Summary AQA A LEVEL English Literature A: Wuthering Heights Complete Notes
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Course
Paper 1: Love through the ages
Institution
AQA
I remember when I was doing my A Levels there weren't a whole lot of resources particularly when it came to A Level English Literature Wuthering Heights. So I compiled the key areas that I focused on to achieve a grade A in AQA A LEVEL ENGLISH LITERATURE A in 2024, saving you the trouble of having ...
AO2: Structure
● Purpose: to draw the reader into a position where he can only judge its events from within
● Author: The narrative form poses severe limitations for the author as she can’t use her voice
● Title: The book is named after a place, not a person - Wuthering Heights: free sounding BUT
Thrushcross Grange: harsh consonants - harder to say + out of reach
● Time: 1801 - novel overtly starts in the past - readers confronted with time - sense of distance,
lack of immediacy, removed from the heat of the action / 1802 September: final chapters
○ Death of Heathcliff: L:”I want to finish my business with your master…” N: “He’s gone
out at present” - Bronte playing with reader as Nelly assumes he heard about
Heathcliff’s death through casual reference to Hareton as new master (Anti-Climax)
○ Fluidity of Time: This is new to us but old news to them - sense of inevitability as
reader knows of their death before / death is the only escape and so lean into it
● Dates: allow us to pinpoint major events, character ages, day of the week of events
● Anachronic Narrative: discrepancy between order of story’s events and order in which plot
presents them eg. In Media Res Opening: Lockwood arrives in middle of tension
○ Primary narrative - Nelly Dean (past), Secondary - Mr Lockwood (tells ND) = As the
audience we are doubly removed from the events of the story - unchronological
○ Emily Bronte’s anachronic narrative is designed, not to satisfy but to unsettle and
frustrate, and to suggest that the past can never quite be left in the past
● Other Narratives: Heathcliff: CH 6, 29, Isabella: CH 13/17, Cathy: CH 24, Zilla: CH 30
● Frame Narrative: signals that central story/love lacks self sufficiency - Catherine recognises
“there is, or should be an existence of yours beyond you.” (John Matthews)
● Heterodiegetic narrator: to vacate the story they tell, Nelly/Lockwood must traffic in deception
- Nelly confesses that to get rid of Heathcliff she is forced into ‘framing a bit of a lie’
○ Lockwood as Narrator: city gentleman in primitive word = uses educated language
eg. liberal use of semicolon, detailed factual description and perceptive observation
○ Nelly as Narrator: vigorous, lively, formidable memory, benefit of hindsight, brings us
close to action but is deeply engaged in it (housekeeper)
● Tertiary narration: (Nelly) Conversation recorded in the words of participants, Presents story
directly to the reader, Perception is constantly changing = witnessing a drama
● Multiple Narratives: Cathy and Heathcliff’s love exceeds beyond the immediate participants in
the relationship and affects external characters
● Analepsis: (flashback) Catherine is first encountered in death before in life ~ child ghost
● Prolepsis: (flashforward) End CH.4 - “I really thought him not vindictive: I was deceived
completely, as you will hear.” - Emily chooses to not immerse the reader in one time
● Doubling: Hareton and Cathy’s love doubles that of Heathcliff and Catherine = Cathy and
Hareton get a chance at the happiness Catherine and Heathcliff never experienced in life
○ 2 civilised children in the Grange versus 2 wild savage kids in Wuthering Heights
● Bildungsroman: WH built around central fall or C’s journey from ‘innocence’ to ‘experience’ ~
Self discovery is goal of Male Bildungsroman BUT female version = anxious self denial
● Naming: Sandra Gilbert - Catherine’s many names contrast Heathcliff’s 1 name = girls must
learn that she doesn't know her name / Joseph tries to reduce people as ‘nowt’ or ‘naught’
○ Frank Kermode: “Read from left to right they recapitulate Catherine Earnshaw’s story;
read from right to left, the story of her daughter, Catherine Linton.”
● Interrogative Exchange: Catherine’s process to restrain her auditor Nelly - ‘Be quick and say
whether I was wrong’ - incorporates listener’s response into her own evaluation of self
● Setting: WH and TG = contrasting physical appearance and the dispositions of their residents.
○ WH: solid, strong winds on hills / TG: elegant, sits within a large park in the valley.
○ WH: dark + foreboding - fiery Earnshaws / TG: welcomes tenants - refined Lintons
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