makes him to be angry. Lockwood also overhears Heathcliff
pleading to Cathy to come in at last. Somehow, Lockwood is embarrassed by the landlord's agony.
Again, he witnesses in the morning argument between Heathcliff and the girl who is reading. She resists
Heathcliff's bulliesbefot she sees Lockwood off.

CHAPTER FOUR
Being so bored and weak after his adventure, Lockwood asks his house keeper, Ellen Dean, to tell him
what he knows about Heathcliff and the old families of the area. Ellen informs Lockwood that Heathcliff
is rich and stingy. According to the housekeeper, he has no family since his son died. The girl living at the
Wuthering Heights is Ellen's former employer's daughter called Catherine Lintons. Ellen worries about
the unhappy mood of younger Catherine because she is always fond of her. Also, Ellen says that she
grows up at Wuthering Heights where her mother was working as a nurse. She narratedto Lockwood
how Mr. Earnshaw returned with a dirty ragged black haired child found starving on the street. The boy
was named Heathcliff and was adopted into the family but not fully welcomed by MrsEarnshaw and
Hindiey. Catherine and Heathcliff became very friendly and he also became Earnshaw'sfavourites.
Hindiey was jealous and unhappy thinking that Heathcliff has taken his place. Even when Earnshaw
made clothes for them, Heathcliff chose the finest of it. When Heathcliff claimed that Hindiey threw a
heavy iron at him, Heathcliff threatened to import him to Earnshaw.

CHAPTER FIVE

When Earnshaw becomes old and sick, he is obsessed with the fear and idea that people do not like his
favourite, Heathcliff. Being his spoilt child, Hthtlley grows more bitter against the situation and he is sent
away to college. Worse still, the old Joseph, the self righteous Pharisee uses his religious influence over
Earnshaw to separate him from his children. To Earnshaw, he thinks Hindiey is useless. He also hates
Cathy's playfulness and high spirits. Cathy is too fond of Heathcliff and likes to order people around just
like Heathcliff can do anything she requests. Earnshaw is too harsh to her and she remains more
hardened to his reproofs.

At last Earnshaw died in one evening. Cathy does not know until she goes to

kiss her father good night and discovers that he has died. However, the two

children cry without measures:

I shall bid father good- night first, said Catherine

The poor thing discovered her loss directly. She screams

out- oh, he's dead Heathcliff, he's dead [p,30].

Later, they console themselves believing that the old man is in heaven.

CHAPTER SIX

MrHindiey comes home for his father's funeral. Unexpectedly, he returns home with a wife. Hindiey also
comes back with new rules with strange manners upon which he orders servants to go and live in
inferior quarters. He does not spare Heathcliff as he treats him like other servants, stops his education
and makes him to work in the field like any other farm boy.

Heathcliff does not feel it initially because Cathy teaches him what she learns and helps him to work and
also plays with in the field. Even Ellen plans to runway to the Moors in the morning till the punishment is
over.

One day, the servant ran away after being punished till in the night when Heathcliff returned. Heathcliff
and Cathy run to the Grange (farm House) to see how Isabella is doing there. They met Linton's children
Edgar and Isabella crying over who will hold the pet dog. They are amused by the actions of the children
who go to call their parents. Cathy and Heathcliff try to escape after making frightening noises and a bull
dog bites her on the leg and holds her to still. She asks Heathcliff to escape but he comes to her rescue
trying to pry the dog's jaws open. Mr and Mrs Linton take them to be thieves. Surprisingly, Edgar
recognizes Cathy as Miss Earnshaw and the parents frowns at their wild behaviour especially at
Heathcliff for being allowed to keep company with Cathy. The couple treats Cathy with care and drives
out Heathcliff. He returns to Wuthering Heights after ensuring that Cathy is in safe hands and alright
When Hindley knows what is happening, he accepts the idea of separating Cathy from Heathcliff; As a
result, Cathy is to stay for a long time with the Lintons while her dog bite heals. Heathcliff is banned
from speaking to her.

CHAPTER SEVEN
Cathy stays at Thrushcross Grange for five weeks until Christmas. By the time she returns home, she has
become a transformed lady trained to keep certau i restrictions. As at now, he can hardly kiss Ellen
without worrying whether she will stain her clothe with flour.

To Heathcliff, she hurts his feelings by comparing his darkeness and dirtiness to Edgar's and Isabella's
fair complexions and clean clotties. In her absence, he has been over neglected. Cathy's new polished
life styles and cruel treatment of Hindley hurt him the more. Still, Cathy's love for Heathcliff has not
changed but Heathcliff does not know, rather, he runs out and refuses to come irtfar supper. Etenfeete
sorry for the way he is treated.

When Linton's children are invited for a Christmas party, Heathcliff politelybegs Ellen to make him
decent, promising that he is going to be good. Ellen accepts his promise and also reassures him that
Cathy still loves him. Heathcliff wishes he could be more like Edgar both in good looking, riches and good
manner. Ellen tells him that he can be handsome if he smiles and is trustworthy. As Heathcliff becomes
clean and cheerful, he comes to join the party but Hindley sends him out declaring that he is not fit for
the occasion. Edgar mocks his long hair which makes Heathcliff to throw hot apple sauce on him.
Because of this, he is taken away and flogged by Hindley. Cathy is angry at Edgar for mocking Heathcliff
and putting him into trouble, but she holds herself to avoid ruining her party. Cathy was not herself
throughout the party. She thinks of how Heathcliff is beaten and l^ppt alone. When her guests leave,
she sneaks into the garret (unfinish room) where Heathcliff is confined. Out of compassion, Ellen offers
Heathcliff night food remembering that he has not eaten all the day. He eats little and Ellen being
worried asks him why, he says that he is thinking of how to revenge against Hindley. Ellen stops her
narratives at this point and goes on to get things done.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Hindley's wife, Francis, delivers a baby Hareton. Believing that she will recover despite doctor's warning,
she dies after some weeks. Hindley being shattered in his hope grows in sorrow and desperation to the
extent that he curses both God and man. Ellen is happy to care for the baby. The entire household
degenerate into violent confusion. Notable people begin to shun their visit except Edgar who visits
Wuthering Heights because of Cathy. She dislikes Edgar coming to their house because Edgar's presence
used to make her think that she has to behave like Linton's to which she is not comfortable with,

Once upon a time at the absence of Hindley, Heathcliff was offended for seeing Cathy dressing for
Edgar's visit. He asked Cathy to shun the visit and come to stay with him but she refused. When he
comes, Heathcliff departs, leaving Ellen with them. Inside the house, Catherine shows her bad character
by secretly pinching Ellen. Ellen is happy to use the chance to show Edgar how Catherine behaves,
Catherine out of anger slaps Ellen and also slaps Edgar for reproving her. For this, Edgar decides to go
but Catherine stops him. Being too

weak, he is overcome by Catherine's strong will and two of them reconcile and they become lovers.
Later, Hindley returns home drunk and unloads his gun out of precaution.

CHAPTER NINE

Hindley, fully drunk, shouting and swearing in anger catches Ellen as she tries to hide Hareton in a
cupboard for safety. He takes up Hareton and says he will crop his ears like a dog to make him look
fearful. As he holds the baby over the banister (handrail),he suddenly hears Heathcliff walking down
stairs. He drops the baby yet Heathcliff catches him. Heathcliff even wishes that Hindley kills his own son
by mistake due to fpw he hates him. Ellen confirms this by saying that Heathcliff could have remedy the
mistake by smashing the baby's skull on the step if it is dark as revenge. While Hindley is shaking and
drinking, Heathcliff whispers to Nelly that he wishes Hindley drinks himself to death.

chapter-ten:

Catherine is living-well with her husband^and Isabella. She has her season of silence and groom which
Edgar attributes to her illness. Within one year of her marriage, Heathcliff comes back asking Nelly to
inform Catherine of his visit. He looks totally changed with good manners and educated speech.
Catherine is happy to meet him but Edgar refuses to be happy.

Heathcliff s frequent visit to Linton's family makes Edgar's sister (Isabella) to

fall in love with him to the dislike of her brother. Isabella becomes offended at

Catherine for keeping Heathcliff for herself but she shuns her that Heathcliff is not her match. Catherine
teases Isabella by telling Heathcliff that Isabella loves him. On hearing this, Isabella shyly runs out. But
Heathcliff confides in Catherine that he will marry Isabella because of her money and to make Edgar
unhappy.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Nelly goes to Wuthering Heights to see how Hindley and his son Hareton are faring. When she sees
Hareton, he begins to throw stone at her not knowing that she is his former nurse. Nelly realizes that his
father teaches him how tocurse. When Heathcliff visits Thrushcross Grange, Nelly sees him kissing
Isabella. She told Catherine what she saw and Heathcliff defended himself by saying that he has a right
of doing whatever he wants since Catherine has married another person.

As Edgar comes in, he meets Catherine scolding Heathcliff. Edgar also scolds Catherine for having time to
talk with "that blackguard" His comment makes Catherine to feel angry before Edgar orders Heathcliff to
leave but he stubbornly ignores him. Then, Edgar asks Nelly to call the servants to send Heathcliff out,
but his wife angrily locks the door and throws the key into the fire. When the husband tries to collect it
from her, both Catherine and Heathcliff mock Edgar before he beats Heathcliff and goes out to get help.
While left alone with Nelly, Catherine expresses her anger at her husband and Heathcliff. Later, Edgar
comes inside and wants to know whether Catherine will quit her friendship with Heathcliff. Instead,
Catherine runs into her room and refuses to either come out or eat for many days.

EVALUATION

State how the novel reveal the intensity of love exiting between Cathrine and Heathcliff

Summaries the event in each chapter

Discuss to what extent the life of Heathcillff and Edgar depict cruetly and malicious hartred?

ASSIGNMENT
Narrate the event that leads to marriage of Heathcliff and Isabella

WEEK 3

SUBJECT - LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

CLASS – SS2

TOPIC – SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS TWELVE TO TWENTY TWO

Specific Objective: By the student should able to

State the reason why Heathcilff marry Isabella

State how Heathcilff became the LandLord of the thrustcross grange

SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS TWELVE TO TWENTY TWO CHAELVE

Catherine having stayed alone for three days in her room, requested for food and water from Nelly. She
is annoyed that Edgar is not even worried about her. Giving the situation, Ellen concludes that Catherine
is not happy and she thinks of going back to her room at Wuthering Heights. Catherine opens the
window and begins to talk to Heathcliff who has left in their childish manner before as if he is there to
the surprise of the husband who goes out to bring a doctor for her. Again, Doctor Kenneth informs Ellen
that he sees Isabella walking with Heathcliff in the park confirming the rumour that Isabella and
Heathcliff are planning to run away together. Ellen rushes back to the house and finds that Isabella has
disappeared with Heathcliff. Edgar shows no concern to this.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN

After two months, Catherine is diagnosed with a brain feyer while being« pregnant. By this time,
Heathcliff and Isabella have returned to Wuthering Heights. She sends an apology letter to her brother
asking for forgiveness but,

Edgar refuses to reply her. Again with her experiences with Heathcliff, she sends another letter to Ellen
asking whether Heathcliff is a demon or madman. In Wuthering Heights, she sees the place very dirty,
uncivilized and unwelcoming. According to Isabella, Joseph is rude to her, Hareton is disobedient,
Hindley is a semi shattered madman and at worst, Heathcliff treated her cruelly to the extent that he
refuses to allow her to sleep in his room. Again, she discovers that Hindley has a pistol with which he
plans to kill Heathcliff. In a nut shell, she feels miserable and regrets her marriage.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Ellen is not happy at Edgar for refusing to console her sister Isabella. As a result, she goes to visit her at
Wuthering Heights. There, she informs Isabella and Heathcliff that Catherine can never become what
she was due to her illness. She advises Heathcliff not to bother her anymore. However, Heathcliff
ignores her advice and determines not to abandon her in her husband's unserious care, because she
loves him more than even the husband. In addition, Ellen urges Heathcliff to treat Isabella with care.
Heathcliff expresses in the presence of Ellen his hatred for his wife. Isabella in confidence tells Ellen that
she hates Heathcliffas well before he orders her to go upstairs. Before Ellen leaves Wuthering Heights,
he gives her a letter for Catherine.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

On Sunday, Ellen gives Catherine the letter from Heathcliff. Catherine is totally changed by her sickness.
As Ellen keeps the door open, Heathcliff comes in and Catherine is eager to see him. Their coming
together is somehow bitter and sweet. Right there, Catherine accuses Heathcliff of having killed her but
Heathcliff cautions her not to say such a thing to avoid hurting him after her death. In return, Heathcliff
accuses her of abandoning him for which Catherine asks him to forgive her knowing that she will not
even be at peace after death. They hold themselves closely and cried until Ellen informs themthat Edgar
is returning. Even when Heathcliff wants to go, Catherine refuses, since she is dying and will never see
him again. He agrees to stay and in the course of agitation Ellen discovers that Catherine has fainted
before Edgar comes in and Heathcliff hands over Catherine's body to him and tells him to take care of
her.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Catherine delivers a child around midnight and also names her Catherine Linton who was the teenage
girl Lockwood saw at Wuthering Heights. Sadly, Catherine Earnshaw dies two hours after delivery.
Nobody cares for the baby and Ellen wishes it could have been a boy. Even at death, Catherine's corpse
looks peaceful and beautiful, and Ellen concludes that she has made heaven at last.

Ellen goes outside to tell Heathcliff though he knows that Catherine is dead and asks Ellen how it
happens. In anger, Heathcliff curses Catherine and begs her to haunt him "so he would not be left in this
abyss, where I cannot find you! I cannot live without my soul". When Catherine's body is still lying in the
Grange, Heathcliff takes advantage of Edgar's absence to see her again. At last, Catherine is buried on
Friday.

chapter seventeen

On the next day when Ellen is carrying baby Catherine on her laps, Isabella comes in crying. She asks
Ellen to call a carriage that can take her to the nearest town, Gimmerton. She' is escaping from the
husband with her face cut and silk dress torn. Ellen gives her clothes and binds up her wounds. Isabella
tries to destroy her wedding,ring by throwing it into the fire and narrates to Ellen what happens to her
Isabella tells Ellen that she hates Heathcliff and cannot have compassion for him even when he is
mourning Catherine's death. He stays alone in his room praying like a Methodist. Hindley discloses to
Isabella his plan to kill Heath cliffwith his bladed pistol as he returns from his watch over Catherine's
grave. Isabella wants him to be killed but refuses to join. As Hindley tries to kill him, he grabs the
weapon and the blade cutsHindley on his wrist. He also kicks and tramples Hindley to faint after losing
much blood.

In the morning, Isabella comes down and meets Hindley very sick beside the fire. She informs Hindley
how Heathcliff kicks him when he is down. She mocks Heathcliff1 s action and he throws a knife at her.
Isabella runs to the Grange and never returns again. She delivers a son in her new house near London,
named Linton. She dies in the twelfth year of her son. Similarly, Hindfey dies six months after Catherines
death. Ellen grieves for him and wants to bring back his son Hareton to tfte Grange. She fears Heathcliff
who plans to degrade him as his father does to him. After mourning Catherine's death, Edgar loves his
daughter whom he calls Cathy.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

After twelve years, Cathy Linton grows up to be the only thing that brings joy to the lonely house. Her
father allows her to stay within the park of Grange. On her way to Penistone Crags closed to Wuthering
Heights, Ellen runs after her to ensure that she is safe. Heathcliff is not around but she meets Hareton
whom Ellen introduces to her as her cousin after taking him as the servant. Cathy cries for mistaking
Hareton and he offers her a puppy to console her but she refuses. Ellen tells her that the father does not
want her to visit Wuthering Heights and forbids her not to tell Edgar what happens.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

After the death of Isabella, Edgar returns with his nephew, Linton. Cathy is happy to see her cousin. In
the evening, Joseph comes to claim Linton on Heathcliff's behalf. Ellen tells him that Edgar is sleeping
but he goes into his room insisting on taking Linton. Edgar wishes to keep Linton at the Grange but lack
legal right to claim him.
CHAPTER TWENTY

When Ellen takes Linton to Wuthering Heights, he is surprised to hear that hehas a father because
Isabella has never told him about Heathcliff. Both Joseph and Heathcliff see him. Ellen begs Heathcliff to
be kind with the boy. He accepts to care for him at least he is the heir to the Grange, so that after
Edgar's death, he will inherit the place.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Cathy misses her cousin when she wakes in the morning. Linton grows up to be a selfish and
disagreeable boy. He is fond of complaining about his health. Heathcliff invites Cathy and Ellen to
Wuthering Heights where he wants Linton and Cathy to marry so that he will be fully sure of inheriting
the Grange.

When they return to the Grange, Cathy tells her father where she has been. She asks Edgar why he has
not allowed her to see her cousin at Wuthering Heights. He tells her of Heathcliff's wickedness and
warns her not to visit there. Cathy is not happy and begins to relate with Linton through love letters.
Seeing the letters, Ellens burns it and threatens to tell her father if she writes it again.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Edgar is confined in the house throughout the winter because of the cold he contacted. Cathy discloses
her displeasure to Ellen that she is afraid of being alone if Ellen and her father die. Being stranded at the
outside wall, Heathcliff meets her. He tells Cathy that Linton has been sick of her. He urges her to go and
visit Linton. Ellen tells her that Heathcliff may be lying. Cathy persuades her to accompany her to see
Linton at Wuthering Heights.

EVALUATION

State the reason why Heathcilff marry Isabella

State how Heathcilff became the LandLord of the thrust cross grange

ASSIGNMENT

In not less than two page summary chapters twelve to twenty two

WEEK 4

SUBJECT - LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

CLASS – SS2

TOPIC – SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS TWENTY THREE TO THIRTY FOUR

SpecificObjective

Bytheendofthelessonthestudentshouldabletodiscusstheeventthatleadstotherentingofthrustcrossganrge

StatewhyLinton beggedyoungCathrine tomarryhim

StatethereasonHeathcilff toldthefuneralpeopletoburiednexttoCathrine1 whendies

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Ellen and Cathy meet Linton at Wuthering Heights who complains that the servants don't take care of
him. He also complains that writing Cathy has been tiring. Linton says that he wishes Cathy will marry
him because he believes that wives always love their husband. As they return home, Ellen warns Cathy
not to marry him believing that he will die young. However, Cathy seems not to believe it. Instead, she
grows more friendly with him. Ellen catches cold and she is cared by Cathy.

Within three weeks, Elien gets better. She discovers Cathy's evening visit to Wuthering Heights as she
explains to her all that happens between her and Linton. On her next visit, Hareton angrily cemes in and
orders Cathy and Linton into the kitchen while Cathy is reading something for Linton. Linton in his angry
reaction coughs blood and faints. Hareton carries the boy upstairs. He prevents Cathy to follow. Linton
refuses to talk to Cathy, but only blames her for what happens last time. Heathcliff hates him but he is
unhappy at Wuthering Heights. He only loves Cathy. When Ellen tells Edgar about the several visits, he
warns Cathy notfto visit Wuthering Heights. Instead, he writes to Linton to come to the Grange as he
likes.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

Ellen explains to Lockwood that these events happened in the year before. She thinks that Lockwood
will be interested in Cathy. Edgar asks Ellen about the nature of Linton which she tells him that he is
delicate and has little of his father in him. When Edgar resumes his walk, he writes Linton to visit him to
the Grange but he declines because of Heathcliff but promises to meet him outside. As Edgar could not
walk far, he finally allows Cathy to marry Linton so that she will not leave the Grange when he dies, but
not knowing that Linton will die soon.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Ellen and Cathy ride to meet Linton close to Wuthering Heights. He is very ill but pretends to be better.
He could not find it easy talking with Cathy before she leaves. He begs her to stay, and to inform her
father that he is in tolerable health condition. No sooner had Cathy partly agreed than Linton falling into
slumber. Ellen and Cathy return home worried by his strange behaviour.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

After a week, Ellen and Cathy plan to make a trip to London. Edgar is getting worse in his sickness,
making Cathy not to leave him. He approves Cathy's relationship with Linton to ensure her welfare.
Cathy is not happy leaving his father. Heathcliff meets them and asks Ellen how long Edgar could live,
because

he is worried that Linton may die before him, which will stop the- marriage. Heathcliff orders his son to
bring Cathy inside the house which he does. He also locks up Ellen. Heathcliff slaps Cathy bitterly as she
protests to go and declares that she will not leave until she marries Linton. Ellen is imprisoned
separately from Cathy for five days with Hareton as her jailer.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

It was on the fifth day of captivity that Zilla released Ellen. Zilla says that Heathcliff has allowed Ellen to
go home while Cathy will be released to attend her father's burial Edgar is not dead yet. Ellen inquires
from him that Cathy is shut upstairs and she has been forced to marry Linton. He says that Linton is glad
that she is being treated harshly.

Ellen rebukes Linton for his selfishness and unkindness. As she goes to the Grange, Edgar is happy to
hear that his daughter is safe and will come home soon. At the age of thirty nine, Edgar is almost dead.
When he hears HeathclifFs plan to inherit his estate, he sends for a lawyer, Mr. Green to change his will.
Unfortunately, Heathcliff buys up the lawyer and he does not come on time until it is too late to change
the will. Cathy manages to escape in time to see her father again and Edgar dies happy. Mr. Green,
contracted by Heathcliff issues quit notice to all the servants in the Grange except Ellen.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Heathcliff comes to the Grangeto bring Cathy to look after Linton who is dying in terror of his father.
Ellen begs him to allow Cathy and Linton to live in the Grange. He declines because he wants to put a
tenant in the estate being Mr. Lockwood. Heathcliff tells Ellen that he bribes the sexton who digs Edgar's
grave to open Catherine coffin for him to see her face again. As that request fails, he bribes the sexton
to put his body into Catherine's coffin when he dies. Ellen upon hearing this from Heathcliff is shocked
and rebukes him for disturbing the dead but he replies Ellen that Catherine has been haunting him day
and night since eighteen years. Heathcliff reveals how he digs out Catherine's corpse at kirkyard just to
feel her in his arms again after which he is consoled and tortured as well. Heathcliff has been feeling as if
he can see her even when he sleeps in her room, trying to see her but to no avail.
Again, Ellen in her narrative tells Lockwood what Zilla informed her about Cathy's residence at
Wuthering Heights. Cathy spends time in Linton's room caring for him when he is terribly sick. Even
Heathcliff refuses to bring a doctor at Cathy's request, saying that Linton does not have a value of a
farthing. Cathy is left alone to care for Linton till he dies without any one including Joseph and Hareton
to assist her. When Cathy is ill for two weeks, Heathcliff informs her that Linton has left all of his
property and that of his wife to him. Cathy grows angry against all of them and refuses to forgive them
for abandoning her alone with Linton till he dies. She, however, becomes the unfriendly young woman
whom Lockwood sees at Wuthering Height. Ellen after Lintons believes that the only way Cathy can
escape from Wuthering Heights is to re-marry another man.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

Lockwood goes to the Wuthering Heights to tell Heathcliff that he will not live instead he is going to
London to live. Cathy in her captivity expresses her longing for freedom. She also complains that
Heathcliff has destroyed her book such that she cannot write Ellen. Sooner, Heathcliff enters to bear his
anger and grief in solitude. Later, Heathcliff invites Lockwood to the cheerless meal, which he
manageably eats before he leaves. He thinks of courting Cathy and bringing her into a happy
environment in the town.

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

At the end of 1801, Lockwood returns to Grange on a haunting mission. He finds the place almost
empty. He sees Cathy teaching Hareton how to read. In his path finding trip to see what has changed in
Wuthering Heights, Ellen is happy to meet him as he promises to settle her rent since she is acting for
Cathy. Nelly comes after Lockwood's departure and she is not happy at the way the young Catherine's
personality Has changed in the course of time. Cathy and Hareton reconcile and they become loving
friends to Joseph's anger.

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

Ellen sees Cathy and Hareton in the garden planting a flower garden in the most cherished bush by
Joseph. As soon as Joseph comes in, he laments for the bushthey destroy which makes Heathcliff to call
Cathy an "insolent sluf” and threatens to break her in pieces after ordering Hareton to throw her out.
Cathy by Hareton's advice seizes to insult Heathcliff anymore and the duo continues to live friendly.
Heathcliff comes up and is surprised to see both Hareton and Cathy losing like Catherine Earnshaw. He
informs Ellen that he has lost his motivation for destruction just because of their resemblance to
Catherine. He takes Hareton and Cathy as apparitions that evoke his beloved.

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

After few days, Heathdiff stops eating and spends the whole night walking. Catherine comes out and
sees him looking more excited, wild and glad. At dinner, he totally loses interest in eating. He seems to
be watching something by the window and goes outside. He later goes outside expressing unnatural
appearance of joy, Blen tries to ask him why the sudden behaviour, but he replies that he is within the
sight of his heaven.

In the evening, Bten finds Heathcliff sitting in the dark alone with all the windows open. Ellen wonders
whether he is a vampire. On the next day, he became more restlessand began to lose his speech filled
with emotional and physical anquish. Heatehdlflff sends for his lawyer, Mr. Green to settle things, yet
refusing to eat or sleqp. However, Slenasks him to repent of his sins. He also begs Ellen to make sure
that his body is buried next to Catherine's grave. As he is dying, he is talking open about Catherine.
Heathcliff refuses to see the doctor Ellen invites to attend to himAgain, on the next morning, she finds
him dead in his room. Hareton mourns for him and his death is attributed to depression. He is buried
besides Catherine as he requested. People used to claim that his ghost and that of Catttaiine roam the
Moor. Cathy and Hareton engage themselves. They plan to movetothe Grange leaving Joseph and the
ghosts in Wuthering Heights.

CHARACTERIZATION /ROLE

A: HCATHCLJFF

He is one of the central characters of the novel. He is an orphan whom Mr. Earnshaw adopted and
brought to live in Wuthering Heights. He falls into a deepand unbreakable love with Earnshaw's
daughter, Catherine. He becomes a victim of hate after the death of Eamshaw. His resentful son,
Hindley, not only abuses him but treats htm like a servant. His humiliation and misery cause him to
spend most of his life trying to carry out a revenge against Hindley. He is a fierce and cruel man who is
always destructive and aggressive in character because he is denied access to marry Catherine. Upon the
death of Edgar, Heathcliff acquires both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange which is the estate
of Edgar Linton. Heathcliff inhuman devotion to Catherine even in death is the distinctive feature of this
character laa.symbollentel, Heathcliff stands for wild and natural forces which often seem mysterious
and dangerous to humanity.

B: CATHERINE EARNSHAW

She is the daughter of MrEarnshaw. She falls in love with the adopted son of her father, Heathcliff.
Catherine's desire for social relevance is the reason behind her marriage with Edgar Unton instead of
Heathcliff. Their intense love for each other is much expressed in Catherine's confession and claims that
she is the same with Heathcliff. Character wise, Catherine is free spirited and often arrogant in relating
with others especially in defence of Heathcliff. She is beautiful and charming but flawed by an unruly
temper. She is survived by a daughter who is also named Catherine.

C: EDGAR UNTON

He is the older brother of Isabella who marries Catherine Earnshaw. He is also the father of Catherine
Linton. He is an ideal gentleman who is well bred so much that Catherine describes him as being
handsome and pleasant to be with. He combines moral cheerfulness with riches thereby reflecting his
elevated social class. As a refined gentleman, he is easily disposed to unforgiveness when his dignity is
hurt. For instance, Edgar frowns at Isabella's elopement with Heathcliff and turns his back on her even
when her situation get worse with Heathcliff.

D: LOCKWOOD

He is the narrator of the novel and a gentleman from London. His roles in the novel serve as an
intermediary between Nelly and the reader. Again, Lockwoodcomes from a domesticated region of
England. He seems to be sympathetic and always likes to patronize the people around him. This sense of
compassion is the driving force that makes him to settle a rentage for Ellen. He is baffled by the strange
behaviours of the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights which negates the principles of social conventions
and norms that characterize his world in England. He is the potential tenant that comes for Grange
estate but declines his interestafter hearing everything from Nelly.
E. ISABELLA LINTON

She is the younger sister of Edgar. She falls in love with Heathcliff and elopes with him without her
brother's consent. Her marriage with Heathcliff gives rise to the birth of her son, Linton Heathcliff. In the
novel, Isabella can be described as a shallow minded young lady blessed with natural beauty. She is also
quick witted but handicapped by foolishness especially in making choices. Her unhappy marriage for
which she runs out of wedlock and resides in London brings an element of cruelty in her character
against the husband who treats her brutally. Before her death, she hates Heathcliff with all her mind.

F: HINDLEY EARNSHAW

He is the only son of Mr and Mrs. Earnshaw and the brother of Catherine, He is morally inclined to
bullying and discontention against Heathcliff whom his father loves and cares for. After the death of his
father, he inherits the Grange estate as the heir apparent. He abuses and torments Heathcliff by
stopping his education and forces Heathcliff to work in the farm out of hate. He becomes addicted to
alcoholism and dissipation following the death of his wife.

G: LINTON HEATHCLIFF

He is the son of Heathcliff and Isabella. He is a combined picture of odd characters of his parents. In
Wuthering Heights, Linton can be described as an effeminate, sickly in nature with cruel disposition. He
is hated and often despised by his father. He uses his condition as an invalid to torment the tender Cathy
Linton who devotes to caring for him. Linton marries Cathy by force as planned by his father. He dies
soon after the marriage.

H.ELLEN DEAN (NELLY)

She plays a role in the novel as one of the main narrators. She has been a servant throughout her life
serving both the Earnshaws and Union's. She has mastery of all their family stories and histories. Ellen is
an independent and high spirited servant who narrates everything about Wuthering Heights to Mr.
Lockwood.
X: CATHY UNION

She is the daughter of the older Catherine and Edgar Linton. With Heathcliff s selfish arrangement, she is
beaten into marriage with Linton by Heathcliff. By moral standard, she takes after her mother though
with her "wildness". Upon Linton's death, she re-marries Hareton after reconciling with him and after
the death of Heathdiff.

THEMES/MORAL LESSONS

"Wuthering Heights" as a fictional piece is a package of many themes such as:

A: LONELINESS AND ISOLATION

In the novel, Blonte uses and presents characters who value loneliness and isolation as the only panacea
to their psychic-wounds (heartbreaks). Most of the characters like Heathcliff becomes a loner and
monster because of his yearning and mourning for Catherine's ddath. Again, Mr. Lockwood desires to
rent Thrushcross Grange just to cool his emotional anguish in solitary zone. Hindley becomes cruel and
lonely upon the death of his wife, Francis. These characters appreciate lonely moment and environment
as the only psychological thereapy that can heal their love failures and romantic disappointment with
time.

B. THE DESTRUCTIVENESS AND GENUITYOFIOVE

Love and its destructive tendency is one of the fundamental and universal ideas explored in the novel.
Evidently, Catherine and Heathcliff's passion for each other is the centerpiece of "Withering Heights". As
romantic heroes, their love transcends social norms and conventional morality. It is recorded in the-
novel that their love is strangely asexual and goes beyond the convention of love among fornicators and
adulterers. Conversely, the destructive nature of their love is the rationale behind Heathcliff' endless
mourning of Catherine's death. Hindley for losing his lover is turned to cruelty, drunfenness and
depression till he dies.
C: THEME OF SOCIAL AND CLASS DISTINCTION

The novel is an x-ray of social class, identity and status as reflected in most characters through their
education, exposure and wealth. For example, Catherine to maintain her quest for social recognition and
relevance pretentiously marries Edgar while her love is only built around Heathciiff. Again, these
characters are socially structured to show their societal values and positions in the fiction. Joseph, Ellen,
Ziila, Heathcliff etc are portrayed as servants while Mr. Lockwood, Isabella, Hindley, Edgar, etc with their
household define a set of people from exalted social background.

D, THE PREVALENCE OF DISEASE/SICKNESS AND DEATH

The tragic intensity of the novel is heightened by the prevalence of disease and sickness which-has
resulted in serial premature deaths. For instance, Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw die out of fever infection of
Catherine. Hindley's wife dies in a short time after delivering Hareton. Isabella becomes sick and dies
premature living her only son, Linton. Catherine, after suffering from brain fever dies leaving alone Cathy
among others. In a nutshell, the prominence of sickness with its attendant death in the novel is a
physical denominator of external forces and challenges fighting human survival and destinies in the
world and especially the era of Emily Blonte.
SpecificObjective- By the end of the lesson the students should be able to:

Identify the another of the WutheringHeight

State the settle of the pose

Narrate the story in the pose

Background of the author

The author, Emily Jane Blonte, was bornin 1818 in England. She was the daughter of the Curate of
Haworth in West Yorkshire. Emily was the third eldest child of her father. She was an English novelist
and poet who was best known for her English novel, "Wuthering Heights". At the age of seventeen,
Emily began her education at Roe Head Girls' school but later left the school due to horrfesickness. Her
sudden development of sickness resulting from tuberculosis cost her life in 1848.

SETTING OF THE POSE WUTHERING HEIGHT

The novel "Wuthering Heights" was set in the Yorkshire Moors in New England. The time frame was in
the late 18th century. The novelist makes use of the gothic landscape and setting to paint the
environmental pictures of the wild farm house called Wuthering Heights and the decent and habitable
mansion known as Thrushcross Grange. The setting of the novel brings to light certain characters who
are influenced by the sad and depressing Wuthering Heights. The occupants are only happy when they
move out of the Heights and relax in the Moor which sqemsto be lively and colourful.
EVALUATION

Who is the author of the pose Wuthering Heights

Comment on the settling of the pose

Narrate the story in the pose.

ASSIGNMENT

Summaries the whole novel in one page

WEEK 2

SUBJECT - LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

CLASS – SS2

TOPIC – SUMMERING OF CHAPTER ONE TO ELEVEN

Specific Objective:By the student should able to

State how the novel reveal the intensity of love exiting between Cathrine and Heathcliff

Summaries the event in each chapter

Discuss to what extent the life of Heathcillff and Edgar depict cruetly and malicious hartred?

SUMMARIES OF CHAPTERS ONE TO ELEVEN

It was in the year 1808 when Mr, Lockwood the narrator tells the story of his visit to his new landlord
called Mr. Heathcliff. Lockwood, a hater, is rentiny Thrush Cross Grange in order to hide away from the
society because of his encountered failure in love with the goddess he has loved. On meeting Heathcliff,
Lockwood is so happy that he has met a man who is more sociable than him especially at the way he is
given him a warm reception. At the Wuthering Heights which is the name of Heathcliff's residence,
Lockwood realized that Wuthering means stormy and windy environment. He also sees a carved name
near the door bearing "HarethonEarnshaw". Inside the Wuthering Height, where Heathcliff and his old
servant Joseph and his cook live, Lockwood is threatened by barking dogs living in the old fashioned
rooms. When he calls for help, the landlord, Heathcliff thinks that Lockwood has tried to steal
something. Despite his rudeness and embarrassment,

Lockwood still finds himself relaxed with Heathcliff whom he describes as an intelligent, proud but a
morose, unlikely farmer. He offers Lockwood some wines and invites him to come again. Inside his mind,
he sees the invitation as insincere but decides to return the visit due to the way the landlord arouses his
mind.

CHAPTER TWO

Lockwood is annoyed at the type of housework being done in the Grange. He pays his second visit to
Wuthering Heights when snow is falling causing cold weather. After shouting at the old servant Joseph
to open the door, Lockwood is let in as another young man opens the entrance. The kitchen is warm and
Lockwood thinks that the young, beautiful woman he meets there is Heathcliff's wife. The young lady
scornfully refuses to converse with him even when he tries to talk with her. Lockwood fells embarrassed
and worst still, she refuses to make tea for him unless Heathcliff says so. When Lockwood and the young
man sit for tea, he discovers that the young man is suspecting him of making advances to the girl by the
way he behaves. There also, Heathcliff's savagely makes demand for tea which makes Lockwood not to
really like him. Lockwood gets more confused by taking the lady as Heathcliff's wife or the wife of the
young man whom he takes to be Heathcliff's son. But her husband is dead and she is as Heathcliff's wife.
Lockwood is rudely corrected as he comes to understand that the lady is Heathcliff's daughter-in-law.
The young man is HaretonEarnshaw. Due to heavy snowfall, Lockwood demands for a guide so that he
can return home safely, but it is denied to him. Heathcliff sees it as more important that Hareton takes
care of the horses than going out. Joseph, being a religious fanatic, argues with the girl who pretends to
be a witch. At the end, Lockwood is left stranded and ignored by all. When he tries to take a lantern,
Joseph accuses him of stealing it and sets dogs on him. Lockwood is humiliated and Heathcliff and
Hareton laugh at him. He is taken in by cook, Zilla who asks him to spend the night with them.
CHAPTER THREE

Having been ushered into a chamber by Zilla, she discovers that Lockwood does not like it. Being left
alone, Lockwood sees some names like Catherine Linton, and Catherine Heathcliff written over the
window edge. Readingthrough some old books packed inside the room, he comes across Catherine's
childhood diary. He reads some write iSps which show the time when Catherine and Heathcliff were
playmates livjng together as brother and sister. The diary also reveals how Joseph bullied them and her
older brother, Hindley. Heathcliff by his history was a vagabond (wahderer) rescued by Catherine's
father and raised as one of the family members. Unfortunately when the father died, Hindley made him
a servant and threaten to send him out which Catherine never likes.

After a while, Lockwood falls asleep while reading a religious book. He dreamt about a religious fanatic
leading a vidtent mob. He had his second dream where a little ice-cold hand grabbed his arm and begs
him to let him in. The voice introduces herself as Catherine Linton and that she comes home because
she lost her way to the Moor. Therein, Lockwood sees a child's face and feels afraid. His efforts to draw
the child in through the glass window wound the child's wrist such that the blood stains the sheet
before he wakes up screaming. When Heathcliff comes in looking disturbed and confused not knowing
that Lockwood is there. He tells Heathcliff what happens and the dream in which Catherine's name is
mentioned. The name worries Heathcliff and makes him to be angry. Lockwood also overhears Heathcliff
pleading to Cathy to come in at last. Somehow, Lockwood is embarrassed by the landlord's agony.
Again, he witnesses in the morning argument between Heathcliff and the girl who is reading. She resists
Heathcliff's bulliesbefot she sees Lockwood off.

CHAPTER FOUR

Being so bored and weak after his adventure, Lockwood asks his house keeper, Ellen Dean, to tell him
what he knows about Heathcliff and the old families of the area. Ellen informs Lockwood that Heathcliff
is rich and stingy. According to the housekeeper, he has no family since his son died. The girl living at the
Wuthering Heights is Ellen's former employer's daughter called Catherine Lintons. Ellen worries about
the unhappy mood of younger Catherine because she is always fond of her. Also, Ellen says that she
grows up at Wuthering Heights where her mother was working as a nurse. She narratedto Lockwood
how Mr. Earnshaw returned with a dirty ragged black haired child found starving on the street. The boy
was named Heathcliff and was adopted into the family but not fully welcomed by MrsEarnshaw and
Hindiey. Catherine and Heathcliff became very friendly and he also became Earnshaw'sfavourites.
Hindiey was jealous and unhappy thinking that Heathcliff has taken his place. Even when Earnshaw
made clothes for them, Heathcliff chose the finest of it. When Heathcliff claimed that Hindiey threw a
heavy iron at him, Heathcliff threatened to import him to Earnshaw.

CHAPTER FIVE

When Earnshaw becomes old and sick, he is obsessed with the fear and idea that people do not like his
favourite, Heathcliff. Being his spoilt child, Hthtlley grows more bitter against the situation and he is sent
away to college. Worse still, the old Joseph, the self righteous Pharisee uses his religious influence over
Earnshaw to separate him from his children. To Earnshaw, he thinks Hindiey is useless. He also hates
Cathy's playfulness and high spirits. Cathy is too fond of Heathcliff and likes to order people around just
like Heathcliff can do anything she requests. Earnshaw is too harsh to her and she remains more
hardened to his reproofs.

At last Earnshaw died in one evening. Cathy does not know until she goes to

kiss her father good night and discovers that he has died. However, the two

children cry without measures:

I shall bid father good- night first, said Catherine

The poor thing discovered her loss directly. She screams

out- oh, he's dead Heathcliff, he's dead [p,30].

Later, they console themselves believing that the old man is in heaven.

CHAPTER SIX
MrHindiey comes home for his father's funeral. Unexpectedly, he returns home with a wife. Hindiey also
comes back with new rules with strange manners upon which he orders servants to go and live in
inferior quarters. He does not spare Heathcliff as he treats him like other servants, stops his education
and makes him to work in the field like any other farm boy.

Heathcliff does not feel it initially because Cathy teaches him what she learns and helps him to work and
also plays with in the field. Even Ellen plans to runway to the Moors in the morning till the punishment is
over.

One day, the servant ran away after being punished till in the night when Heathcliff returned. Heathcliff
and Cathy run to the Grange (farm House) to see how Isabella is doing there. They met Linton's children
Edgar and Isabella crying over who will hold the pet dog. They are amused by the actions of the children
who go to call their parents. Cathy and Heathcliff try to escape after making frightening noises and a bull
dog bites her on the leg and holds her to still. She asks Heathcliff to escape but he comes to her rescue
trying to pry the dog's jaws open. Mr and Mrs Linton take them to be thieves. Surprisingly, Edgar
recognizes Cathy as Miss Earnshaw and the parents frowns at their wild behaviour especially at
Heathcliff for being allowed to keep company with Cathy. The couple treats Cathy with care and drives
out Heathcliff. He returns to Wuthering Heights after ensuring that Cathy is in safe hands and alright
When Hindley knows what is happening, he accepts the idea of separating Cathy from Heathcliff; As a
result, Cathy is to stay for a long time with the Lintons while her dog bite heals. Heathcliff is banned
from speaking to her.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Cathy stays at Thrushcross Grange for five weeks until Christmas. By the time she returns home, she has
become a transformed lady trained to keep certau i restrictions. As at now, he can hardly kiss Ellen
without worrying whether she will stain her clothe with flour.

To Heathcliff, she hurts his feelings by comparing his darkeness and dirtiness to Edgar's and Isabella's
fair complexions and clean clotties. In her absence, he has been over neglected. Cathy's new polished
life styles and cruel treatment of Hindley hurt him the more. Still, Cathy's love for Heathcliff has not
changed but Heathcliff does not know, rather, he runs out and refuses to come irtfar supper. Etenfeete
sorry for the way he is treated.
When Linton's children are invited for a Christmas party, Heathcliff politelybegs Ellen to make him
decent, promising that he is going to be good. Ellen accepts his promise and also reassures him that
Cathy still loves him. Heathcliff wishes he could be more like Edgar both in good looking, riches and good
manner. Ellen tells him that he can be handsome if he smiles and is trustworthy. As Heathcliff becomes
clean and cheerful, he comes to join the party but Hindley sends him out declaring that he is not fit for
the occasion. Edgar mocks his long hair which makes Heathcliff to throw hot apple sauce on him.
Because of this, he is taken away and flogged by Hindley. Cathy is angry at Edgar for mocking Heathcliff
and putting him into trouble, but she holds herself to avoid ruining her party. Cathy was not herself
throughout the party. She thinks of how Heathcliff is beaten and l^ppt alone. When her guests leave,
she sneaks into the garret (unfinish room) where Heathcliff is confined. Out of compassion, Ellen offers
Heathcliff night food remembering that he has not eaten all the day. He eats little and Ellen being
worried asks him why, he says that he is thinking of how to revenge against Hindley. Ellen stops her
narratives at this point and goes on to get things done.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Hindley's wife, Francis, delivers a baby Hareton. Believing that she will recover despite doctor's warning,
she dies after some weeks. Hindley being shattered in his hope grows in sorrow and desperation to the
extent that he curses both God and man. Ellen is happy to care for the baby. The entire household
degenerate into violent confusion. Notable people begin to shun their visit except Edgar who visits
Wuthering Heights because of Cathy. She dislikes Edgar coming to their house because Edgar's presence
used to make her think that she has to behave like Linton's to which she is not comfortable with,

Once upon a time at the absence of Hindley, Heathcliff was offended for seeing Cathy dressing for
Edgar's visit. He asked Cathy to shun the visit and come to stay with him but she refused. When he
comes, Heathcliff departs, leaving Ellen with them. Inside the house, Catherine shows her bad character
by secretly pinching Ellen. Ellen is happy to use the chance to show Edgar how Catherine behaves,
Catherine out of anger slaps Ellen and also slaps Edgar for reproving her. For this, Edgar decides to go
but Catherine stops him. Being too

weak, he is overcome by Catherine's strong will and two of them reconcile and they become lovers.
Later, Hindley returns home drunk and unloads his gun out of precaution.
CHAPTER NINE

Hindley, fully drunk, shouting and swearing in anger catches Ellen as she tries to hide Hareton in a
cupboard for safety. He takes up Hareton and says he will crop his ears like a dog to make him look
fearful. As he holds the baby over the banister (handrail),he suddenly hears Heathcliff walking down
stairs. He drops the baby yet Heathcliff catches him. Heathcliff even wishes that Hindley kills his own son
by mistake due to fpw he hates him. Ellen confirms this by saying that Heathcliff could have remedy the
mistake by smashing the baby's skull on the step if it is dark as revenge. While Hindley is shaking and
drinking, Heathcliff whispers to Nelly that he wishes Hindley drinks himself to death.

chapter-ten:

Catherine is living-well with her husband^and Isabella. She has her season of silence and groom which
Edgar attributes to her illness. Within one year of her marriage, Heathcliff comes back asking Nelly to
inform Catherine of his visit. He looks totally changed with good manners and educated speech.
Catherine is happy to meet him but Edgar refuses to be happy.

Heathcliff s frequent visit to Linton's family makes Edgar's sister (Isabella) to

fall in love with him to the dislike of her brother. Isabella becomes offended at

Catherine for keeping Heathcliff for herself but she shuns her that Heathcliff is not her match. Catherine
teases Isabella by telling Heathcliff that Isabella loves him. On hearing this, Isabella shyly runs out. But
Heathcliff confides in Catherine that he will marry Isabella because of her money and to make Edgar
unhappy.
CHAPTER ELEVEN

Nelly goes to Wuthering Heights to see how Hindley and his son Hareton are faring. When she sees
Hareton, he begins to throw stone at her not knowing that she is his former nurse. Nelly realizes that his
father teaches him how tocurse. When Heathcliff visits Thrushcross Grange, Nelly sees him kissing
Isabella. She told Catherine what she saw and Heathcliff defended himself by saying that he has a right
of doing whatever he wants since Catherine has married another person.

As Edgar comes in, he meets Catherine scolding Heathcliff. Edgar also scolds Catherine for having time to
talk with "that blackguard" His comment makes Catherine to feel angry before Edgar orders Heathcliff to
leave but he stubbornly ignores him. Then, Edgar asks Nelly to call the servants to send Heathcliff out,
but his wife angrily locks the door and throws the key into the fire. When the husband tries to collect it
from her, both Catherine and Heathcliff mock Edgar before he beats Heathcliff and goes out to get help.
While left alone with Nelly, Catherine expresses her anger at her husband and Heathcliff. Later, Edgar
comes inside and wants to know whether Catherine will quit her friendship with Heathcliff. Instead,
Catherine runs into her room and refuses to either come out or eat for many days.

EVALUATION

State how the novel reveal the intensity of love exiting between Cathrine and Heathcliff

Summaries the event in each chapter

Discuss to what extent the life of Heathcillff and Edgar depict cruetly and malicious hartred?

ASSIGNMENT

Narrate the event that leads to marriage of Heathcliff and Isabella

WEEK 3

SUBJECT - LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

CLASS – SS2

TOPIC – SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS TWELVE TO TWENTY TWO

Specific Objective: By the student should able to

State the reason why Heathcilff marry Isabella

State how Heathcilff became the LandLord of the thrustcross grange

SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS TWELVE TO TWENTY TWO CHAELVE

Catherine having stayed alone for three days in her room, requested for food and water from Nelly. She
is annoyed that Edgar is not even worried about her. Giving the situation, Ellen concludes that Catherine
is not happy and she thinks of going back to her room at Wuthering Heights. Catherine opens the
window and begins to talk to Heathcliff who has left in their childish manner before as if he is there to
the surprise of the husband who goes out to bring a doctor for her. Again, Doctor Kenneth informs Ellen
that he sees Isabella walking with Heathcliff in the park confirming the rumour that Isabella and
Heathcliff are planning to run away together. Ellen rushes back to the house and finds that Isabella has
disappeared with Heathcliff. Edgar shows no concern to this.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

After two months, Catherine is diagnosed with a brain feyer while being« pregnant. By this time,
Heathcliff and Isabella have returned to Wuthering Heights. She sends an apology letter to her brother
asking for forgiveness but,
Edgar refuses to reply her. Again with her experiences with Heathcliff, she sends another letter to Ellen
asking whether Heathcliff is a demon or madman. In Wuthering Heights, she sees the place very dirty,
uncivilized and unwelcoming. According to Isabella, Joseph is rude to her, Hareton is disobedient,
Hindley is a semi shattered madman and at worst, Heathcliff treated her cruelly to the extent that he
refuses to allow her to sleep in his room. Again, she discovers that Hindley has a pistol with which he
plans to kill Heathcliff. In a nut shell, she feels miserable and regrets her marriage.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Ellen is not happy at Edgar for refusing to console her sister Isabella. As a result, she goes to visit her at
Wuthering Heights. There, she informs Isabella and Heathcliff that Catherine can never become what
she was due to her illness. She advises Heathcliff not to bother her anymore. However, Heathcliff
ignores her advice and determines not to abandon her in her husband's unserious care, because she
loves him more than even the husband. In addition, Ellen urges Heathcliff to treat Isabella with care.
Heathcliff expresses in the presence of Ellen his hatred for his wife. Isabella in confidence tells Ellen that
she hates Heathcliffas well before he orders her to go upstairs. Before Ellen leaves Wuthering Heights,
he gives her a letter for Catherine.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

On Sunday, Ellen gives Catherine the letter from Heathcliff. Catherine is totally changed by her sickness.
As Ellen keeps the door open, Heathcliff comes in and Catherine is eager to see him. Their coming
together is somehow bitter and sweet. Right there, Catherine accuses Heathcliff of having killed her but
Heathcliff cautions her not to say such a thing to avoid hurting him after her death. In return, Heathcliff
accuses her of abandoning him for which Catherine asks him to forgive her knowing that she will not
even be at peace after death. They hold themselves closely and cried until Ellen informs themthat Edgar
is returning. Even when Heathcliff wants to go, Catherine refuses, since she is dying and will never see
him again. He agrees to stay and in the course of agitation Ellen discovers that Catherine has fainted
before Edgar comes in and Heathcliff hands over Catherine's body to him and tells him to take care of
her.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Catherine delivers a child around midnight and also names her Catherine Linton who was the teenage
girl Lockwood saw at Wuthering Heights. Sadly, Catherine Earnshaw dies two hours after delivery.
Nobody cares for the baby and Ellen wishes it could have been a boy. Even at death, Catherine's corpse
looks peaceful and beautiful, and Ellen concludes that she has made heaven at last.

Ellen goes outside to tell Heathcliff though he knows that Catherine is dead and asks Ellen how it
happens. In anger, Heathcliff curses Catherine and begs her to haunt him "so he would not be left in this
abyss, where I cannot find you! I cannot live without my soul". When Catherine's body is still lying in the
Grange, Heathcliff takes advantage of Edgar's absence to see her again. At last, Catherine is buried on
Friday.

chapter seventeen

On the next day when Ellen is carrying baby Catherine on her laps, Isabella comes in crying. She asks
Ellen to call a carriage that can take her to the nearest town, Gimmerton. She' is escaping from the
husband with her face cut and silk dress torn. Ellen gives her clothes and binds up her wounds. Isabella
tries to destroy her wedding,ring by throwing it into the fire and narrates to Ellen what happens to her

Isabella tells Ellen that she hates Heathcliff and cannot have compassion for him even when he is
mourning Catherine's death. He stays alone in his room praying like a Methodist. Hindley discloses to
Isabella his plan to kill Heath cliffwith his bladed pistol as he returns from his watch over Catherine's
grave. Isabella wants him to be killed but refuses to join. As Hindley tries to kill him, he grabs the
weapon and the blade cutsHindley on his wrist. He also kicks and tramples Hindley to faint after losing
much blood.

In the morning, Isabella comes down and meets Hindley very sick beside the fire. She informs Hindley
how Heathcliff kicks him when he is down. She mocks Heathcliff1 s action and he throws a knife at her.
Isabella runs to the Grange and never returns again. She delivers a son in her new house near London,
named Linton. She dies in the twelfth year of her son. Similarly, Hindfey dies six months after Catherines
death. Ellen grieves for him and wants to bring back his son Hareton to tfte Grange. She fears Heathcliff
who plans to degrade him as his father does to him. After mourning Catherine's death, Edgar loves his
daughter whom he calls Cathy.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

After twelve years, Cathy Linton grows up to be the only thing that brings joy to the lonely house. Her
father allows her to stay within the park of Grange. On her way to Penistone Crags closed to Wuthering
Heights, Ellen runs after her to ensure that she is safe. Heathcliff is not around but she meets Hareton
whom Ellen introduces to her as her cousin after taking him as the servant. Cathy cries for mistaking
Hareton and he offers her a puppy to console her but she refuses. Ellen tells her that the father does not
want her to visit Wuthering Heights and forbids her not to tell Edgar what happens.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

After the death of Isabella, Edgar returns with his nephew, Linton. Cathy is happy to see her cousin. In
the evening, Joseph comes to claim Linton on Heathcliff's behalf. Ellen tells him that Edgar is sleeping
but he goes into his room insisting on taking Linton. Edgar wishes to keep Linton at the Grange but lack
legal right to claim him.

CHAPTER TWENTY
When Ellen takes Linton to Wuthering Heights, he is surprised to hear that hehas a father because
Isabella has never told him about Heathcliff. Both Joseph and Heathcliff see him. Ellen begs Heathcliff to
be kind with the boy. He accepts to care for him at least he is the heir to the Grange, so that after
Edgar's death, he will inherit the place.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Cathy misses her cousin when she wakes in the morning. Linton grows up to be a selfish and
disagreeable boy. He is fond of complaining about his health. Heathcliff invites Cathy and Ellen to
Wuthering Heights where he wants Linton and Cathy to marry so that he will be fully sure of inheriting
the Grange.

When they return to the Grange, Cathy tells her father where she has been. She asks Edgar why he has
not allowed her to see her cousin at Wuthering Heights. He tells her of Heathcliff's wickedness and
warns her not to visit there. Cathy is not happy and begins to relate with Linton through love letters.
Seeing the letters, Ellens burns it and threatens to tell her father if she writes it again.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Edgar is confined in the house throughout the winter because of the cold he contacted. Cathy discloses
her displeasure to Ellen that she is afraid of being alone if Ellen and her father die. Being stranded at the
outside wall, Heathcliff meets her. He tells Cathy that Linton has been sick of her. He urges her to go and
visit Linton. Ellen tells her that Heathcliff may be lying. Cathy persuades her to accompany her to see
Linton at Wuthering Heights.

EVALUATION

State the reason why Heathcilff marry Isabella

State how Heathcilff became the LandLord of the thrust cross grange

ASSIGNMENT
In not less than two page summary chapters twelve to twenty two

WEEK 4

SUBJECT - LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

CLASS – SS2

TOPIC – SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS TWENTY THREE TO THIRTY FOUR

SpecificObjective

Bytheendofthelessonthestudentshouldabletodiscusstheeventthatleadstotherentingofthrustcrossganrge

StatewhyLinton beggedyoungCathrine tomarryhim

StatethereasonHeathcilff toldthefuneralpeopletoburiednexttoCathrine1 whendies

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Ellen and Cathy meet Linton at Wuthering Heights who complains that the servants don't take care of
him. He also complains that writing Cathy has been tiring. Linton says that he wishes Cathy will marry
him because he believes that wives always love their husband. As they return home, Ellen warns Cathy
not to marry him believing that he will die young. However, Cathy seems not to believe it. Instead, she
grows more friendly with him. Ellen catches cold and she is cared by Cathy.
Within three weeks, Elien gets better. She discovers Cathy's evening visit to Wuthering Heights as she
explains to her all that happens between her and Linton. On her next visit, Hareton angrily cemes in and
orders Cathy and Linton into the kitchen while Cathy is reading something for Linton. Linton in his angry
reaction coughs blood and faints. Hareton carries the boy upstairs. He prevents Cathy to follow. Linton
refuses to talk to Cathy, but only blames her for what happens last time. Heathcliff hates him but he is
unhappy at Wuthering Heights. He only loves Cathy. When Ellen tells Edgar about the several visits, he
warns Cathy notfto visit Wuthering Heights. Instead, he writes to Linton to come to the Grange as he
likes.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

Ellen explains to Lockwood that these events happened in the year before. She thinks that Lockwood
will be interested in Cathy. Edgar asks Ellen about the nature of Linton which she tells him that he is
delicate and has little of his father in him. When Edgar resumes his walk, he writes Linton to visit him to
the Grange but he declines because of Heathcliff but promises to meet him outside. As Edgar could not
walk far, he finally allows Cathy to marry Linton so that she will not leave the Grange when he dies, but
not knowing that Linton will die soon.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Ellen and Cathy ride to meet Linton close to Wuthering Heights. He is very ill but pretends to be better.
He could not find it easy talking with Cathy before she leaves. He begs her to stay, and to inform her
father that he is in tolerable health condition. No sooner had Cathy partly agreed than Linton falling into
slumber. Ellen and Cathy return home worried by his strange behaviour.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

After a week, Ellen and Cathy plan to make a trip to London. Edgar is getting worse in his sickness,
making Cathy not to leave him. He approves Cathy's relationship with Linton to ensure her welfare.
Cathy is not happy leaving his father. Heathcliff meets them and asks Ellen how long Edgar could live,
because
he is worried that Linton may die before him, which will stop the- marriage. Heathcliff orders his son to
bring Cathy inside the house which he does. He also locks up Ellen. Heathcliff slaps Cathy bitterly as she
protests to go and declares that she will not leave until she marries Linton. Ellen is imprisoned
separately from Cathy for five days with Hareton as her jailer.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

It was on the fifth day of captivity that Zilla released Ellen. Zilla says that Heathcliff has allowed Ellen to
go home while Cathy will be released to attend her father's burial Edgar is not dead yet. Ellen inquires
from him that Cathy is shut upstairs and she has been forced to marry Linton. He says that Linton is glad
that she is being treated harshly.

Ellen rebukes Linton for his selfishness and unkindness. As she goes to the Grange, Edgar is happy to
hear that his daughter is safe and will come home soon. At the age of thirty nine, Edgar is almost dead.
When he hears HeathclifFs plan to inherit his estate, he sends for a lawyer, Mr. Green to change his will.
Unfortunately, Heathcliff buys up the lawyer and he does not come on time until it is too late to change
the will. Cathy manages to escape in time to see her father again and Edgar dies happy. Mr. Green,
contracted by Heathcliff issues quit notice to all the servants in the Grange except Ellen.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Heathcliff comes to the Grangeto bring Cathy to look after Linton who is dying in terror of his father.
Ellen begs him to allow Cathy and Linton to live in the Grange. He declines because he wants to put a
tenant in the estate being Mr. Lockwood. Heathcliff tells Ellen that he bribes the sexton who digs Edgar's
grave to open Catherine coffin for him to see her face again. As that request fails, he bribes the sexton
to put his body into Catherine's coffin when he dies. Ellen upon hearing this from Heathcliff is shocked
and rebukes him for disturbing the dead but he replies Ellen that Catherine has been haunting him day
and night since eighteen years. Heathcliff reveals how he digs out Catherine's corpse at kirkyard just to
feel her in his arms again after which he is consoled and tortured as well. Heathcliff has been feeling as if
he can see her even when he sleeps in her room, trying to see her but to no avail.

Again, Ellen in her narrative tells Lockwood what Zilla informed her about Cathy's residence at
Wuthering Heights. Cathy spends time in Linton's room caring for him when he is terribly sick. Even
Heathcliff refuses to bring a doctor at Cathy's request, saying that Linton does not have a value of a
farthing. Cathy is left alone to care for Linton till he dies without any one including Joseph and Hareton
to assist her. When Cathy is ill for two weeks, Heathcliff informs her that Linton has left all of his
property and that of his wife to him. Cathy grows angry against all of them and refuses to forgive them
for abandoning her alone with Linton till he dies. She, however, becomes the unfriendly young woman
whom Lockwood sees at Wuthering Height. Ellen after Lintons believes that the only way Cathy can
escape from Wuthering Heights is to re-marry another man.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

Lockwood goes to the Wuthering Heights to tell Heathcliff that he will not live instead he is going to
London to live. Cathy in her captivity expresses her longing for freedom. She also complains that
Heathcliff has destroyed her book such that she cannot write Ellen. Sooner, Heathcliff enters to bear his
anger and grief in solitude. Later, Heathcliff invites Lockwood to the cheerless meal, which he
manageably eats before he leaves. He thinks of courting Cathy and bringing her into a happy
environment in the town.

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

At the end of 1801, Lockwood returns to Grange on a haunting mission. He finds the place almost
empty. He sees Cathy teaching Hareton how to read. In his path finding trip to see what has changed in
Wuthering Heights, Ellen is happy to meet him as he promises to settle her rent since she is acting for
Cathy. Nelly comes after Lockwood's departure and she is not happy at the way the young Catherine's
personality Has changed in the course of time. Cathy and Hareton reconcile and they become loving
friends to Joseph's anger.

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

Ellen sees Cathy and Hareton in the garden planting a flower garden in the most cherished bush by
Joseph. As soon as Joseph comes in, he laments for the bushthey destroy which makes Heathcliff to call
Cathy an "insolent sluf” and threatens to break her in pieces after ordering Hareton to throw her out.
Cathy by Hareton's advice seizes to insult Heathcliff anymore and the duo continues to live friendly.
Heathcliff comes up and is surprised to see both Hareton and Cathy losing like Catherine Earnshaw. He
informs Ellen that he has lost his motivation for destruction just because of their resemblance to
Catherine. He takes Hareton and Cathy as apparitions that evoke his beloved.
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

After few days, Heathdiff stops eating and spends the whole night walking. Catherine comes out and
sees him looking more excited, wild and glad. At dinner, he totally loses interest in eating. He seems to
be watching something by the window and goes outside. He later goes outside expressing unnatural
appearance of joy, Blen tries to ask him why the sudden behaviour, but he replies that he is within the
sight of his heaven.

In the evening, Bten finds Heathcliff sitting in the dark alone with all the windows open. Ellen wonders
whether he is a vampire. On the next day, he became more restlessand began to lose his speech filled
with emotional and physical anquish. Heatehdlflff sends for his lawyer, Mr. Green to settle things, yet
refusing to eat or sleqp. However, Slenasks him to repent of his sins. He also begs Ellen to make sure
that his body is buried next to Catherine's grave. As he is dying, he is talking open about Catherine.
Heathcliff refuses to see the doctor Ellen invites to attend to himAgain, on the next morning, she finds
him dead in his room. Hareton mourns for him and his death is attributed to depression. He is buried
besides Catherine as he requested. People used to claim that his ghost and that of Catttaiine roam the
Moor. Cathy and Hareton engage themselves. They plan to movetothe Grange leaving Joseph and the
ghosts in Wuthering Heights.

CHARACTERIZATION /ROLE

A: HCATHCLJFF

He is one of the central characters of the novel. He is an orphan whom Mr. Earnshaw adopted and
brought to live in Wuthering Heights. He falls into a deepand unbreakable love with Earnshaw's
daughter, Catherine. He becomes a victim of hate after the death of Eamshaw. His resentful son,
Hindley, not only abuses him but treats htm like a servant. His humiliation and misery cause him to
spend most of his life trying to carry out a revenge against Hindley. He is a fierce and cruel man who is
always destructive and aggressive in character because he is denied access to marry Catherine. Upon the
death of Edgar, Heathcliff acquires both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange which is the estate
of Edgar Linton. Heathcliff inhuman devotion to Catherine even in death is the distinctive feature of this
character laa.symbollentel, Heathcliff stands for wild and natural forces which often seem mysterious
and dangerous to humanity.
B: CATHERINE EARNSHAW

She is the daughter of MrEarnshaw. She falls in love with the adopted son of her father, Heathcliff.
Catherine's desire for social relevance is the reason behind her marriage with Edgar Unton instead of
Heathcliff. Their intense love for each other is much expressed in Catherine's confession and claims that
she is the same with Heathcliff. Character wise, Catherine is free spirited and often arrogant in relating
with others especially in defence of Heathcliff. She is beautiful and charming but flawed by an unruly
temper. She is survived by a daughter who is also named Catherine.

C: EDGAR UNTON

He is the older brother of Isabella who marries Catherine Earnshaw. He is also the father of Catherine
Linton. He is an ideal gentleman who is well bred so much that Catherine describes him as being
handsome and pleasant to be with. He combines moral cheerfulness with riches thereby reflecting his
elevated social class. As a refined gentleman, he is easily disposed to unforgiveness when his dignity is
hurt. For instance, Edgar frowns at Isabella's elopement with Heathcliff and turns his back on her even
when her situation get worse with Heathcliff.

D: LOCKWOOD

He is the narrator of the novel and a gentleman from London. His roles in the novel serve as an
intermediary between Nelly and the reader. Again, Lockwoodcomes from a domesticated region of
England. He seems to be sympathetic and always likes to patronize the people around him. This sense of
compassion is the driving force that makes him to settle a rentage for Ellen. He is baffled by the strange
behaviours of the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights which negates the principles of social conventions
and norms that characterize his world in England. He is the potential tenant that comes for Grange
estate but declines his interestafter hearing everything from Nelly.

E. ISABELLA LINTON
She is the younger sister of Edgar. She falls in love with Heathcliff and elopes with him without her
brother's consent. Her marriage with Heathcliff gives rise to the birth of her son, Linton Heathcliff. In the
novel, Isabella can be described as a shallow minded young lady blessed with natural beauty. She is also
quick witted but handicapped by foolishness especially in making choices. Her unhappy marriage for
which she runs out of wedlock and resides in London brings an element of cruelty in her character
against the husband who treats her brutally. Before her death, she hates Heathcliff with all her mind.

F: HINDLEY EARNSHAW

He is the only son of Mr and Mrs. Earnshaw and the brother of Catherine, He is morally inclined to
bullying and discontention against Heathcliff whom his father loves and cares for. After the death of his
father, he inherits the Grange estate as the heir apparent. He abuses and torments Heathcliff by
stopping his education and forces Heathcliff to work in the farm out of hate. He becomes addicted to
alcoholism and dissipation following the death of his wife.

G: LINTON HEATHCLIFF

He is the son of Heathcliff and Isabella. He is a combined picture of odd characters of his parents. In
Wuthering Heights, Linton can be described as an effeminate, sickly in nature with cruel disposition. He
is hated and often despised by his father. He uses his condition as an invalid to torment the tender Cathy
Linton who devotes to caring for him. Linton marries Cathy by force as planned by his father. He dies
soon after the marriage.

H.ELLEN DEAN (NELLY)

She plays a role in the novel as one of the main narrators. She has been a servant throughout her life
serving both the Earnshaws and Union's. She has mastery of all their family stories and histories. Ellen is
an independent and high spirited servant who narrates everything about Wuthering Heights to Mr.
Lockwood.

X: CATHY UNION
She is the daughter of the older Catherine and Edgar Linton. With Heathcliff s selfish arrangement, she is
beaten into marriage with Linton by Heathcliff. By moral standard, she takes after her mother though
with her "wildness". Upon Linton's death, she re-marries Hareton after reconciling with him and after
the death of Heathdiff.

THEMES/MORAL LESSONS

"Wuthering Heights" as a fictional piece is a package of many themes such as:

A: LONELINESS AND ISOLATION

In the novel, Blonte uses and presents characters who value loneliness and isolation as the only panacea
to their psychic-wounds (heartbreaks). Most of the characters like Heathcliff becomes a loner and
monster because of his yearning and mourning for Catherine's ddath. Again, Mr. Lockwood desires to
rent Thrushcross Grange just to cool his emotional anguish in solitary zone. Hindley becomes cruel and
lonely upon the death of his wife, Francis. These characters appreciate lonely moment and environment
as the only psychological thereapy that can heal their love failures and romantic disappointment with
time.

B. THE DESTRUCTIVENESS AND GENUITYOFIOVE

Love and its destructive tendency is one of the fundamental and universal ideas explored in the novel.
Evidently, Catherine and Heathcliff's passion for each other is the centerpiece of "Withering Heights". As
romantic heroes, their love transcends social norms and conventional morality. It is recorded in the-
novel that their love is strangely asexual and goes beyond the convention of love among fornicators and
adulterers. Conversely, the destructive nature of their love is the rationale behind Heathcliff' endless
mourning of Catherine's death. Hindley for losing his lover is turned to cruelty, drunfenness and
depression till he dies.

C: THEME OF SOCIAL AND CLASS DISTINCTION

The novel is an x-ray of social class, identity and status as reflected in most characters through their
education, exposure and wealth. For example, Catherine to maintain her quest for social recognition and
relevance pretentiously marries Edgar while her love is only built around Heathciiff. Again, these
characters are socially structured to show their societal values and positions in the fiction. Joseph, Ellen,
Ziila, Heathcliff etc are portrayed as servants while Mr. Lockwood, Isabella, Hindley, Edgar, etc with their
household define a set of people from exalted social background.

D, THE PREVALENCE OF DISEASE/SICKNESS AND DEATH

The tragic intensity of the novel is heightened by the prevalence of disease and sickness which-has
resulted in serial premature deaths. For instance, Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw die out of fever infection of
Catherine. Hindley's wife dies in a short time after delivering Hareton. Isabella becomes sick and dies
premature living her only son, Linton. Catherine, after suffering from brain fever dies leaving alone Cathy
among others. In a nutshell, the prominence of sickness with its attendant death in the novel is a
physical denominator of external forces and challenges fighting human survival and destinies in the
world and especially the era of Emily Blonte.

WEEK 1

SUBJECT - LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

CLASS – SS2

TOPIC– introduction to the Wuthering Height, author’s background setting on plot

SpecificObjective- By the end of the lesson the students should be able to:

Identify the another of the WutheringHeight

State the settle of the pose

Narrate the story in the pose

Background of the author

The author, Emily Jane Blonte, was bornin 1818 in England. She was the daughter of the Curate of
Haworth in West Yorkshire. Emily was the third eldest child of her father. She was an English novelist
and poet who was best known for her English novel, "Wuthering Heights". At the age of seventeen,
Emily began her education at Roe Head Girls' school but later left the school due to horrfesickness. Her
sudden development of sickness resulting from tuberculosis cost her life in 1848.

SETTING OF THE POSE WUTHERING HEIGHT

The novel "Wuthering Heights" was set in the Yorkshire Moors in New England. The time frame was in
the late 18th century. The novelist makes use of the gothic landscape and setting to paint the
environmental pictures of the wild farm house called Wuthering Heights and the decent and habitable
mansion known as Thrushcross Grange. The setting of the novel brings to light certain characters who
are influenced by the sad and depressing Wuthering Heights. The occupants are only happy when they
move out of the Heights and relax in the Moor which sqemsto be lively and colourful.
EVALUATION

Who is the author of the pose Wuthering Heights

Comment on the settling of the pose

Narrate the story in the pose.

ASSIGNMENT

Summaries the whole novel in one page

WEEK 2

SUBJECT - LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

CLASS – SS2

TOPIC – SUMMERING OF CHAPTER ONE TO ELEVEN

Specific Objective:By the student should able to

State how the novel reveal the intensity of love exiting between Cathrine and Heathcliff

Summaries the event in each chapter

Discuss to what extent the life of Heathcillff and Edgar depict cruetly and malicious hartred?

SUMMARIES OF CHAPTERS ONE TO ELEVEN

It was in the year 1808 when Mr, Lockwood the narrator tells the story of his visit to his new landlord
called Mr. Heathcliff. Lockwood, a hater, is rentiny Thrush Cross Grange in order to hide away from the
society because of his encountered failure in love with the goddess he has loved. On meeting Heathcliff,
Lockwood is so happy that he has met a man who is more sociable than him especially at the way he is
given him a warm reception. At the Wuthering Heights which is the name of Heathcliff's residence,
Lockwood realized that Wuthering means stormy and windy environment. He also sees a carved name
near the door bearing "HarethonEarnshaw". Inside the Wuthering Height, where Heathcliff and his old
servant Joseph and his cook live, Lockwood is threatened by barking dogs living in the old fashioned
rooms. When he calls for help, the landlord, Heathcliff thinks that Lockwood has tried to steal
something. Despite his rudeness and embarrassment,

Lockwood still finds himself relaxed with Heathcliff whom he describes as an intelligent, proud but a
morose, unlikely farmer. He offers Lockwood some wines and invites him to come again. Inside his mind,
he sees the invitation as insincere but decides to return the visit due to the way the landlord arouses his
mind.

CHAPTER TWO

Lockwood is annoyed at the type of housework being done in the Grange. He pays his second visit to
Wuthering Heights when snow is falling causing cold weather. After shouting at the old servant Joseph
to open the door, Lockwood is let in as another young man opens the entrance. The kitchen is warm and
Lockwood thinks that the young, beautiful woman he meets there is Heathcliff's wife. The young lady
scornfully refuses to converse with him even when he tries to talk with her. Lockwood fells embarrassed
and worst still, she refuses to make tea for him unless Heathcliff says so. When Lockwood and the young
man sit for tea, he discovers that the young man is suspecting him of making advances to the girl by the
way he behaves. There also, Heathcliff's savagely makes demand for tea which makes Lockwood not to
really like him. Lockwood gets more confused by taking the lady as Heathcliff's wife or the wife of the
young man whom he takes to be Heathcliff's son. But her husband is dead and she is as Heathcliff's wife.
Lockwood is rudely corrected as he comes to understand that the lady is Heathcliff's daughter-in-law.
The young man is HaretonEarnshaw. Due to heavy snowfall, Lockwood demands for a guide so that he
can return home safely, but it is denied to him. Heathcliff sees it as more important that Hareton takes
care of the horses than going out. Joseph, being a religious fanatic, argues with the girl who pretends to
be a witch. At the end, Lockwood is left stranded and ignored by all. When he tries to take a lantern,
Joseph accuses him of stealing it and sets dogs on him. Lockwood is humiliated and Heathcliff and
Hareton laugh at him. He is taken in by cook, Zilla who asks him to spend the night with them.
CHAPTER THREE

Having been ushered into a chamber by Zilla, she discovers that Lockwood does not like it. Being left
alone, Lockwood sees some names like Catherine Linton, and Catherine Heathcliff written over the
window edge. Readingthrough some old books packed inside the room, he comes across Catherine's
childhood diary. He reads some write iSps which show the time when Catherine and Heathcliff were
playmates livjng together as brother and sister. The diary also reveals how Joseph bullied them and her
older brother, Hindley. Heathcliff by his history was a vagabond (wahderer) rescued by Catherine's
father and raised as one of the family members. Unfortunately when the father died, Hindley made him
a servant and threaten to send him out which Catherine never likes.

After a while, Lockwood falls asleep while reading a religious book. He dreamt about a religious fanatic
leading a vidtent mob. He had his second dream where a little ice-cold hand grabbed his arm and begs
him to let him in. The voice introduces herself as Catherine Linton and that she comes home because
she lost her way to the Moor. Therein, Lockwood sees a child's face and feels afraid. His efforts to draw
the child in through the glass window wound the child's wrist such that the blood stains the sheet
before he wakes up screaming. When Heathcliff comes in looking disturbed and confused not knowing
that Lockwood is there. He tells Heathcliff what happens and the dream in which Catherine's name is
mentioned. The name worries Heathcliff and makes him to be angry. Lockwood also overhears Heathcliff
pleading to Cathy to come in at last. Somehow, Lockwood is embarrassed by the landlord's agony.
Again, he witnesses in the morning argument between Heathcliff and the girl who is reading. She resists
Heathcliff's bulliesbefot she sees Lockwood off.

CHAPTER FOUR

Being so bored and weak after his adventure, Lockwood asks his house keeper, Ellen Dean, to tell him
what he knows about Heathcliff and the old families of the area. Ellen informs Lockwood that Heathcliff
is rich and stingy. According to the housekeeper, he has no family since his son died. The girl living at the
Wuthering Heights is Ellen's former employer's daughter called Catherine Lintons. Ellen worries about
the unhappy mood of younger Catherine because she is always fond of her. Also, Ellen says that she
grows up at Wuthering Heights where her mother was working as a nurse. She narratedto Lockwood
how Mr. Earnshaw returned with a dirty ragged black haired child found starving on the street. The boy
was named Heathcliff and was adopted into the family but not fully welcomed by MrsEarnshaw and
Hindiey. Catherine and Heathcliff became very friendly and he also became Earnshaw'sfavourites.
Hindiey was jealous and unhappy thinking that Heathcliff has taken his place. Even when Earnshaw
made clothes for them, Heathcliff chose the finest of it. When Heathcliff claimed that Hindiey threw a
heavy iron at him, Heathcliff threatened to import him to Earnshaw.

CHAPTER FIVE

When Earnshaw becomes old and sick, he is obsessed with the fear and idea that people do not like his
favourite, Heathcliff. Being his spoilt child, Hthtlley grows more bitter against the situation and he is sent
away to college. Worse still, the old Joseph, the self righteous Pharisee uses his religious influence over
Earnshaw to separate him from his children. To Earnshaw, he thinks Hindiey is useless. He also hates
Cathy's playfulness and high spirits. Cathy is too fond of Heathcliff and likes to order people around just
like Heathcliff can do anything she requests. Earnshaw is too harsh to her and she remains more
hardened to his reproofs.

At last Earnshaw died in one evening. Cathy does not know until she goes to

kiss her father good night and discovers that he has died. However, the two

children cry without measures:

I shall bid father good- night first, said Catherine

The poor thing discovered her loss directly. She screams

out- oh, he's dead Heathcliff, he's dead [p,30].

Later, they console themselves believing that the old man is in heaven.

CHAPTER SIX
MrHindiey comes home for his father's funeral. Unexpectedly, he returns home with a wife. Hindiey also
comes back with new rules with strange manners upon which he orders servants to go and live in
inferior quarters. He does not spare Heathcliff as he treats him like other servants, stops his education
and makes him to work in the field like any other farm boy.

Heathcliff does not feel it initially because Cathy teaches him what she learns and helps him to work and
also plays with in the field. Even Ellen plans to runway to the Moors in the morning till the punishment is
over.

One day, the servant ran away after being punished till in the night when Heathcliff returned. Heathcliff
and Cathy run to the Grange (farm House) to see how Isabella is doing there. They met Linton's children
Edgar and Isabella crying over who will hold the pet dog. They are amused by the actions of the children
who go to call their parents. Cathy and Heathcliff try to escape after making frightening noises and a bull
dog bites her on the leg and holds her to still. She asks Heathcliff to escape but he comes to her rescue
trying to pry the dog's jaws open. Mr and Mrs Linton take them to be thieves. Surprisingly, Edgar
recognizes Cathy as Miss Earnshaw and the parents frowns at their wild behaviour especially at
Heathcliff for being allowed to keep company with Cathy. The couple treats Cathy with care and drives
out Heathcliff. He returns to Wuthering Heights after ensuring that Cathy is in safe hands and alright
When Hindley knows what is happening, he accepts the idea of separating Cathy from Heathcliff; As a
result, Cathy is to stay for a long time with the Lintons while her dog bite heals. Heathcliff is banned
from speaking to her.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Cathy stays at Thrushcross Grange for five weeks until Christmas. By the time she returns home, she has
become a transformed lady trained to keep certau i restrictions. As at now, he can hardly kiss Ellen
without worrying whether she will stain her clothe with flour.

To Heathcliff, she hurts his feelings by comparing his darkeness and dirtiness to Edgar's and Isabella's
fair complexions and clean clotties. In her absence, he has been over neglected. Cathy's new polished
life styles and cruel treatment of Hindley hurt him the more. Still, Cathy's love for Heathcliff has not
changed but Heathcliff does not know, rather, he runs out and refuses to come irtfar supper. Etenfeete
sorry for the way he is treated.
When Linton's children are invited for a Christmas party, Heathcliff politelybegs Ellen to make him
decent, promising that he is going to be good. Ellen accepts his promise and also reassures him that
Cathy still loves him. Heathcliff wishes he could be more like Edgar both in good looking, riches and good
manner. Ellen tells him that he can be handsome if he smiles and is trustworthy. As Heathcliff becomes
clean and cheerful, he comes to join the party but Hindley sends him out declaring that he is not fit for
the occasion. Edgar mocks his long hair which makes Heathcliff to throw hot apple sauce on him.
Because of this, he is taken away and flogged by Hindley. Cathy is angry at Edgar for mocking Heathcliff
and putting him into trouble, but she holds herself to avoid ruining her party. Cathy was not herself
throughout the party. She thinks of how Heathcliff is beaten and l^ppt alone. When her guests leave,
she sneaks into the garret (unfinish room) where Heathcliff is confined. Out of compassion, Ellen offers
Heathcliff night food remembering that he has not eaten all the day. He eats little and Ellen being
worried asks him why, he says that he is thinking of how to revenge against Hindley. Ellen stops her
narratives at this point and goes on to get things done.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Hindley's wife, Francis, delivers a baby Hareton. Believing that she will recover despite doctor's warning,
she dies after some weeks. Hindley being shattered in his hope grows in sorrow and desperation to the
extent that he curses both God and man. Ellen is happy to care for the baby. The entire household
degenerate into violent confusion. Notable people begin to shun their visit except Edgar who visits
Wuthering Heights because of Cathy. She dislikes Edgar coming to their house because Edgar's presence
used to make her think that she has to behave like Linton's to which she is not comfortable with,

Once upon a time at the absence of Hindley, Heathcliff was offended for seeing Cathy dressing for
Edgar's visit. He asked Cathy to shun the visit and come to stay with him but she refused. When he
comes, Heathcliff departs, leaving Ellen with them. Inside the house, Catherine shows her bad character
by secretly pinching Ellen. Ellen is happy to use the chance to show Edgar how Catherine behaves,
Catherine out of anger slaps Ellen and also slaps Edgar for reproving her. For this, Edgar decides to go
but Catherine stops him. Being too

weak, he is overcome by Catherine's strong will and two of them reconcile and they become lovers.
Later, Hindley returns home drunk and unloads his gun out of precaution.
CHAPTER NINE

Hindley, fully drunk, shouting and swearing in anger catches Ellen as she tries to hide Hareton in a
cupboard for safety. He takes up Hareton and says he will crop his ears like a dog to make him look
fearful. As he holds the baby over the banister (handrail),he suddenly hears Heathcliff walking down
stairs. He drops the baby yet Heathcliff catches him. Heathcliff even wishes that Hindley kills his own son
by mistake due to fpw he hates him. Ellen confirms this by saying that Heathcliff could have remedy the
mistake by smashing the baby's skull on the step if it is dark as revenge. While Hindley is shaking and
drinking, Heathcliff whispers to Nelly that he wishes Hindley drinks himself to death.

chapter-ten:

Catherine is living-well with her husband^and Isabella. She has her season of silence and groom which
Edgar attributes to her illness. Within one year of her marriage, Heathcliff comes back asking Nelly to
inform Catherine of his visit. He looks totally changed with good manners and educated speech.
Catherine is happy to meet him but Edgar refuses to be happy.

Heathcliff s frequent visit to Linton's family makes Edgar's sister (Isabella) to

fall in love with him to the dislike of her brother. Isabella becomes offended at

Catherine for keeping Heathcliff for herself but she shuns her that Heathcliff is not her match. Catherine
teases Isabella by telling Heathcliff that Isabella loves him. On hearing this, Isabella shyly runs out. But
Heathcliff confides in Catherine that he will marry Isabella because of her money and to make Edgar
unhappy.
CHAPTER ELEVEN

Nelly goes to Wuthering Heights to see how Hindley and his son Hareton are faring. When she sees
Hareton, he begins to throw stone at her not knowing that she is his former nurse. Nelly realizes that his
father teaches him how tocurse. When Heathcliff visits Thrushcross Grange, Nelly sees him kissing
Isabella. She told Catherine what she saw and Heathcliff defended himself by saying that he has a right
of doing whatever he wants since Catherine has married another person.

As Edgar comes in, he meets Catherine scolding Heathcliff. Edgar also scolds Catherine for having time to
talk with "that blackguard" His comment makes Catherine to feel angry before Edgar orders Heathcliff to
leave but he stubbornly ignores him. Then, Edgar asks Nelly to call the servants to send Heathcliff out,
but his wife angrily locks the door and throws the key into the fire. When the husband tries to collect it
from her, both Catherine and Heathcliff mock Edgar before he beats Heathcliff and goes out to get help.
While left alone with Nelly, Catherine expresses her anger at her husband and Heathcliff. Later, Edgar
comes inside and wants to know whether Catherine will quit her friendship with Heathcliff. Instead,
Catherine runs into her room and refuses to either come out or eat for many days.

EVALUATION

State how the novel reveal the intensity of love exiting between Cathrine and Heathcliff

Summaries the event in each chapter

Discuss to what extent the life of Heathcillff and Edgar depict cruetly and malicious hartred?

ASSIGNMENT

Narrate the event that leads to marriage of Heathcliff and Isabella

WEEK 3

SUBJECT - LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

CLASS – SS2

TOPIC – SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS TWELVE TO TWENTY TWO

Specific Objective: By the student should able to

State the reason why Heathcilff marry Isabella

State how Heathcilff became the LandLord of the thrustcross grange

SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS TWELVE TO TWENTY TWO CHAELVE

Catherine having stayed alone for three days in her room, requested for food and water from Nelly. She
is annoyed that Edgar is not even worried about her. Giving the situation, Ellen concludes that Catherine
is not happy and she thinks of going back to her room at Wuthering Heights. Catherine opens the
window and begins to talk to Heathcliff who has left in their childish manner before as if he is there to
the surprise of the husband who goes out to bring a doctor for her. Again, Doctor Kenneth informs Ellen
that he sees Isabella walking with Heathcliff in the park confirming the rumour that Isabella and
Heathcliff are planning to run away together. Ellen rushes back to the house and finds that Isabella has
disappeared with Heathcliff. Edgar shows no concern to this.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

After two months, Catherine is diagnosed with a brain feyer while being« pregnant. By this time,
Heathcliff and Isabella have returned to Wuthering Heights. She sends an apology letter to her brother
asking for forgiveness but,
Edgar refuses to reply her. Again with her experiences with Heathcliff, she sends another letter to Ellen
asking whether Heathcliff is a demon or madman. In Wuthering Heights, she sees the place very dirty,
uncivilized and unwelcoming. According to Isabella, Joseph is rude to her, Hareton is disobedient,
Hindley is a semi shattered madman and at worst, Heathcliff treated her cruelly to the extent that he
refuses to allow her to sleep in his room. Again, she discovers that Hindley has a pistol with which he
plans to kill Heathcliff. In a nut shell, she feels miserable and regrets her marriage.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Ellen is not happy at Edgar for refusing to console her sister Isabella. As a result, she goes to visit her at
Wuthering Heights. There, she informs Isabella and Heathcliff that Catherine can never become what
she was due to her illness. She advises Heathcliff not to bother her anymore. However, Heathcliff
ignores her advice and determines not to abandon her in her husband's unserious care, because she
loves him more than even the husband. In addition, Ellen urges Heathcliff to treat Isabella with care.
Heathcliff expresses in the presence of Ellen his hatred for his wife. Isabella in confidence tells Ellen that
she hates Heathcliffas well before he orders her to go upstairs. Before Ellen leaves Wuthering Heights,
he gives her a letter for Catherine.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

On Sunday, Ellen gives Catherine the letter from Heathcliff. Catherine is totally changed by her sickness.
As Ellen keeps the door open, Heathcliff comes in and Catherine is eager to see him. Their coming
together is somehow bitter and sweet. Right there, Catherine accuses Heathcliff of having killed her but
Heathcliff cautions her not to say such a thing to avoid hurting him after her death. In return, Heathcliff
accuses her of abandoning him for which Catherine asks him to forgive her knowing that she will not
even be at peace after death. They hold themselves closely and cried until Ellen informs themthat Edgar
is returning. Even when Heathcliff wants to go, Catherine refuses, since she is dying and will never see
him again. He agrees to stay and in the course of agitation Ellen discovers that Catherine has fainted
before Edgar comes in and Heathcliff hands over Catherine's body to him and tells him to take care of
her.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Catherine delivers a child around midnight and also names her Catherine Linton who was the teenage
girl Lockwood saw at Wuthering Heights. Sadly, Catherine Earnshaw dies two hours after delivery.
Nobody cares for the baby and Ellen wishes it could have been a boy. Even at death, Catherine's corpse
looks peaceful and beautiful, and Ellen concludes that she has made heaven at last.

Ellen goes outside to tell Heathcliff though he knows that Catherine is dead and asks Ellen how it
happens. In anger, Heathcliff curses Catherine and begs her to haunt him "so he would not be left in this
abyss, where I cannot find you! I cannot live without my soul". When Catherine's body is still lying in the
Grange, Heathcliff takes advantage of Edgar's absence to see her again. At last, Catherine is buried on
Friday.

chapter seventeen

On the next day when Ellen is carrying baby Catherine on her laps, Isabella comes in crying. She asks
Ellen to call a carriage that can take her to the nearest town, Gimmerton. She' is escaping from the
husband with her face cut and silk dress torn. Ellen gives her clothes and binds up her wounds. Isabella
tries to destroy her wedding,ring by throwing it into the fire and narrates to Ellen what happens to her

Isabella tells Ellen that she hates Heathcliff and cannot have compassion for him even when he is
mourning Catherine's death. He stays alone in his room praying like a Methodist. Hindley discloses to
Isabella his plan to kill Heath cliffwith his bladed pistol as he returns from his watch over Catherine's
grave. Isabella wants him to be killed but refuses to join. As Hindley tries to kill him, he grabs the
weapon and the blade cutsHindley on his wrist. He also kicks and tramples Hindley to faint after losing
much blood.

In the morning, Isabella comes down and meets Hindley very sick beside the fire. She informs Hindley
how Heathcliff kicks him when he is down. She mocks Heathcliff1 s action and he throws a knife at her.
Isabella runs to the Grange and never returns again. She delivers a son in her new house near London,
named Linton. She dies in the twelfth year of her son. Similarly, Hindfey dies six months after Catherines
death. Ellen grieves for him and wants to bring back his son Hareton to tfte Grange. She fears Heathcliff
who plans to degrade him as his father does to him. After mourning Catherine's death, Edgar loves his
daughter whom he calls Cathy.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

After twelve years, Cathy Linton grows up to be the only thing that brings joy to the lonely house. Her
father allows her to stay within the park of Grange. On her way to Penistone Crags closed to Wuthering
Heights, Ellen runs after her to ensure that she is safe. Heathcliff is not around but she meets Hareton
whom Ellen introduces to her as her cousin after taking him as the servant. Cathy cries for mistaking
Hareton and he offers her a puppy to console her but she refuses. Ellen tells her that the father does not
want her to visit Wuthering Heights and forbids her not to tell Edgar what happens.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

After the death of Isabella, Edgar returns with his nephew, Linton. Cathy is happy to see her cousin. In
the evening, Joseph comes to claim Linton on Heathcliff's behalf. Ellen tells him that Edgar is sleeping
but he goes into his room insisting on taking Linton. Edgar wishes to keep Linton at the Grange but lack
legal right to claim him.

CHAPTER TWENTY
When Ellen takes Linton to Wuthering Heights, he is surprised to hear that hehas a father because
Isabella has never told him about Heathcliff. Both Joseph and Heathcliff see him. Ellen begs Heathcliff to
be kind with the boy. He accepts to care for him at least he is the heir to the Grange, so that after
Edgar's death, he will inherit the place.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Cathy misses her cousin when she wakes in the morning. Linton grows up to be a selfish and
disagreeable boy. He is fond of complaining about his health. Heathcliff invites Cathy and Ellen to
Wuthering Heights where he wants Linton and Cathy to marry so that he will be fully sure of inheriting
the Grange.

When they return to the Grange, Cathy tells her father where she has been. She asks Edgar why he has
not allowed her to see her cousin at Wuthering Heights. He tells her of Heathcliff's wickedness and
warns her not to visit there. Cathy is not happy and begins to relate with Linton through love letters.
Seeing the letters, Ellens burns it and threatens to tell her father if she writes it again.

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Edgar is confined in the house throughout the winter because of the cold he contacted. Cathy discloses
her displeasure to Ellen that she is afraid of being alone if Ellen and her father die. Being stranded at the
outside wall, Heathcliff meets her. He tells Cathy that Linton has been sick of her. He urges her to go and
visit Linton. Ellen tells her that Heathcliff may be lying. Cathy persuades her to accompany her to see
Linton at Wuthering Heights.

EVALUATION

State the reason why Heathcilff marry Isabella

State how Heathcilff became the LandLord of the thrust cross grange

ASSIGNMENT
In not less than two page summary chapters twelve to twenty two

WEEK 4

SUBJECT - LITERATURE IN ENGLISH

CLASS – SS2

TOPIC – SUMMARY OF CHAPTERS TWENTY THREE TO THIRTY FOUR

SpecificObjective

Bytheendofthelessonthestudentshouldabletodiscusstheeventthatleadstotherentingofthrustcrossganrge

StatewhyLinton beggedyoungCathrine tomarryhim

StatethereasonHeathcilff toldthefuneralpeopletoburiednexttoCathrine1 whendies

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Ellen and Cathy meet Linton at Wuthering Heights who complains that the servants don't take care of
him. He also complains that writing Cathy has been tiring. Linton says that he wishes Cathy will marry
him because he believes that wives always love their husband. As they return home, Ellen warns Cathy
not to marry him believing that he will die young. However, Cathy seems not to believe it. Instead, she
grows more friendly with him. Ellen catches cold and she is cared by Cathy.
Within three weeks, Elien gets better. She discovers Cathy's evening visit to Wuthering Heights as she
explains to her all that happens between her and Linton. On her next visit, Hareton angrily cemes in and
orders Cathy and Linton into the kitchen while Cathy is reading something for Linton. Linton in his angry
reaction coughs blood and faints. Hareton carries the boy upstairs. He prevents Cathy to follow. Linton
refuses to talk to Cathy, but only blames her for what happens last time. Heathcliff hates him but he is
unhappy at Wuthering Heights. He only loves Cathy. When Ellen tells Edgar about the several visits, he
warns Cathy notfto visit Wuthering Heights. Instead, he writes to Linton to come to the Grange as he
likes.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

Ellen explains to Lockwood that these events happened in the year before. She thinks that Lockwood
will be interested in Cathy. Edgar asks Ellen about the nature of Linton which she tells him that he is
delicate and has little of his father in him. When Edgar resumes his walk, he writes Linton to visit him to
the Grange but he declines because of Heathcliff but promises to meet him outside. As Edgar could not
walk far, he finally allows Cathy to marry Linton so that she will not leave the Grange when he dies, but
not knowing that Linton will die soon.

CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Ellen and Cathy ride to meet Linton close to Wuthering Heights. He is very ill but pretends to be better.
He could not find it easy talking with Cathy before she leaves. He begs her to stay, and to inform her
father that he is in tolerable health condition. No sooner had Cathy partly agreed than Linton falling into
slumber. Ellen and Cathy return home worried by his strange behaviour.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

After a week, Ellen and Cathy plan to make a trip to London. Edgar is getting worse in his sickness,
making Cathy not to leave him. He approves Cathy's relationship with Linton to ensure her welfare.
Cathy is not happy leaving his father. Heathcliff meets them and asks Ellen how long Edgar could live,
because
he is worried that Linton may die before him, which will stop the- marriage. Heathcliff orders his son to
bring Cathy inside the house which he does. He also locks up Ellen. Heathcliff slaps Cathy bitterly as she
protests to go and declares that she will not leave until she marries Linton. Ellen is imprisoned
separately from Cathy for five days with Hareton as her jailer.

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

It was on the fifth day of captivity that Zilla released Ellen. Zilla says that Heathcliff has allowed Ellen to
go home while Cathy will be released to attend her father's burial Edgar is not dead yet. Ellen inquires
from him that Cathy is shut upstairs and she has been forced to marry Linton. He says that Linton is glad
that she is being treated harshly.

Ellen rebukes Linton for his selfishness and unkindness. As she goes to the Grange, Edgar is happy to
hear that his daughter is safe and will come home soon. At the age of thirty nine, Edgar is almost dead.
When he hears HeathclifFs plan to inherit his estate, he sends for a lawyer, Mr. Green to change his will.
Unfortunately, Heathcliff buys up the lawyer and he does not come on time until it is too late to change
the will. Cathy manages to escape in time to see her father again and Edgar dies happy. Mr. Green,
contracted by Heathcliff issues quit notice to all the servants in the Grange except Ellen.

CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Heathcliff comes to the Grangeto bring Cathy to look after Linton who is dying in terror of his father.
Ellen begs him to allow Cathy and Linton to live in the Grange. He declines because he wants to put a
tenant in the estate being Mr. Lockwood. Heathcliff tells Ellen that he bribes the sexton who digs Edgar's
grave to open Catherine coffin for him to see her face again. As that request fails, he bribes the sexton
to put his body into Catherine's coffin when he dies. Ellen upon hearing this from Heathcliff is shocked
and rebukes him for disturbing the dead but he replies Ellen that Catherine has been haunting him day
and night since eighteen years. Heathcliff reveals how he digs out Catherine's corpse at kirkyard just to
feel her in his arms again after which he is consoled and tortured as well. Heathcliff has been feeling as if
he can see her even when he sleeps in her room, trying to see her but to no avail.

Again, Ellen in her narrative tells Lockwood what Zilla informed her about Cathy's residence at
Wuthering Heights. Cathy spends time in Linton's room caring for him when he is terribly sick. Even
Heathcliff refuses to bring a doctor at Cathy's request, saying that Linton does not have a value of a
farthing. Cathy is left alone to care for Linton till he dies without any one including Joseph and Hareton
to assist her. When Cathy is ill for two weeks, Heathcliff informs her that Linton has left all of his
property and that of his wife to him. Cathy grows angry against all of them and refuses to forgive them
for abandoning her alone with Linton till he dies. She, however, becomes the unfriendly young woman
whom Lockwood sees at Wuthering Height. Ellen after Lintons believes that the only way Cathy can
escape from Wuthering Heights is to re-marry another man.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

Lockwood goes to the Wuthering Heights to tell Heathcliff that he will not live instead he is going to
London to live. Cathy in her captivity expresses her longing for freedom. She also complains that
Heathcliff has destroyed her book such that she cannot write Ellen. Sooner, Heathcliff enters to bear his
anger and grief in solitude. Later, Heathcliff invites Lockwood to the cheerless meal, which he
manageably eats before he leaves. He thinks of courting Cathy and bringing her into a happy
environment in the town.

CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

At the end of 1801, Lockwood returns to Grange on a haunting mission. He finds the place almost
empty. He sees Cathy teaching Hareton how to read. In his path finding trip to see what has changed in
Wuthering Heights, Ellen is happy to meet him as he promises to settle her rent since she is acting for
Cathy. Nelly comes after Lockwood's departure and she is not happy at the way the young Catherine's
personality Has changed in the course of time. Cathy and Hareton reconcile and they become loving
friends to Joseph's anger.

CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

Ellen sees Cathy and Hareton in the garden planting a flower garden in the most cherished bush by
Joseph. As soon as Joseph comes in, he laments for the bushthey destroy which makes Heathcliff to call
Cathy an "insolent sluf” and threatens to break her in pieces after ordering Hareton to throw her out.
Cathy by Hareton's advice seizes to insult Heathcliff anymore and the duo continues to live friendly.
Heathcliff comes up and is surprised to see both Hareton and Cathy losing like Catherine Earnshaw. He
informs Ellen that he has lost his motivation for destruction just because of their resemblance to
Catherine. He takes Hareton and Cathy as apparitions that evoke his beloved.
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

After few days, Heathdiff stops eating and spends the whole night walking. Catherine comes out and
sees him looking more excited, wild and glad. At dinner, he totally loses interest in eating. He seems to
be watching something by the window and goes outside. He later goes outside expressing unnatural
appearance of joy, Blen tries to ask him why the sudden behaviour, but he replies that he is within the
sight of his heaven.

In the evening, Bten finds Heathcliff sitting in the dark alone with all the windows open. Ellen wonders
whether he is a vampire. On the next day, he became more restlessand began to lose his speech filled
with emotional and physical anquish. Heatehdlflff sends for his lawyer, Mr. Green to settle things, yet
refusing to eat or sleqp. However, Slenasks him to repent of his sins. He also begs Ellen to make sure
that his body is buried next to Catherine's grave. As he is dying, he is talking open about Catherine.
Heathcliff refuses to see the doctor Ellen invites to attend to himAgain, on the next morning, she finds
him dead in his room. Hareton mourns for him and his death is attributed to depression. He is buried
besides Catherine as he requested. People used to claim that his ghost and that of Catttaiine roam the
Moor. Cathy and Hareton engage themselves. They plan to movetothe Grange leaving Joseph and the
ghosts in Wuthering Heights.

CHARACTERIZATION /ROLE

A: HCATHCLJFF

He is one of the central characters of the novel. He is an orphan whom Mr. Earnshaw adopted and
brought to live in Wuthering Heights. He falls into a deepand unbreakable love with Earnshaw's
daughter, Catherine. He becomes a victim of hate after the death of Eamshaw. His resentful son,
Hindley, not only abuses him but treats htm like a servant. His humiliation and misery cause him to
spend most of his life trying to carry out a revenge against Hindley. He is a fierce and cruel man who is
always destructive and aggressive in character because he is denied access to marry Catherine. Upon the
death of Edgar, Heathcliff acquires both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange which is the estate
of Edgar Linton. Heathcliff inhuman devotion to Catherine even in death is the distinctive feature of this
character laa.symbollentel, Heathcliff stands for wild and natural forces which often seem mysterious
and dangerous to humanity.
B: CATHERINE EARNSHAW

She is the daughter of MrEarnshaw. She falls in love with the adopted son of her father, Heathcliff.
Catherine's desire for social relevance is the reason behind her marriage with Edgar Unton instead of
Heathcliff. Their intense love for each other is much expressed in Catherine's confession and claims that
she is the same with Heathcliff. Character wise, Catherine is free spirited and often arrogant in relating
with others especially in defence of Heathcliff. She is beautiful and charming but flawed by an unruly
temper. She is survived by a daughter who is also named Catherine.

C: EDGAR UNTON

He is the older brother of Isabella who marries Catherine Earnshaw. He is also the father of Catherine
Linton. He is an ideal gentleman who is well bred so much that Catherine describes him as being
handsome and pleasant to be with. He combines moral cheerfulness with riches thereby reflecting his
elevated social class. As a refined gentleman, he is easily disposed to unforgiveness when his dignity is
hurt. For instance, Edgar frowns at Isabella's elopement with Heathcliff and turns his back on her even
when her situation get worse with Heathcliff.

D: LOCKWOOD

He is the narrator of the novel and a gentleman from London. His roles in the novel serve as an
intermediary between Nelly and the reader. Again, Lockwoodcomes from a domesticated region of
England. He seems to be sympathetic and always likes to patronize the people around him. This sense of
compassion is the driving force that makes him to settle a rentage for Ellen. He is baffled by the strange
behaviours of the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights which negates the principles of social conventions
and norms that characterize his world in England. He is the potential tenant that comes for Grange
estate but declines his interestafter hearing everything from Nelly.

E. ISABELLA LINTON
She is the younger sister of Edgar. She falls in love with Heathcliff and elopes with him without her
brother's consent. Her marriage with Heathcliff gives rise to the birth of her son, Linton Heathcliff. In the
novel, Isabella can be described as a shallow minded young lady blessed with natural beauty. She is also
quick witted but handicapped by foolishness especially in making choices. Her unhappy marriage for
which she runs out of wedlock and resides in London brings an element of cruelty in her character
against the husband who treats her brutally. Before her death, she hates Heathcliff with all her mind.

F: HINDLEY EARNSHAW

He is the only son of Mr and Mrs. Earnshaw and the brother of Catherine, He is morally inclined to
bullying and discontention against Heathcliff whom his father loves and cares for. After the death of his
father, he inherits the Grange estate as the heir apparent. He abuses and torments Heathcliff by
stopping his education and forces Heathcliff to work in the farm out of hate. He becomes addicted to
alcoholism and dissipation following the death of his wife.

G: LINTON HEATHCLIFF

He is the son of Heathcliff and Isabella. He is a combined picture of odd characters of his parents. In
Wuthering Heights, Linton can be described as an effeminate, sickly in nature with cruel disposition. He
is hated and often despised by his father. He uses his condition as an invalid to torment the tender Cathy
Linton who devotes to caring for him. Linton marries Cathy by force as planned by his father. He dies
soon after the marriage.

H.ELLEN DEAN (NELLY)

She plays a role in the novel as one of the main narrators. She has been a servant throughout her life
serving both the Earnshaws and Union's. She has mastery of all their family stories and histories. Ellen is
an independent and high spirited servant who narrates everything about Wuthering Heights to Mr.
Lockwood.

X: CATHY UNION
She is the daughter of the older Catherine and Edgar Linton. With Heathcliff s selfish arrangement, she is
beaten into marriage with Linton by Heathcliff. By moral standard, she takes after her mother though
with her "wildness". Upon Linton's death, she re-marries Hareton after reconciling with him and after
the death of Heathdiff.

THEMES/MORAL LESSONS

"Wuthering Heights" as a fictional piece is a package of many themes such as:

A: LONELINESS AND ISOLATION

In the novel, Blonte uses and presents characters who value loneliness and isolation as the only panacea
to their psychic-wounds (heartbreaks). Most of the characters like Heathcliff becomes a loner and
monster because of his yearning and mourning for Catherine's ddath. Again, Mr. Lockwood desires to
rent Thrushcross Grange just to cool his emotional anguish in solitary zone. Hindley becomes cruel and
lonely upon the death of his wife, Francis. These characters appreciate lonely moment and environment
as the only psychological thereapy that can heal their love failures and romantic disappointment with
time.

B. THE DESTRUCTIVENESS AND GENUITYOFIOVE

Love and its destructive tendency is one of the fundamental and universal ideas explored in the novel.
Evidently, Catherine and Heathcliff's passion for each other is the centerpiece of "Withering Heights". As
romantic heroes, their love transcends social norms and conventional morality. It is recorded in the-
novel that their love is strangely asexual and goes beyond the convention of love among fornicators and
adulterers. Conversely, the destructive nature of their love is the rationale behind Heathcliff' endless
mourning of Catherine's death. Hindley for losing his lover is turned to cruelty, drunfenness and
depression till he dies.

C: THEME OF SOCIAL AND CLASS DISTINCTION

The novel is an x-ray of social class, identity and status as reflected in most characters through their
education, exposure and wealth. For example, Catherine to maintain her quest for social recognition and
relevance pretentiously marries Edgar while her love is only built around Heathciiff. Again, these
characters are socially structured to show their societal values and positions in the fiction. Joseph, Ellen,
Ziila, Heathcliff etc are portrayed as servants while Mr. Lockwood, Isabella, Hindley, Edgar, etc with their
household define a set of people from exalted social background.

D, THE PREVALENCE OF DISEASE/SICKNESS AND DEATH

The tragic intensity of the novel is heightened by the prevalence of disease and sickness which-has
resulted in serial premature deaths. For instance, Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw die out of fever infection of
Catherine. Hindley's wife dies in a short time after delivering Hareton. Isabella becomes sick and dies
premature living her only son, Linton. Catherine, after suffering from brain fever dies leaving alone Cathy
among others. In a nutshell, the prominence of sickness with its attendant death in the novel is a
physical denominator of external forces and challenges fighting human survival and destinies in the
world and especially the era of Emily Blonte.
Subject:

Literature

News

Allocated Reg. No. For Ss2 2019/2020 Academic Session

Allocated Reg. no. for SS1 2019/2020 Academic Session

Allocated Reg No. forJs 2 2019/2020 Academic Session

Allocated reg No. for Js1 2019/2020 Academic Session

ALLOCATED REG. NOS FOR SS1 2018/2019 ACADEMIC SESSION

All News

Learning from Home

Scheme of Work JS1

Scheme of Work JS2

Scheme of Work JS3

Scheme of Work SS1

Scheme of Work SS2

Scheme of Work SS3

Subject Contents\ Classwork JS1

Subject Contents\ Classwork JS2

Subject Contents\ Classwork JS3

Subject Contents\ Classwork SS1

Subject Contents\ Classwork SS2

Subject Contents\ Classwork SS3

Quizzes, Tests or Examinations

Recent Galleries

All Galleries

User login

Username *

Password *

Request new password

CAPTCHA

This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam
submissions.

Image CAPTCHA

What code is in the image? *

Enter the characters shown in the image.

Powered by: Mofasoft

http://www.tansicollege.edu.ng/content/introduction-wuthering-height-authors-background-setting-
plot

Wuthering Heights

HOME

"GOSSIP GIRL"
ANSWER KEY

AUTHOR BACKGROUND

CHARACTER DATING PROFILES

CHARACTER RELATIONSHIP GUIDE

ESSAY

LITERARY ELEMENTS

PASSAGES

QUESTIONS

SUMMARY

WORKS CITED

SITEMAP

Author Background

Emily Bronte is a famous author who is known for her only novel, which is considered to be an English
literature classic, "Wuthering Heights." Bronte was born July 30, 1818 in Thorton, Yorkshire, England.
She had many sisters and one brother, and two of her sisters passed away at an early age from typhoid.
Another sister later died after that, which only left Emily and Charlotte. A previous death in the family
was their mother who died when Emily was only 3 years old from cancer.

Despite Emily's tragic experiences at such a young age, she went on to be a teacher at Law Hill School
in Halifax. Charlotte and Emily wished to open a school of their own together. Though they did not
achieve this dream, they still published poems they wrote when they were younger. The sisters used
male names in place of their own due to the rights of women then. Emily's was Ellis Bell, which is why
her very own novel "Wuthering Heights" was by Ellis Bell (Emily Bronte Biography).

Sadly, she died from tuberculosis 3 months after her brother Branwell passed. She died on December
19, 1848. She refused all medical attention until the very day of her death. Shortly before her passing,
she told her to fetch the doctor, but it was already too late. The disease affected her so much so that her
coffin was only 16 inches wide. "The carpenter said he had never made a narrower one for an adult"
(Emily Bronte).

Bronte was a very independent and private person who only really interacted with her family. She did
have an interest in moors though, which can be related to why moors are included in "Wuthering
Heights." She is a mysterious character which poses an obstacle of not being

able to obtain much information about her.

Č

EMILY_~1.JPG (203K)ETHAN GOODMANSEN, JAN 1, 2015, 3:25 PM

V.1ď

Comments

You do not have permission to add comments.

Sign in|Recent Site Activity|Report Abuse|Print Page|Powered By Google Sites

https://sites.google.com/site/bisfawutheringheights/author-background

hmh logo

Wuthering Heights

Emily Brontë

Table of Contents
About Wuthering Heights

Although Wuthering Heights received neither critical praise nor any local popularity during its initial
publication, the reading public has changed substantially since 1847, and now both critical and popular
opinion praise Emily Brontë's singular work of fiction. Victorian society would not accept the violent
characters and harsh realities of Wuthering Heights, but subsequent audiences are both more
understanding and accepting of the use of unsavory aspects of human life in literature.

The first person to praise publicly Wuthering Heights was Charlotte Brontë, Emily's sister, who wrote a
preface and introduction for the second publication of the novel in 1850 and became the novel's first
and foremost critic. Yet Charlotte herself was not entirely convinced of all its merits. Commenting upon
the advisability of creating characters such as Heathcliff, Charlotte states, "I scarcely think it is
[advisable]." Charlotte's comments may be a direct concession and appeal to Victorian audiences to
accept and respect Wuthering Heights without having to accept completely everything within the text.
In addition to having difficulty with the content, the Victorian audience's view of women could not allow
anyone of that period to accept that Wuthering Heights was the creation of a female (it had been
published originally under the pseudonym Ellis Bell). After its initial publication, both critical and popular
audiences ended up embracing Wuthering Heights, and it remains one of the classic works still read and
studied.

Wuthering Heights is an important contemporary novel for two reasons: Its honest and accurate
portrayal of life during an early era provides a glimpse of history, and the literary merit it possesses in
and of itself enables the text to rise above entertainment and rank as quality literature. The portrayal of
women, society, and class bear witness to a time that's foreign to contemporary readers. But even
though society is different today than it was two centuries ago, people remain the same, and
contemporary readers can still relate to the feelings and emotions of the central characters — Heathcliff
and Catherine — as well as those of the supporting characters. Because Brontë's characters are real,
they are human subjects with human emotions; therefore, Wuthering Heights is not just a sentimental
romance novel. It is a presentation of life, an essay on love, and a glimpse at relationships. Many critics,
praising Brontë's style, imagery, and word choice, contend that Wuthering Heights is actually poetry
masquerading as prose.

This lyrical prose has a distinct structure and style. Significantly, Wuthering Heights is about ordered
pairs: two households, two generations, and two pairs of children. Some critics dismiss the plot of the
second-generation characters as being a simple retelling of the first story; however, in doing so, they are
dismissing the entire second half of the book. Each of the two main story lines of the two generations
comprises 17 chapters. Clearly, in order to appreciate fully Wuthering Heights, attention must be paid to
the second half, particularly noting that the second half is not just a retelling but rather a revising — a
form of renewal and rebirth.

These ordered pairs more often than not, are pairs of contrast. The most noticeable pair is that of the
two houses: Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. Wuthering Heights has the wild, windy moors
and its inhabitants possess the same characteristics. Opposite this are the calm, orderly parks of
Thrushcross Grange and its inhabitants. Each household has a male and female with a counterpart at the
other. Readers gain insight into these characters not only by observing what they think, say, and do but
also by comparing them to their counterparts, noticing how they do not think, speak, and act. Much is
learned by recognizing what one is not.

Structurally, the narrative is also primarily told from a paired point of view. Lockwood frames the initial
story, telling the beginning and ending chapters (with minor comments within). Within the framework of
his story, Nelly relates the majority of the action from her outsider's point of view. In essence, readers
are eavesdropping rather than experiencing the action. And embedded within Nelly's narrative are
chapters told primarily from another character's point of view that has been related to Nelly. This
technique allows readers to experience more than would with any one narrator, enabling readers to
gain an insider's perspective.

The role of the outsider should not be overlooked because the setting of Wuthering Heights is one of
complete isolation; therefore, only those with first- or second-hand experiences are able to relate them
to others. The moors connecting Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange serve a dual purpose —
linking the two households while simultaneously separating them from the village and all others.

This isolated setting is important for Brontë's combination of realism and gothic symbolism. Brontë took
conventions of the time and instead of merely recreating them in a work of her own, used them as a
springboard to write an entirely original tale, creating characters who are simultaneously real and
symbolic archetypes.

Brontë uses these characters to explore themes of good versus evil, crime and punishment, passion
versus rationality, revenge, selfishness, division and reconciliation, chaos and order, nature and culture,
health and sickness, rebellion, and the nature of love. These themes are not independent of each other;
rather, they mix, mingle, and intertwine as the story unfolds.
Wuthering Heights is also a social novel about class structure in society as well as a treatise on the role
of women. Brontë illustrates how class mobility is not always moving in one direction. For Catherine,
representing a lower class, social class plays a major role when deciding to get married. That is why she
cannot marry Heathcliff and agrees, instead, to marry Edgar. For Isabella, however, just the opposite is
true. She is drawn to the wild, mysterious man, regardless of the fact that he is beneath her social
standing. Because of her infatuation, she loses everything that is dear to her. Readers must therefore
look not only to social class when judging and analyzing characters; they must determine what decisions
are made by members of a certain class and why these characters made the decisions they did.

On the surface, Wuthering Heights is a love story. Delving deeper, readers find both a symbolic and
psychological novel. (Contemporary audiences, for example, easily relate to issues of child abuse and
alcoholism.) In fact, Wuthering Heights cannot be easily classified as any particular type of novel — that
is the literary strength that Brontë's text possesses. The novel told from multiple points of view is easily
read and interpreted from multiple perspectives, also.

Like other literary masterpieces, Wuthering Heights has spawned dramatic productions, a musical
retelling, movies, and even a novel that fills in the gaps of Heathcliff's three missing years. Emily Brontë's
novel has overcome its initial chilly reception to warm the hearts of romantics and realists worldwide.

PREVIOUS

NEXT

CliffsNotes study guides are written by real teachers and professors, so no matter what you're studying,
CliffsNotes can ease your homework headaches and help you score high on exams.

About CliffsNotes

Advertise with Us

Contact Us

Follow us:
Twitter Facebook Youtube Instagram

© 2020 Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.

Terms & Conditions

Privacy Policy

Disclaimer

Literature Notes

Test Prep

Study Guides

Sign In

Sign Up

A18ACD436D5A3997E3DA2573E3FD792A

https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/w/wuthering-heights/about-wuthering-heights