Shape

Finally, we come to the last criteria for analyzing a graph, or this novel, which is the shape. In order to really understand Wuthering Heights, the reader has to appreciate it for what it was as a feminist novel. Overall, that’s a major theme within this book-- how women and men interact, and what that ultimately means about us as humans. However, I think that most of the feminist actions for Bronte occur outside of her book and in the context of when this piece was published.

Wuthering Heights was published in 1847, a time when women had little to no rights. Females in society were not valued: they were to cook, clean, and help the family. None of those jobs included writing novels. For Bronte to have written such an incredible book and garner such amazing feedback in her day and age was a fantastic feminist act.

It’s strange to think that a book so rooted in unhealthy relationships towards women would be rooted in an act of feminism. A ubiquitous motif in Wuthering Heights is Heathcliff using people, especially women, as pawns to gain more money or power. Similarly, the abusive relationships he has with the women he interacts with, as discussed in the previous blogpost, is not particularly sympathetic towards women. Finally, most of the women are not deeply respected-- Catherine (the daughter) is lazy and rude and Nelly (the maidservant) is painted as pretty dumb. In fact, the women heavily rely on the men for their survival. In Chapter 9, Catherine states, "My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being. So don't talk of our separation again: it is impracticable" (9.6). This deep-rooted need for a man is directly against all feminist values.

This feminist view is also negated by other facets of the book, as explored in earlier blog posts. Thinking back about the point of view and choice of narrator, it seems obvious that Bronte choice Lockwood for the major point of view because she didn’t trust that the reader would want to read a story told by a woman. Similarly, the nature vs. nurture argument would lend towards Heathcliff being instinctually drawn towards violence and abuse (as it is a man’s nature) and therefore giving him no blame for his unruly actions.

In any event, the mere act of writing such a book makes Bronte one of the greatest feminist writers in history. Along with other authors like Jane Austen, Bronte’s sister (Charlotte), Mary Shelley, and many others fought for women’s rights not by actually talking about them, but by showing that they were just as capable of making entertaining pieces of literature as the men they competed with. Although the female characters may be flimsy and involved with men in unhealthy ways, at least Bronte painted them out to be three-dimensional people like herself. She is regarded as a feminist writer. Although her text may lend away from painting women in a purely good light, I think I agree that she did a lot for women in literature.

Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is a masterpiece for a lot of reasons. The great use of language, the fantastic characters, the driving plot, and the overall message are important for understanding this time period and the inhabitants of it. However, Bronte is the real hero of her story. By breaking through gender stereotypes and writing a book just as well as a man could have, she proves that she is the true MVP.

As far as reading this book went, I think I did an okay job at close reading. This book was really difficult to understand. I did not explore any of the symbols in these blog posts because I didn’t really get them. The recurrence of ghosts did not make sense of me. I could not tell Bronte’s intentions for creating these characters. It seemed almost too forced to be metaphorical in a larger sense. Similarly, I’m not particularly sure what Bronte’s overall message was. I probably should have followed Nabokov’s directions more and reread to make better sense of the text, but I didn’t really have time to. The readings on Point of View were really what I thought was most helpful in understanding this book. Point of view was really important, and I wouldn’t have been able to comprehend most of the book without this textbook excerpt.

For these reasons, I wouldn’t really recommend Wuthering Heights. It was fine, but I don’t really understand what all the hype was about. As mentioned in my Unusual Points post, Bronte is a fantastic writer. However, if I had to read this book on my own and was not tacked to it by an assignment, I probably would not have finished it. I’m not sure where Gothic novels like this have in a place in the current literary work. Being a “classic” doesn’t seem like a good enough reason for this book to still be relevant, and still appear so frequently on the AP test.

Center

The center of this story lies in abusive relationships, their roots, and what becomes of them.

At its core, Wuthering Heights is an exploration of the classic psychological debate over Nature vs. Nurture. Was Heathcliff born cold, distant, and rude, or did he have these tendencies thrust upon him?

When Heathcliff first enters the mansion, a mere “gispy” boy taken off the street, he is not treated well. Bronte writes, “Cathy, when she learned the master had lost her whip in attending on the stranger, showed her humour by grinning and spitting at the stupid little thing; earning for her pains a sound blow from her father, to teach her cleaner manners.  They entirely refused to have it in bed with them, or even in their room; and I had no more sense, so I put it on the landing of the stairs, hoping it might he gone on the morrow” (36).  Heathcliff is not respected by his new family. In fact, they literally spit on him and treat him like a common dog by placing him on the staircase. He is given no respect, and therefore is not taught how to respect others.

If, when Heathcliff arrived to the Grange, he had been welcomed with open arms into a loving home by all his family members, would he still have turned out the way he did? If everyone was not so horrible to him, would he horrible back? As Nelly lays out the troubles of Heathcliff’s past, one cannot help but feel bad for him. He was never given a chance to succeed as he had the potential too. Although old Earnshaw may have been incorrect in so obviously playing favorites with him, it wasn’t Heathcliff’s fault. He only knew unkindness, and so he only treated others with unkindness.

Similarly, his gipsy upbringing makes it hard to know what his true nature is. Other characters are more simple: Lockwood is obviously from a nice English family, Nelly is a servant who was probably born into the trade, and the histories of the other characters are told to us through Nelly. However, Heathcliff’s clandestine past makes it harder to understand if he was predestined to be awful. However, the fact that he was found as a  “dirty, ragged, black-haired child”(36) on the city streets, it’s unlikely that his parents were kindly people who taught him good morals.

So maybe it’s a combination of the nature and nurture. Maybe Heathcliff has a predisposition for awfulness and, paired with his bad treatment from the Earnshaws, he gradually became a terrible person. Or maybe it’s none of these things. Maybe there is no such thing as Nature vs. Nurture. Maybe Heathcliff is bad because he is. Maybe there is no literary, psychological, or otherwise reason. Maybe we are who we are and that is the end of the road.

Unusual Points

The next thing to consider when discovering a Normal curve, or Wuthering Heights, are the unusual points. Although this refers to outliers in mathematics, I’m going to interpret this as something that stands out to me in Bronte’s writing.

Bronte has fabulous diction. She writes in a way that, in my opinion, literally doesn’t exist anymore. Each sentence is concise, uses the perfect words, and seems purposeful. It’s my opinion that if a contemporary author had just ONE sentence in their book that was reminiscent of a Bronte sentence, they would be the greatest author of our time. Bronte has a whole book of perfect sentences. While reading, I sometimes had to sit back and just watch her play with language.

For example, in Chapter 9, she writes, “If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.” In the same chapter, she muses, “I have dreamt in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind. And this is one: I'm going to tell it - but take care not to smile at any part of it.” These lines, taken out of context, are strikingly beautiful pieces of writing. Thrown in with the rest of the great language in the book, Wuthering Heights makes for a masterpiece.

Another way in which Bronte manipulates language to drive the plot of her novel forward is through the names of her characters and places. Like a good porno, the names of the characters in Wuthering Heights reveal a lot about their personalities, role in the story, and perhaps their physical features. For example, Heathcliff—the antagonist—has a name that sounds as serious and hard as the character is. A "heath" is an area of uncultivated land, similar to how Heathcliff is uncultivated in his social upbringing and rugged beahavior. A "cliff" is jagged, dangerous, and sinister-- another one of Heathcliff's stand-out character traits. It’s also fitting that he has no last name, as he is an orphan who was found in the streets of London by the Mr. Earnshaw. Other character has similar meaningful names. The repetition of the name “Catherine” is something that cannot be ignored. Both the mother Catherine and the daughter Catherine share character traits (and even last names, though not as the same time). They are obviously supposed to be parallel characters of one another and their similarities are highlighted by their shared names. Finally, the names of the respective houses helps create the environment for both places. Wuthering Heights, as the author points out, is a "significant provincial adjective, descriptive of the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather" (1). The name of Wuthering Heights signals the reader and prepares them for the turbulent lifestyle they'll find there. Juxtaposed with the name and nature of Thrushcross Grange, which sounds open and welcoming, the names of the two structures central to the plot of this book help Bronte create a fully-formed world. 

Bronte loves wordplay. A lot of it can just be admired for the beauty of the language, but in other cases (as with the names she chooses for her characters), she’s trying to communicate a different meaning through nuances of language. There's a lot to be learned from Wuthering Heights, particularly in the way Bronte executes her craft.

Spread

After finishing Wuthering Heights, I can certainly say that I enjoyed it far more than I thought I would.

There’s a lot to munch on this book and a lot that I want to discuss. In order to cover everything, I’ve decided to take a mathematical approach to dissecting Wuthering Heights. In Statistics, you can investigate a normal curve by describing its S.U.C.S., or its Spread, Unusual points, Center, and Shape. I will attempt to investigate Bronte’s work using similar guidelines, changed to fit a literary work, in four different blog posts.

In this post, I will explore the Spread of Bronte’s novel, especially how the story is laid (or spread) out for the reader. 

The point of view in Wuthering Heights is a bit confusing. Although the entire book is supposedly journal entries from the main character’s perspective, most of the plot occurs through second-hand narration from Lockwood’s maidservant, Nelly.  Lockwood moves into Thrushschcross Grange, a house neighboring Wuthering Heights, and sets out to meet his neighbor, Heathcliff. He finds him very disagreeable and eventually attempts to get the low-down from Nelly, who he hopes is “a regular gossip” (20). She then goes on to recount the entire history of the family, from the time the Mr. Earnshaw found Heathcliff roaming around in the city to the present-day. However, even within Nelly’s interpretation, there are many other perspectives explored throughout this novel. She sometimes utilizes anecdotes from other people, like other servants or inhabitants of Wuthering Heights or Thrushcross Grange.

The major question this lends towards is WHY Bronte chose to create Lockwood's character if she intended on having Nelly narrate most of the important bits of the tale. I can think of a few reasons for this bold choice. First and foremost, Lockwood is higher up in society and therefore more trustworthy as a narrator. Wuthering Heights deals with a lot of huge societal issues, including that of the social classes (as Heathcliff is cast aside by most of his makeshift upbringing because of his "gypsy" upbringing). Nelly is not someone the reader should respect because she is very low in class. Furthermore, the comparisons the reader sees between Lockwood and Heathcliff is very important. Lockwood and Heathcliff are directly opposite characters. Without Lockwood commenting on the plot in addition to Nelly, the book would hold far less weight.

This book deals with themes that are ubiquitous in the novels we have read so far in AP Lit Comp. Multiple layers of narration, the reliability of the narrator, and the importance of truth are all things that the reader grapples with during Bronte’s work. Should we trust Nelly’s account of Heathcliff’s history? Should we even trust Lockwood’s account of Nelly’s account of Heathcliff’s history? There are many layers to the truth.

I think Bronte made a really bold and important choice when she decided to narrate the story through a first person recount to a first person major narrator. The way the book is spread out to the reader is an important part of understanding Wuthering Heights.