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Bronte: Wuthering Heights
In this course, Professor John Bowen (University of York) explores Emily Brontë’s 1848 novel, Wuthering Heights. In the first module, we provide an introduction to the novel as a whole, focusing in particular on Brontë’s life, her character, and the impact of her only novel – Wuthering Heights. After that, we think about the Brontë family, life in Haworth, and the setting of the novel. In the third module, we think about Emily’s early experience of death, her interest in Romanticism, and the power of the past in the novel, before turning in the fourth module to the question of how we judge characters in the novel – especially the figure of Heathcliff. Do we approve or disapprove of him? Is he a victim or a tyrant? In the sixth module, we think about the origins of some of characters in the novel, before turning in the seventh module to the question of who the main characters in the novel are. Is it Heathcliff? Catherine? Both of them together? Or neither? In the eighth module, we think about the critical reception of the novel, while in the ninth module, we consider the way the story is told in Wuthering Heights, including the strange repetition of names throughout the novel. Finally, in the tenth novel, we consider the related themes of character psychology, the way the characters in the novel tend to treat each other, and the transformation of Heathcliff in the novel’s final pages.
Introduction
In this module, we provide an introduction to the novel as a whole, focusing in particular on: (i) Emily Bronte’s sheltered life and her limited literary output; (ii) Constantin Héger’s description of Emily as someone with an “imperious will” who was “obtuse to all reasoning where her own wishes and her own sense of right was concerned”; (iii) the immediate impact of Wuthering Heights, and its worldwide reach today; and (iv) Wuthering Heights as a highly organised, well-planned novel that is at the same completely self-disciplined and ungoverned.
I'm John Bowen from the University of York, where I'm a professor of English.
00:00:06Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights,
00:00:10The story of Emily Bronte and her sisters,
00:00:12Charlotte and an all three of them important novelists
00:00:15still has the power
00:00:18to shock.
00:00:20Emily only published one novel
00:00:21and some powerful and moving poems,
00:00:23but they are enough to give her an unveiling. Quotable place
00:00:26in English literature.
00:00:29Wuthering Heights provoked,
00:00:31fascinated and disturbed when it was first published in 18 47.
00:00:33It has continued to disturb, enchant
00:00:38and fascinate readers
00:00:40ever since.
00:00:42If you go up on the moors behind where the Brontes lived,
00:00:44in Howarth in West Yorkshire,
00:00:47you'll see sign posts in English
00:00:49and also in Japanese.
00:00:51It's a remarkable achievement for one who lives such a short provincial life.
00:00:53Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights is a novel now of worldwide Reach the Moors,
00:00:58on which it set a place of global pilgrimage.
00:01:03Emily herself travelled very little.
00:01:07She only once went abroad to a school in Brussels,
00:01:10but her teacher there wrote,
00:01:13she should have been
00:01:15a great
00:01:16navigator.
00:01:17Her powerful reason would have deduced new
00:01:19spheres of discovery from knowledge of the old
00:01:21and her strong, imperious will
00:01:25would never have been daunted by opposition or difficulty,
00:01:27never have given way.
00:01:31But with life
00:01:33she had a head for logic
00:01:35and a capability of argument, unusual in a man and rarer, indeed in a woman.
00:01:36But impairing this gift was her stubborn tenacity of will,
00:01:41which rendered her obtuse to all reasoning where her own
00:01:46wishes or her own sense of right was concerned.
00:01:49Monsieur brilliantly notices so many qualities
00:01:53that we can also see in Wuthering Heights.
00:01:57Emily had a powerful will, he says,
00:01:59that couldn't be defeated
00:02:01as long as she lived. She had a powerful sense of logic and reason,
00:02:03but her will, her wishes
00:02:07and her sense of right
00:02:10were even stronger. Still,
00:02:11the most brilliant insight that he makes, though,
00:02:15is to imagine Emily as a great navigator,
00:02:19an adventurer or explorer.
00:02:22Navigation,
00:02:24the art of discovering and mapping new lands and seas
00:02:25needs an unusual combination of qualities,
00:02:29knowledge and planning,
00:02:31courage and strength, and a desire to encounter
00:02:33the completely unknown.
00:02:37Emily
00:02:39never became an alligator,
00:02:40but she did something even greater
00:02:42in her creation of a revolutionary novel
00:02:44that's caused through the veins of generations of readers
00:02:47has been translated across the world
00:02:51into a Siamese and Burmese, Russian, Polish, Italian, French,
00:02:53Hungarian and many more languages.
00:02:58It's a book as familiar
00:03:01as it is still extraordinary,
00:03:03brilliantly creative and the source of creativity in many others.
00:03:05Among visual artists, writers,
00:03:09film makers
00:03:11and composers
00:03:13planning,
00:03:15courage
00:03:16and the desire to encounter the unknown,
00:03:17Wuthering Heights has just these qualities.
00:03:20On the one hand
00:03:23is a highly organised and well planned novel with a complicated time scheme
00:03:24and several interlocking narrators.
00:03:29The story of Heath Bits Marriage, for example,
00:03:32is told by his ex wife, Isabella, to Nelly Dean,
00:03:34the housekeeper, who then tells Mr Lockwood,
00:03:37the Southern intruder, who in turn tells us,
00:03:40on the one hand,
00:03:44is a world of passionate intensities,
00:03:45which particular events are burned on the characters and readers.
00:03:48Memories beyond Reason,
00:03:51measure or reserve
00:03:53terror
00:03:55stalks the book
00:03:56and defines so many of its central relationships
00:03:58concerned that it is
00:04:01with the ecstatic,
00:04:02the eerie
00:04:04and the mad.
00:04:05There's no law in the book,
00:04:07although Katherine's husband, Edgar Linton,
00:04:09is a magistrate and at one point threatens to fetch the constable.
00:04:11It's a world in which the powerful
00:04:14Heathcliff mostly
00:04:16can give the law to themselves
00:04:18and thus impose their will on others.
00:04:20It's complicated narrative frameworks
00:04:24and careful organisation of time.
00:04:27Don't lesson but intensify the books power,
00:04:29which, like Heath Cliffs,
00:04:32is both very self disciplined
00:04:34and completely ungoverned.
00:04:36
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Bowen, J. (2020, September 12). Bronte: Wuthering Heights - Introduction [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/bronte-wuthering-heights-john-bowen/critical-reception-11650bf4-5c00-4b45-bab7-aea33dbb5d57
MLA style
Bowen, J. "Bronte: Wuthering Heights – Introduction." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 12 Sep 2020, https://massolit.io/courses/bronte-wuthering-heights-john-bowen/critical-reception-11650bf4-5c00-4b45-bab7-aea33dbb5d57