Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Wuthering Heights opens as a diary; according to Steinitz (2000), thisserves as a means to establish a frame through which the story can be told. Steinitz also suggests that Bronte uses a personal diary to "articulateher preoccupation with space by locating all of her family membersprecisely" (Steinitz, 2000:1). She notes the exact positioning for exampleof her sister Anne's foot on the floor; likewise her character Catherineuses a diary not to place people, but rather as a means to detail a "seriesof struggles which replace emplacement with displacement" (Steinitz,2000:1). The work goes on to discuss the displacement of a series ofcharacters including the narrator, who rambles from time to time and seemsto suffer from an "anxiety of place;" Lockwood, the narrator obviouslyuses the diary as a method of discourse, but also as a means perhaps tosearch for a space to put himself (Steinitz, 2000:1). These ideas areperhaps reflective of Ms. Bronte's own desire to find a place for herself.According to Gaskell (1857) Bronte's earliest years were passed amidst"peculiar forms of population and society" (p.9) whose impressions madeupon her early life influenced her writing, including
Joyce Carol Oates commented that Catherinehad an unusual fixation on her childhoods that was "inaccessible toanalysis" (Levey, 1996:1). Throughout the novelthe ideas of passion, love unrealized, and a sense of displacement arerevealed by Bronte. Bronte found herself in after her mother died. The themes used are alsoindicative of the time Emily Bronte wrote the book. Emily's childhood was believed to be unhappy, and it has beensaid that she created stories to escape the realities of a world where hermother died when she was only three (Jalic, 2004). WhenEmily was growing up, Byron's literature was popular and influential,depicting a passive-aggressive type of sexuality that was "at oncesadomasochistic, homoerotic, incestuous, and ambivalently narcisstic"(Chelsea House, 1987). It has been suggested that his work established apattern that Bronte uses to create an "ambiguously erotic universe" such asthat in Wuthering Heights (Chelsea House, 1987). According to Goodleet (1996), Catherine attempts wildly to captureHeathcliffe's "psyche" in order to fill the emptiness and loneliness thatconsumers her. Critics have suggested that in the novel Bronte portrays "twotypes of defective love in childhood, each barring the path to fulfillinglove in adulthood" (Levy, 1996:1). "A struggle exists along the theme, which seems to revolve around the ideaof a fear of abandonment; a majority of the characters seek to findrelationships that might offer love without the threat of abandonment orseparation (Levy, 1996:1). One school of thought suggests that Wuthering Heightsis adapted from "stories of Grandfather Hugh relating his own boyhood underthe brutal power of an adopted uncle" (Hinkley, 319). She portrays both with incredible intensity andrealism. The settings, tone and character of the novel often portray a sense ofloneliness. The novel brings out the havoc wreaked by an "absence of strong parentalfigures" (Goodlett, 1996) which is similar perhaps to the situation Ms.
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