Cime Tempestose

Wuthering Heights

This is the only novel published by Emily Brontë (1818-1848)

The Brontë sisters. (Victorian Age)

She had two sisters, Charlotte and Anne. They lived in a village in the Yorkshire moors. After their mother's death they were brought up, together with their two sisters and one brother, by their aunt. They attended Clergy daughter's school where Maria and Elizabeth became ill and died because of the terrible conditions of the school. Charlotte, Emily and Anne attended another school. After that Emily decided to travel to Brussels with Charlotte, to complete their education, in fact they wanted to open their own school. That project failed, but they decided to publish a selection of the poems of all three sisters. The collection didn't sell well, but the three sisters started working on other projects.

Wuthering Heights

It is about hate and love between two families. The protagonists are Catherine Earnshaws and Heathcliff. One day Mr Earnshaw, Catherine's father, brings home a child picked up in the streets during one of his travels. He calls him Heathcliff and treats him kindly, as if he were his own son. However the foundling has got a violent temper and he provokes the jealousy of Hindley, Mr Earnshaw's son and Catherine's brother. Catherine and Heathcliff become friends. They study, play and run together on tne moor so that they really seem to be made for each other, but when the girl grows older she decides to marry Edward Linton, because she considers Heathcliff socially inferior. When he discovers the reason why she married another man, he disappears. In the meanwhile Catherine and her husband are happy and quiet. But three years later Heathcliff returns. He is quite different. He is elegant and rich, and he still loves Catherine so he can't accept her marriage. He is determined to take his revenge. And he succeeds in his terrible project. However Catherine dies giving birth to Cathy, and her ghost haunts his difficult life made of hate and destruction, until he dies.

Themes and features:

Emily Brontë combines realism and romanticism. We can find realism in her description of the characters and of the setting, and romanticism in the theme of love and death. In addition Heathcliff can be considered a Byronic hero.

The Gothicism appears in the beliefs in ghosts and in the diffused sense of the presence of something supernatural, in fact the two protagonists meet in the extra-sensory world. Love is presented as a total identification with the beloved to form a unity. Love is also a destructive force which leads to revenge and death. Death is not an end but a liberation of the spirit.

Narrative technique.

Emily Brontë anticipates the 20^th century novel for the narrative technique she uses: there is no chronological order of events, in fact the novel starts at the end of the story. The story moves backwards and forwards thanks to the narration af an eye witness, to her memories and flashbacks.