Wuthering Heights: Cultural Criticism

Wuthering Heights was written around the same time as photography started to become somewhat prominent in society.  It was expensive and not very common, but it was coming about.  I personally appreciate the fact that there are no photographs of the Bronte sisters because it adds greatly to the mystery of their existence.  Fiction is my favorite type of literature, and while I sometimes like at least an idea of what a place or scene looks like, I am much more imaginative with out one.  Movies often disappoint me because they do not portray something as exotically or romantically as I would have thought.  In the same way, if I just knew what moors were before reading Wuthering Heights, the setting of the novel would not have been nearly as spooky or mysterious as I made it out to be in my mind.  Because of that, I enjoyed reading it a lot more than I would have.  I also love the picture on page 450 that may or may not be Charlotte Bronte.  It is just a black figure standing against a brick wall, but it is of course, in black and white.  Maybe it is Charlotte; maybe it is not.  The truth is we will probably never know, and I am perfectly fine with that.  Keep the mystery alive.  

Wuthering Heights: Cultural Documents & Illustrations

I am a very visual learner, so I am automatically grateful for anything that has some sort of picture or visual representation that I can look at and connect with my reading.  I actually had to google what a moor was the first time I read Wuthering Heights.  The picture of Top Withens, which is considered the site the novel takes place, is really much different than I imagined.  I always pictured it on top of a hill, a house that once looked like a majestic castle, now slowly decaying.  Instead, it looks almost like it was built into the side of a hill, and reminds me a lot of just a nice English country home.  The picture that shows an artist’s interpretation of Wuthering Heights from far away though, looks a lot like I imagined it.  The moor itself is relatively empty except for the images of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange in the background.

             I find it interesting that all of the Bronte sisters were buried in Haworth Church, which is located close to the moors.  I think that really enforces their interest in the moors and how much they liked them.  The Law Hill School is also very interesting, because it is noted that the idea of Wuthering Heights may have come from the story of an adopted student who eventually gained control of all of the family property, much like Heathcliff.  It seems almost a stroke of luck that Emily Bronte even wrote Wuthering Heights, because she did not teach at Law Hill for very long.

Wuthering Heights, Part One

I remember being rather frustrated with Wuthering Heights when I read it in high school.  I think I just got all of the different names and who was related to who mixed up.  This second time reading it though, it makes a lot more sense.  I do remember that when I read it the first time, I had the same feeling toward the Heathcliff and Hindley relationship as I did this time.  I remember whenever I had friends over to my house to hang out, my parents always treated them a little bit better than they treated me, just because they were guests.  Something like my dad offering my friend Josh a drink when he was up and neglecting to offer me one kind of got under my skin because I didn't understand the concept.  Because of that experience and others like it, I can certainly relate to how Hindley felt when his parents brought home the orphan Heathcliff.  All of the sudden, the favorite and oldest child becomes "second fiddle".

Another thing that stood out to me was Catherine's great desire to keep social order intact.  She said that even though she loved Heathcliff more than anything in the world, she had to marry Edgar because Hindley had demeaned Heathcliff so much that he kind of became a lower class.  It has always driven me crazy in stories like this and Romeo and Juliet that people were so concerned that everything they did had the potential to damage their public perception.  They had an attitude of "This is just the way things are and there is no changing it".

Manuel Part 3

The part that stood out to me most about our last reading was the stealing of books.  As I think about it now, unless the book stolen from me had sentimental value or was a rare book of some kind, I wouldn't be too upset.  If someone stole my copy of "Tuesdays with Morrie", I'd be marginally annoyed, but when all was said and done, I'd just waltz right over to Borders or Tattersalls, or even whiz right around in my chair and order it off of Amazon.  Either way, that book being stolen would not be such an enormous deal.  When you think about it in the very old days, back when books were rather rare, cost a lot, and quite frankly, treasured more, the act of stealing a book becomes that much more fiendish.  I particularly liked the excerpt from the library of the monastery of San Pedro, in Barcelona:

For him that steals, or borrows and returns not, a book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him.  Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted.  Let him languish in pain crying for mercy, and let there be no surcease to his agony til he sing in dissolution.  Let bookworms gnaw at his entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not.  And when at last he goes to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him forever (Manguel 244).

That seems incredibly extreme.  I don't think I would wish that even on someone who had wronged me above the level of stealing a book, but it really makes it clear how big of a deal it was and how irreplaceable books were then.