When studying Gothic literature, one of the key elements to look at regarding setting is the buildings. Gothic literature has an architectural focus, so creepy houses, set apart from villages and society, with elements that suggest a darker history are typical.
The description of Wuthering Heights suggests such a place. It seems inhospitable to human comfort. It is roughly decorated, seemingly ancient, with inharmonious arrangement of light and furniture. Thrushcross Grange, on the other hand, seems contemporary, with efforts at refinement and culture.
Another element in Gothic literature concerns liminality, or in-betweenness. Bronte uses the motif of windows in the novel, and Wuthering Heights particularly is mentioned in terms of its windows. Lockwood is drawn to the window at the beginning where he sees the ghost of Catherine (ghosts occupying a liminal space between life and death). The bed is described in terms of its window-like features and seems unsettling in its decoration.
The Moors are also valuable to British writers of the Gothic period. They have a sublime beauty that is also fearsome in the power of Nature to sweep across them. Catherine and Heathcliff are drawn to these desolate places as though their own untamed nature belongs in this wilderness.
Thursday, July 30, 2015
How do the settings in Wuthering Heights reflect elements of the Gothic genre in literature? Focus your analysis on a particular scene, using specific passage(s) from the novel.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
What is the theme of the chapter Lead?
Primo Levi's complex probing of the Holocaust, including his survival of Auschwitz and pre- and post-war life, is organized around indiv...
-
The statement "Development policy needs to be about poor people, not just poor countries," carries a lot of baggage. Let's dis...
-
"Mistaken Identity" is an amusing anecdote recounted by the famous author Mark Twain about an experience he once had while traveli...
-
Primo Levi's complex probing of the Holocaust, including his survival of Auschwitz and pre- and post-war life, is organized around indiv...
-
De Gouges's Declaration of the Rights of Woman was enormously influential. We can see its influences on early English feminist Mary Woll...
-
As if Hamlet were not obsessed enough with death, his uncovering of the skull of Yorick, the court jester from his youth, really sets him of...
-
In both "Volar" and "A Wall of Fire Rising," the characters are impacted by their environments, and this is indeed refle...
No comments:
Post a Comment