The Bronte sisters

Charlotte, Emily, Anne → born in the 19th century → lived in isolation and were self
educated

They wrote novels under different pen names

● Charlotte (Currer) → Jane Eyre
● Emily (Ellis) → Wuthering Heights
● Anne (Acton) → Agnes Grey

Jane Eyre - plot

The story follows Jane, a young orphan that is being raised at Gateshead by her rich and
cruel aunt, Mrs Reed. She then studies at Lowood school.

When she grows up she becomes a governess at Thornfield Hall where she falls in love with
Mr Rochester, its owner.

Eventually Mr Rochester will propose to her, and she agrees to marrying him → their
wedding is interrupted by a strange man who claims that Rochester already has a wife,
Bertha Mason, a crazy woman he married in the past and who now lives in the attic of the
house

After this Jane leaves, and goes to live with her cousins at Moor House → here she meets
St John Rivers → he proposes to her → Jane refuses and one night she hears Rochester's
voice calling her → she decides to go back to Thornfield Hall.

At her return she finds the house destroyed by a fire caused by Bertha, who lated died → Mr
Rochester tried to save her but lost his sight in the process → he now lives in Ferndean →
Jane visits him and accepts to marry him → Rochester will recover his sight when they have
their first child

Setting: early 19th century in northern England

Symbols: every house or place represents a different state of Jane's life and it has a
symbolic meaning
● Gateshead = gateway → Jane's unhappiest moments + ethical awakening
● Lowood = low wood → it is called like this because it coincides with with a 'low' time
in Jane's life
● Moor House = out on the moors (wilderness) → place where Jane tries to give her
life a new meaning
● Ferndean = fern hill → new Eden where Jane find mature love

Characters:
● Jane Eyre → protagonist and narrator of the novel, Jane is an intelligent, passionate
and independent young girl forced to contend with oppression, inequality, and
hardship. Although she has to face several struggles, Jane repeatedly succeeds at
asserting herself and maintains her principles of justice and morality. She also values
intellectual and emotional fulfillment. Her strong belief in gender and social equality
challenges the Victorian prejudices against women and the poor.
 ● Mr Rochester → Jane’s employer and the master of Thornfield, Rochester is a
wealthy, passionate man with a secret (marriage with Bertha). Rochester is
unconventional, ready to set aside considerations of social classes in order to
interact with Jane frankly and directly.
He also has the quality of a Byronic hero + he's attracted to Jane not because of her
physical appearance but for her soul and personality

Themes
The novel is a Bildungsroman = novel of growing up → important themes are: childhood and
education.
● Family → Jane is searching for family, for a sense of belonging and love.This search
is interfered by Jane’s need for independence. At the beginning she’s an unloved
orphan who is almost obsessed with finding love as a way to establish her own
identity and achieve happiness. She will find her true family when she falls in love
with Mr. Rochester → he becomes more of a kindred spirit to her than any of her
biological relatives could be → however, she is unable to accept Mr. Rochester’s first
marriage proposal because she realizes that their marriage (based on unequal social
standing) would compromise her autonomy. She accepts Rochester’s proposal only
when she gains financial and emotional autonomy, after having received her
inheritance and the familial love of her cousins.
● Marriage = relationship between equals, not a social compromise
● Social position in the Victorian age → Charlotte uses the novel to express her
critique of Victorian class differences and gender relationships. Jane, works as a
governess, even though she’s refined and has manners → she's treated as a
servant. If Jane had been a man, she might have attempted to improve her social
condition, but being a woman in her social class, the only chance she had was
working as a governess
● Gothic elements → Gothic techniques in order to set the stage for the narrative:
gloomy and mysterious atmosphere + presence of supernatural + figure of the
byronic hero

Style → Everything is seen through Jane’s point of view → first person narration + emotional
use of language

Women feel just as men feel - summary

Thornfield meets up to Jane’s career expectations. She gets to know Mrs Fairfax’s and
Adele’s real characters. Even if Adele is a lively girl, she’s also obedient and teachable. Jane
becomes much involved with Adele’s welfare and Mrs Fairfax’s pleasant company, but
restlessness is part of her nature. She at times takes a walk up to the gate of Thornfield Hall
or climbs the attic to have a wider view of the surroundings. She walks up and down the
corridor on the third floor and makes up tales with her imagination. She wishes she could
see the busy world of the city, she longs for variety and contact with different people. Thus
Jane criticizes the conventional perception of women as 2nd class citizens.

● Jane would be defined by people as ‘discontented’. She defines herself as restless

● Men and women have the same feelings → they need to exercise their faculties and
find a field for their efforts, they suffer restriction and stagnation.
Jane and Rochester - summary
In this chapter, Jane learns more about Rochester's past, particularly his relationship with the
madwoman Bertha. Jane realizes that she must leave Thornfield. But when she steps out of
her room, she finds Rochester waiting for her. He asks her forgiveness. Jane doesn't
respond, though she secretly forgives him immediately.

For an instant, Jane considers staying with Rochester, thinking that she deserves a devoted
man after a life of isolation and neglect but at the same time she fears that she may never
find another. She knows that she will respect herself only if she does what she knows is right

Wuthering Heights - plot

This story follows the tales of two houses: Wuthering Heights (Earnshaw family) and
Thrushcross Grange (Linton family). The story begins with Mr Lockwood, the new tenant of
Thrushcross Grange visiting Mr Heathcliff, his landlord. During his stay, Lockwood has a
strange dream about a girl, Catherine. The next day the housekeeper Nelly Dean tells him
the whole story of the Heights family.

Mr Earnshaw, Hindley and Catherine’s father, one day came back from Liverpool with a
foundling, Heathcliff. Hindley didn’t have a good relationship with him, while Catherine got on
very well with him, they even promised they would stay together forever. One day Catherine
was bitten by one of the Lintons' dogs and was forced to spend five weeks at Thrushcross
Grange to recover → she gets to know Edgar and Isabella → a few years later Edgar
proposes to her, and she accepts. She told Nelly Dean she would not marry Heathcliff
because he was socially inferior. Heathcliff overhears this conversation and disappears, only
to reappear 3 years later, as a handsome and rich man, ready to take his revenge:
● He took Wuthering Heights’ possessions by winning the gamble with Hindley who
became a drunkard
● He eloped with Edgar’s sister, Isabella, married her and treated her as a servant

We later get to know that Catherine fell ill and died while giving birth to Cathy. Some time
later, Heathcliff kidnapped Cathy and forced her to marry his son, Linton. This marks the end
of Nelly’s narrative

Mr Lockwood leaves Yorkshire and returns the next year, and finds out that Heathcliff and
Linton are both dead and that Cathy and Hareton, Hindley’s son, are getting married.

Setting: 19th century Yorkshire, England. Important is the duality and contrast between the
two houses: Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange:
● W.H = storm and energy → gloomy and severe, rooted in tradition and custom.
● T.G = calm and settled assurance→ stability and kindness

Symbols → Lockwood’s dream → superstition and it was also something that could reveal
an inner truth of the subconscious
The title gives a hint about the story → involvement of overwhelming emotions

Characters
● Heathcliff → byronic hero, driven by passions, not balanced + gothic villain with the
way he treats his wife and son
 ● Catherine → driven by social ambitions but she also wants to violate social
conventions. She has a romantic nature + typical victorian woman

Themes
● Romanticism → concern with the human soul + overwhelming emotions
● Love → different kinds of love
○ Heathcliff and Catherine's all-consuming passion for each other, noble in its
purity but also terribly destructive.
○ Catherine and Edgar’s love is proper and civilized rather than passionate.
Their love is of peace and comfort, a socially acceptable love
● Death → in this novel, unlike others, death is seen not as the end, but as a way of
liberating the spirit
● Gothic + supernatural → ghosts and spirits, the dream
● Social classes → generally, at the time, people were born into a class and stayed
there, but in Wuthering Heights this changes continuously → young Heathcliff had an
unknown background, so everybody treated him differently. When he disappears for
a few years and comes back rich, the characters struggle even more over how to
approach him → he now has money and land, but many of them still consider him a
farm boy
● Nature → the moors are a place of refuge and delight to Catherine and Heathcliff
● Dualism → binary oppositions → W.Heights/T.Grange, heaven/earth, rock/trees

Style
● Narrative system → concentric system of narratives + narrative within a narrative
● Two narrators: Mr Lockwood and Nelly Dean
● development of a classical tragedy → at the end there is a restoration of peace

I am Heathcliff - summary
Catherine speaks to Nelly in the kitchen. Neither of them is aware at first that Heathcliff is
listening to their conversation. Catherine tells Nelly about Edgar’s marriage proposal and
that she accepted. Nelly asks her if and why she loves Edgar, and she replies she does for a
variety of material reasons: he’s rich, handsome and respectable- Nelly disapproves, and
Catherine admits that she’s doing the wrong thing.

Then she tells Nelly that she had a dream in which she went to heaven and was unhappy
there because she missed Wuthering Heights. She compares her marriage to Linton to
being in heaven. She explains that, although she loves Heathcliff very much, she cannot
marry him because Hindley has degraded him too much and she would be degraded too.
Heathcliff leaves the room full of shame, humiliation and despair, and so he is not present to
hear Catherine say that she loves him more deeply than anything else in the world.

Nelly empathizes that Heathcliff would be deserted if she marries Linton, and Catherine
indignantly replies that she is not going to desert Heathcliff, but will use her influence ro raise
him up in society. She adds that they are suck kindred spirits that they are the same person

● Dreams for Catherine → dreams are ‘like wine through water’ , they alter the color
of her mind, they change her ideas and stay with her. Nelly is superstitious about
dreams and fearful of what they may foresee.
 ● What happens in Catherine’s dream → She is in heaven but she feels unhappy
and cries, so the angels fling her back to the earth, on top of Wuthering Heights,
where she wakes up sobbing for joy.
● Catherine and Heathcliff’s love → She feels that she is a part of Heathcliff and
feels his pains as he does. She thinks that if he did not exist, then she would not be
the same person. It seems that their love has nothing to do with sexual attraction and
physical desire. Their relationship is one of the soul, it is as eternal as ‘the rocks
beneath’ because it transcends time and material existence
● Catherine and Edgar’s love → not lasting, like the foliage in the woods
● Love and death → romantic + religious, not only in its mysticism, but also in the
awareness of the incompleteness of all the elements that make up human nature. In
Catherine and Heathcliff the desire to lose the self in otherness is pure, and opens up
the prospect of disintegration into death, that is, into anonymous natural energy.
● Social conditions → Her love for Heathcliff offers her no material advantage. She
feels the pressure of social conventions and wants to improve her social position. In
this respect she is a Victorian woman, even though her character is Romantic.

Heathcliff’s despair - summary

This chapter deals with Catherine giving birth to Cathy and her death + Heathcliff’s reaction
about her death. It gives a deep insight on Catherine’s love for Heathcliff even though she
married another man.

Nelly is there with Catherine in her last moments, she then went outside to tell Heathcliff and
found him leaning motionless against a tree. Heathcliff cursed Catherine and begged her to
haunt him so he would not be left in "this abyss, where I cannot find you!... I cannot live
without my soul!

Theme of death → The question of what happens after death is important in this chapter
and throughout the novel, though no firm answer is ever given. Nelly is fairly sure Catherine
went to heaven, but Heathcliff cannot conceive of Catherine finding peace when they are still
separated, or of his living without her.

Walt Whitman - New York 1819-1892

He was a democratic bard → he never lost a transcendental sense of the unity of all things.
He rejected traditional forms and structures of the 19th century because they imposed
rigidity

Themes
● He had faith in the future of the american nation and civilisation → celebration of
America
● America = representation of democracy, incarnation of the American dream
● He thought of himself as a sort of prophet, who had to respond to the voice of the
country and reveal the truth
● He embraces mankind in brotherly love
● Physical love → poetry of the body: the theme of sex is developed in a
straightforward way, that shocked the puritanical readers, who defined it as immoral
● Dignity of the individual, conceived as the unity of the body and the soul
View of nature
● Nature = body of the earth, a material entity with a character that attracted the poet
● human body = continuous with nature
● he found in himself the same energies and materials that brought the earth to life →
mystical relation to earth

Style
● rejection of verses and regular lines
● poems characterised by accumulation and addition
● The poet aim is to assert and celebrate

O Captain! My Captain!
● poems that reflects Whitman’s deep awareness of the importance of Abraham
Lincoln’s figure
● President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1865 had a deep impact on the nation
since the last battles of the Civil War were still a recent memory. Whitman, who was a
great admirer of Lincoln, wrote this poem. The poet thought that Lincoln embodied
the American virtues of honesty and courage, and his death inspired a simple,
three-stanza poem of sorrow that little resembled his other, more experimental
writings. The poem’s evocation of triumph overshadowed by despair spoke to
readers throughout the shattered nation

The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - plot

Mr Utterson is a London lawyer and friend to a brilliant scientist, Dr Henry Jekyll. After
investigating about a disturbing tale of a sinister man assaulting a small girl, Utterson begins
to question his friend’s odd behaviour → he finds that his friend had made a potion that
could release his evil side, Mr Hyde, with whom he’s in perpetual struggle. This struggle
finds conlusion with Jekyll’s suicide, as the only way to free himself.

Setting → London in the 1870s → it has duality and reflects the hypocrisy of Victorian
society: respectable West End/appalling poverty of the East End. Most scenes take place at
night, lit up by artificial lighting. The most important scenes take place in the darkness

Characters:
● Jekyll → stereotype of a good person
● Hyde → stereotype of an evil person

Themes:
● Duality → this theme can be seen in the setting of London, but also in
○ Jekyll’s house which has two facades, representing the two opposite sides of
the man
○ Good vs evil → seen in the figure of Jekyll and Hyde. Even though the evil
side of Jekyll is initially less developed, Hyde gradually spoils his good twin →
the original balance of good/evil is threatened
○ Double nature of Victorian society: antithetical values and sexual repression
● Gothic → gloomy and creepy atmosphere

Style → Multi-narrative structure → 4 narrators:

 ● Utterson → detective, he follows the clues and draws hypotheses
● Enfield → Utterson’s cousin → Jekyll has a strange relationship with him, which
might represent the fact that every human has a dual nature, which men must accept
● Dr Lanyon → great advocate of reason, he’s the first person to see his friend
transform → since he witnesses a physically impossible phenomenon, he decides to
die rather than living in a world that he thinks has been turned upside down
● Dr Jekyll → he speaks in first person, and he’s the last narrator

Interpretations
● Hyde → can be interpreted as the primitive man and the symbol of repressed
psychological instincts
● Jekyll → Victorian Faust, an overreacher, his awareness is a sort of pact with an
interior devil that controls him
This novel can also be interpreted as a reflection of art itself → Jekyll’s discovery can
symbolise the artist’s journey to unknown part of the human psyche

Story of the door - summary

The novel opens with two men, Mr Utterson - a quiet, respectable lawyer - and his distant
relative Richard Enfield. They are out for their customary Sunday walk in London. On their
way, Enfield raises his cane and indicates a particular door, which reminds him of a strange
experience he had on this very street. Enfield says that at about 3 o’clock on a black winter
morning, he was coming back home feeling a vague sense of discomfort because the street
was deserted. Suddenly, he saw two figures, a man and a little girl. They ran into each other,
and the man stepped heavily on the child’s body leaving her screaming on the ground.
Enfield describes the scene as hellish. He tells Utterson that he seized the man by the collar,
dragged him back, and by that time a crowd had gathered. Like Enfield, they all seemed to
hate the devilish man, who, on the contrary, was very calm and cool

Jekyll’s experiment - summary

This final chapter presents a transcription of Jekyll's confession letter to Utterson. When he
became an adult, Jekyll found that he was living two lives, one of the utmost respectability
and social graces, and the other of hidden pleasures and evil. As a scientist, Jekyll decided
to examine the dual nature of man through mystical study, Jekyll insists, "man is not truly
one, but truly two". After years of work, Jekyll eventually created a chemical solution that
would allow him to complete his work. Jekyll purchased a large quantity of salt for his final
ingredient.

The drink caused him pain and nausea, but as these feelings passed, Jekyll began to
examine the results of his work, he noticed that his body had changed. His hands were
smaller, and his clothes were suddenly far too large, which led him to conclude that his alter
ego, which he later named Edward Hyde, was a small, dwarfish man.

Oscar Wilde Dublin 1854-1900 Paris

● Aestheticism → art for art’s sake, research for the beautiful, life should be lived in the
spirit of art → art is the only cult of beauty that preserves the soul. The artist is an
alien in a materialistic world. Hedonism → research of pleasure
 ● Dandy → Wilde’s dandy is an aristocrat whose elegance is a symbol of the
superiority of his spirit, he uses his wit and he’s an individualist who demands
absolute freedom

The Picture of Dorian Gray - plot

Dorian Gray, our protagonist, is a young man who is obsessed with his beauty and youth.
This beauty fascinates a painterm Basil Hallward, who decides to paint his portrait. Under
Lord Henry Wotton’s influence, Dorian lives a life of pleasure, and the signs of age do not
show on his face or body, but on the portrait. Dorian uses people, and even lets them die.

When Basil discovers the corruption on Dorian’s portrait, Dorian decides to kill him. Later
Dorian want to free himself of the portrait, and decides to stab it, but since Dorian and the
portrait were linked and it was his soul, he kills himself.

Setting → London at the end of the 19th century

Characters:
● Dorian Gray → he represents the ideal of youth, beauty and innocence →
immortalised in Basil’s portrait. He is influenced by Lord Henry Wotton, who teaches
him about hedonism (research of pleasure)
● The portrait → it represents Dorian’s soul and shows the signs of corruption. After
dorian stabs it and kills himself, the portrait gains its original beauty → art is superior
to earthly beauty because art is eternal
● Lord Henry Wotton → intellectual, brilliant talker → “advocate of the devil” →
influences all of Dorian’s choices
● Basil Hallward → an intellectual who fell in love with Dorian’s beauty and innocence,
he decides to paint Dorian’s portrait, who will eventually be their downfall
●
Style → unobtrusive third-person narrator

Symbols → this story is an allegory: it is the 19th century version of Faust → Soul = picture
→ dark side of Dorian’s persona
● Picture = symbol of immorality and bad conscience of the victorian middle classes
● Dorian’s pure and innocent appearance = symbol of bourgeois hypocrisy

The preface - summary

The preface is a collection of statements that form the manifesto of the English Aesthetic
movement, explaining the purpose of art, the role of the artist, and the value of beauty. He
defines the artist as "the creator of beautiful things". He condemns anyone who finds
ugliness where there is beauty as "corrupt." He states that a book can be neither moral or
immoral, and that morality itself serves only as "part of the subject matter" of art. Since art
exists solely to communicate beauty, Wilde warns against reading too much into any work of
art. The preface ends with the whimsical statement that "All art is quite useless"; earlier,
however, we are told that the "only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it
intensely."

The painter’s studio - summary

This extract introduces us to 2 characters: Basil Hallward, a painter and his friend Lord
Henry Wotton. Lord Henry admires Basil's latest work-in-progress, a portrait of a beautiful
young man, and urges him to show it at a gallery. Basil says that he never will because he
has "put too much of myself into it.". We discover that Lord Henry often speaks in elaborate,
cynical, even paradoxical aphorisms, while Basil is a simple man with purely romantic
values. Basil clarifies his earlier statement by saying that "every portrait that is painted with
feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter."

The discussion turns towards the sitter, whom Basil describes as a pure and naive young
man named Dorian Gray. Lord Henry insists on meeting the man, but Basil refuses. He
wants to protect the boy's innocent purity from Lord Henry's sensualist influence. It is clear
that Basil has very strong feelings for Dorian.

Dorian’s death - summary

During the walk home from Henry's, Dorian enjoys the warm evening. He is annoyed when
several people mutter his name in astonishment as he passes, an occurrence that used to
please him, but he cheers himself by thinking of the beautiful and innocent Hetty, and his
recent "good action." She had been hopelessly naive, but this was her charm, "she had
everything that he had lost." He arrives at home and looks at his face in a mirror given to him
by Henry long ago, but is so overcome with loathing that he shatters the mirror on the floor.
He thinks about the people that died (Alan and Basil) → Victims of Dorian → does he blame
himself for their deaths? No, he tries to blame it on Basil's picture
● Alan Campbell, who shot himself without betraying Dorian's secret,
● Basil Hallward, who Dorian "murdered in the madness of a moment."

He then thinks of Hetty, the preservation of whose innocence he holds as proof of his
newfound goodness, and wonders if his good deed caused his portrait to change for the
better. He climbs to the attic and throws the curtain from the picture → he sees no change →
Dorian realises that his kindness towards Hetty was either an act of vanity or of selfishness
→ desperate to escape his past crimes, Dorian stabs the picture → Dorian's servants are
awoken by a dreadful scream → The servants cannot open the locked door of the attic, so
they manage to climb in through the roof → they find the body of a withered, wrinkled man,
lying on the floor with a knife in his chest, they recognize their master because of the rings
on his fingers.

The importance of being Earnest - plot

Act I → setting: Mayfair in London’s West End → the aristocratic Algernon Mocrieff is
waiting for his aunt Lady Bracknell, he is later surprised by the intrusion of his wealthy friend
Earnest, who came to propose to Lady Bracknell’s daughter, Gwendolen.

Algernon later discovers that his friend Earnest is actually Jack Worthing, who lived in the
country and was the adoptive child of Mr Thomas Cardew, who in his will made him guardian
to his granddaughter, Cecily.

Jack explains that he was Jack in the country and that he created an wicked alter ego who
lives in the city, as a pretext to avoid his responsibilities. Even Algernon confesses he
invented a fried, Bunbury, who lived in the country, that he used as an excuse to get away
from his social obligations in London.
The story follows the attempts of these two young men trying to marry Gwendolen and
Cecily.

Characters → it represents an aristocratic society whose members are typical victorian

snobs, that are arrogant, formal and concerned with money

Themes:
● Marriage → victorian age interpretation of the marriage plot + makes fun of the
institution of marriage, surrounded by hypocrisy and absurdity
● Irony and appearance → witty dialogues, puns and misunderstandings. The title
itself is a pun. The characters are used to criticise the victorian prudery and
exaggerated seriousness. Irony is a dominant characteristic of the play and
appearance is also important, since characters can change their identities as they
wish

The interview - summary

The action and satire in Act 1 are highlighted by the arrival of Lady Bracknell, Gwendolen’s
mother. She is an aristocratic, arrogant and conservative Victorian woman. This character is
used to satirise Victorian attitudes towards marriage, which has been turned into a process
of careful selection and planning by parents. Social status and wealth make marriage a
business proposition that brings together two parties. Lady Bracknell interviews Jack about
his habits and income. Jack seems to give all the right answers, until she asks him about his
family background. He admits that he’s an orphan, found in a hand-bag.

Lady Bracknell → frivolous, arrogant, class-conscious and clever in her wit. Her most
important topics are smoking and money, the least important one is family
Jack → ambitious, frivolous, emptyheaded and privileged.