Novel Notes

Wuthering Heights
 It contains many Romantic influences: Heathcliff is a very Byronic character, though he lacks
the self pity that mars many Byronic characters, and he is deeply attached to the natural world.
 Wuthering Heights expresses criticisms of social conventions, particularly those surrounding
issues of gender: notice that the author distributes "feminine" and "masculine" characteristics
without regard to sex. Brontë had difficulties living in society while remaining true to the things
she considered important: the ideal of women as delicate beings who avoid physical or mental
activity and pursue fashions and flirtations was repugnant to her.
 A gentleman-farmer named Earnshaw went from his farm, Wuthering Heights, to Liverpool on a
business trip. He found there a little boy who looked like a gypsy who had apparently been
abandoned on the streets, and brought the child home with him, to join his own family of his
wife, his son Hindley, his daughter Catherine, a manservant named Joseph, and Ellen, who was
very young at the time and working as a maid. Earnshaw named the boy Heathcliff after a son of
his who had died.
 Hindley in particular felt as though Heathcliff had supplanted him, although he was several years
older and the true son and heir. Hindley bullied Heathcliff when he could, and Heathcliff used
his influence over Earnshaw to get his way.
 One day they ran down to the Grange, a more civilized house where the Lintons lived with their
children Edgar, thirteen, and Isabella, eleven. Catherine and Heathcliff despised the spoiled,
delicate Linton children, and made faces and yelled at them through the window. Catherine was
caught by a bulldog and they were brought inside. When the Lintons found out that the girl was
Miss Earnshaw, they took good care of her and threw Heathcliff out. stayed at the Grange for
five weeks, and came home dressed and acting like a proper young lady, to the delight of
Hindley and his wife, and to Heathcliff's sorrow––he felt as though she had moved beyond him.
Over the next few years, Catherine struggled to both maintain her relationship with Heathcliff,
and socialize with the elegant Linton children.
 Edgar Linton fell in love with Catherine, who was attracted by his wealth and genteel manners,
although she loved Heathcliff much more seriously. Edgar and Catherine became engaged, and
Heathcliff ran away.
 Mr. Earnshaw's daughter and Hindley's sister. She is also Heathcliff's foster sister and love
interest. She marries Edgar Linton and has a daughter, also named Catherine. Catherine is
beautiful and charming, but she is never as civilized as she pretends to be.
 The daughter of the older Catherine and Edgar Linton. She has all her mother's charm without
her wildness, although she is by no means submissive and spiritless. Edgar calls her Cathy. She
marries Linton Heathcliff to become Catherine Heathcliff, and then marries Hareton to be
Catherine Earnshaw.
 Ellen Dean One of the main narrators. She has been a servant with the Earnshaws and the
Lintons for all her life, and knows them better than anyone else.
 A foundling taken in by Mr. Earnshaw and raised with his children. Of unknown descent,
Heathcliff, eloped with Issabella Linton conceived son Linton Heathcliff, represents wild and
natural forces which often seem amoral and dangerous for society. His almost inhuman devotion
to Catherine is the moving force in his life, seconded by his vindictive hatred for all those who
stand between him and his beloved.
 Symbols
 This landscape is comprised primarily of moors: wide, wild expanses, high but somewhat soggy,
and thus infertile. Moorland cannot be cultivated, and its uniformity makes navigation difficult.
It features particularly waterlogged patches in which people could potentially drown. Thus, the
moors serve very well as symbols of the wild threat posed by nature. As the setting for the
beginnings of Catherine and Heathcliff’s bond (the two play on the moors during childhood), the
moorland transfers its symbolic associations onto the love affair.
 Thus, windows serve to showcase what exists on the other side while still keeping the characters
trapped. Heathcliff can see that the chance of escaping to a higher social class is something
impossible for himself, but achievable for Catherine; figuratively he exists on one side of the
window, and she on the other. When she is sick in Chapter XII, closed windows keep her
isolated and away from Heathcliff, despite her desperation to open them so she can feel closer to
him, signifying her inability to be with him due to outside forces, like social class, that keep them
apart. Thus, windows can offer hope for something different, and also serve as a mirror that
shows just how affixed in place and trapped the characters really are.
 Ghosts appear throughout Wuthering Heights, as they do in most other works of Gothic fiction,
yet Brontë always presents them in such a way that whether they really exist remains ambiguous.
Thus the world of the novel can always be interpreted as a realistic one. Certain ghosts—such as
Catherine’s spirit when it appears to Lockwood in may be explained as nightmares. The
villagers’ alleged sightings of Heathcliff’s ghost could be dismissed as unverified superstition.
Whether or not the ghosts are “real,” they symbolize the manifestation of the past within the
present, and the way memory stays with people, permeating their day-to-day lives.
Landlords & Servants in 19th Century Britain
 Servants were common amongst the elite of nineteenth-century Britain; in fact, at the turn of the
twentieth century, there were more servants than factory workers in the country. While the
Earnshaw and Linton families do not have titles, such as Duke or Lord, they own land and large
houses that have been in the families for generations. When Lockwood first visits Wuthering
Heights, he notices “a quantity of grotesque carving” and the date “1500” above the front door,
indicating that the house and family have a long lineage.
 The characters of Nelly Dean and Joseph highlight the close but desperately unequal
relationships that could span generations between wealthy, landed families and the servants they
employed. Nelly’s mother “nursed Mr. Hindley Earnshaw,” so Nelly grows up alongside the
family. And when Catherine Earnshaw moves to Thrushcross Grange after her marriage, Nelly
has “but one choice left, to do as I was ordered” and accompany her mistress. Servants were
sometimes treated as a kind of property.
 The Byronic Hero & Gothic Literature
 Byron’s protagonists are typically morally ambiguous, isolated, brooding, and overly passionate.
Byron’s heroes remain unchanged throughout the course of his poems but are affected by their
relationships with women and the circumstances of their time. Rochester, in Charlotte
Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Heathcliff from Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.
 Both Rochester and Heathcliff harbor the Byronic characteristics of secrecy and unfulfilled
desires. Rochester is infatuated with Jane but cannot act on his desires for her since he is already
married, while Heathcliff is rejected by Catherine when she refuses to marry him. Struggles with
power and its relation to the institution of marriage also characterized Byron’s deployment of his
heroes. Another similarity that Heathcliff and Rochester share with Byron’s heroes is that we can
simultaneously gain enjoyment by reading about their exploits and be repelled by their actions.
The resulting moral ambiguity is a key feature shared by Byron and Gothic literature.
Is Heathcliff a Victim or a Villain?
 Heathcliff can be a difficult character to sympathize with and understand. He acts with a great
deal of cruelty, often to individuals who are particularly weak or defenseless. He marries Isabella
Linton knowing that he does not love or respect her, and his behavior after their marriage quickly
makes her regret her decision to marry him. Isabella tells Nelly that Heathcliff is a “Monster!
Would that he were blotted out of creation.”
 Force Hareton into a repressed and uneducated life, and he also torments his own son, Linton.
Nelly explains that Heathcliff “bent his malevolence on making [Hareton] a brute.” Heathcliff
later essentially imprisons Cathy Linton, forcing her to marry a boy she doesn’t love.
 However, life experiences have warped Heathcliff and driven him to be a cruel man who is in
many ways a victim of circumstances beyond his control. Heathcliff had a traumatic early
childhood, and even after being adopted by the Earnshaws, he is never fully accepted by the
family. While Catherine loves him, she does not think of him as an equal or a possible suitor; she
states that “it would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now.” As a result, Heathcliff has to suffer
through watching the woman he loves marry another man, and then he experiences the agony of
losing her at a young age. As he tells Catherine before her death, “What kind of living will it be
when you—oh God! Would you like to live with your soul in the grave?” Heathcliff’s emotional
traumas offer an explanation for why he becomes so tormented and, in turn, so fixated on
tormenting others.
 As a young boy, Heathcliff is very conscious of how his appearance and class position limit his
opportunities. He wistfully tells Nelly that “I wish I had light hair and a fair skin, and was
dressed and behaved as well, and had a chance of being as rich as he will be.” Even when he
comes back to Yorkshire a wealthy man, Heathcliff will never be treated as the equal of the
landowning families. Thus, he ends his life in bitter loneliness, telling Nelly that “the entire
world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that [Catherine] did exist, and I have lost her.”
 Psychological realism is a literary genre that came to prominence in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. It’s a highly character-driven genre of fiction writing, as it focuses on the motivations
and internal thoughts of characters. A writer of psychological realism seeks to not only show
 what the characters do but also explain why they take such actions. There's often a larger theme
in psychological realist novels, with the author expressing an opinion on a societal or political
issue through the choices of his or her characters.
 American novelist Henry James also used psychological realism to great effect in his novels.
James explored family relationships, romantic desires, and small-scale power struggles through
this lens, often in painstaking detail.

The Victorian Novel

 It reflected the great social changes of this period.
 Popularity of the Bildungsroman (= novel of formation), that told the story of a life of a
character in a realistic way, especially considering the relation between individual and society.
These novels showed on one hand the typical values of Victorian society: conformism,
respectability, faith in progress, but on the other hand they also denounced some social
injustices.
 They felt they had a moral and social responsibility. They described the social changes, they
were aware of the evils of society and denounced them, although it was never radical criticism
(they didn’t question the foundations of society).
 Charles Dickens: the most representative Victorian writer. He was the first urban novelist, most
of his novels are set in London. He described different social classes and professions, different
conditions of life, even the most miserable ones. He showed different speech patterns. He
criticised certain aspects of the “Victorian compromise” (greed, hypocrisy, indifference of the
rich).
 Their new realism was influenced by Darwin’s theory of evolution (individual characters
influenced by the environment, by the historical moment and by hereditary traits), and by
Positivism (scientific precision in describing social and psychological aspects).