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Wuthering Heights Coursework Notes
- Module
- Wuthering Heights
- Institution
- PEARSON (PEARSON)
This includes analysis of themes, inclusion of context and even critical analysis.
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GenderSupernatural and folklore
Class and wealth, and civilisation
Romance and passion
Nature
Revenge
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Context
Emily Bronte born in Haworth, Yorkshire during the Victorian period. Grew up with her 2 sisters
and brother, her other siblings and mother all died before she was the age of 6.
I. The Yorkshire moors and the Parsonage were very isolated, subjecting them to
boredom, which encouraged them to fill their imaginations with tales and grand stories
which was supplemented by the books that were in their home.
II. The Bronte sisters created the imaginary world of Gondal, where women were dominant
as a part of a matriarchal society.
III. Charlotte in a letter to Emily claimed that “ liberty was the breath in her nostrils” in
reference to Emily.
Patrick Bronte was a poor peasant who became a vicar's assistant which lifted him out of
poverty and into a more stable and respectable living. His work made the social status of the
Bronte’s ambiguous as they did not have inherited wealth, and so not the middle class nor did
they make their livelihoods through manual labour like those in the working class.
I. As a result, the Bronte’s were raised to have an appreciation for cultured literature such
as Byron, Wordsworth and Shakespeare, which fueled their creative inquisitiveness and
there imagination
II. The Bronte’s had access to education as well because their father’s job enabled them to
have a discounted schooling fee. However, the Bronte sisters greatly opposed the strict
regime of school and work, they even attempted to found their own school but were met
with failure. On account of them not having a capital inherited with wealth which those
sort of ventures depended on.
The Victorian era placed great limitations on the definition of what it meant to be an individual,
creating strict definitions of what was feminine and masculine, proper and improper, which
largely defined the novels of that era, people were more interested in indulging in the parts of
society that are not often available for public discussion e.g sex, murder, rape and abuse- things
that transgressed the norms of society.
I. There were great limitations placed on the women of the VIctorian era, they were
expected to be the “angel in the home”, the very image of piety, virtue and submission
within a domestic setting, as well as out in public.
, A. The limitations of women can be observed in the increasingly restrictive nature of
clothing, women were made to be objects to be appreciated and admired rather
than having any authority or character e.g corsets , gloves and bonnests must be
worn at all times outdoors.
B. Women were also restricted from percussion intellectual properties such as
benign authors, and pursuing careers such as higher education, politics,
medicine and law. Charlotte Bronte herself faced criticism for attempting to
writing as a woman; the poet laureate at the time claimed that “ literature cannot
be the business of a woman’s life; and it ought not to be” as well as stating that “
the more she is engaged in the proper duties the less leisure she will have for it ,
even as an accomplishment and recreation.”
C. The Bronte sisters were compelled to write under the pseudonyms, Currer, Ellis
and Acton Bell. By doing this they believed that they would be free from the
constraints of being limited by their gender and be taken seriously in the
publishing industry. -”We did not like to declare ourselves women” and they had
the impression that they would be “looked on with prejudice” if they had.
D. Women of the era were subject to lifelong financial insecurity- work was limited,
in order to have a notion of financial freedom they had to marry well. The English
Common Law dictates that the inheritance of a family goes to a male relative,
which completely excludes women from owning anything.
E. The Great Reform Bill of 1832, thoroughly excluded women from voting by
stating that only men could vote if they owned property. Previously, extremely
wealthy women could vote as all that deemed necessary for a person to vote was
holding specific property in a borough.
West Yorkshire at the time the Bronte’s were writing was a hotbed for Chartist activity, a working
class movement for better working conditions for working class labourers. The most striking
example of Chartism was the Plug Plots of 1842, in which half of the population of Britain went
on strike in a show of solidarity for the cut wages of miners.
The literary nature fresh from the Romantic movement inspired the Bronte’s to pursue ideas
about individual freedom away from the confines of social expectations and responsibility.
People became increasingly fascinated by books that detailed a less confined world, the
perspective of the working class and the mistreatment of women and children at the hands of
men in power.
I. Lord Byron, a Romantic poet that placed hedonism and opposition to rigid social
expectations, that influenced the way that the Bronte family wrote.
A. Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage- the wanderings of a Romantic Figure- led to the
creation of the Byronic figure as he was rebellious, introspective and did not want
to be confined by the limits of society.
II. William Wordsworth advocates for the harmony of nature the restorative qualities of
nature without the limitations of the Industrial Revolution-if we abandon modernity and
embrace harmony.
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