Wuthering Heights di Emily Bronte: riassunto e tematiche

WUTHERING HEIGHTS SUMMARY

EMILY BRONTË, WUTHERING HEIGHTS
Plot
The novel is about tho houses:
·    Wuthering Heights, the house of the Earnshaw;
·    Thrushcross Grange, the house of the Linton.
Wuthering heights di Emily Bronte.

The novel beginning with the story of Mr Lockwood, who has rent the Thrushcross Grange, who goes to his neighbour, Mr Heatcliff, who is also his landlord, and he has to stay a night at Wothering Heights, where Heathcliff lives, because of a snowstorm; during the night he has a strange dream about a girl who is tapping on the window asking to be let in after 20 years of wandering on moors. The next day, he returns home and his housekeeper tells him all the story:
One day, Mr Earnshaw came back from Liverpool with a foundling, that he decided to call Heathcliff because of his black hair and eyes, symbol of mystery. Hindley, Mr Earnshaw son, ill-treated him, Catherine instead got on very well with him. They wandered the moors together and they promised each other that they would stay together forever. One day, because of an accident, Catherine had to stay at Thrushcross Grange for five weeks and she had the opportunity of known Edgar and Isabella, the sons of Linton. When a few year later Edgar proposed to her, she accepted. She told to Nelly that she wouldn’t marry Heathcliff because he was socially inferior. Heathcliff overheard the conversation and disappear; he returned three years later handsome, rich and determinate to take his revenge. He obtained the possession of Wuthering Heights gambling with his stepbrother and he married Isabel and treated her like a servant. Catherine felt ill and died giving birth to Cathy; after some years, Heathcliff forced her to marry his horrible son, Linton, becoming the owner of Thrushcross Grange, completing his revenge. Nelly’s narrative ends here.
After a year, Mr Lockwood came back and he found out that Heathcliff and Linton were died, Cathy and Hareton (Hidley’s son) were going to get married and to live in peace and happiness. Nelly told him that someone had seen a man and a woman wandering together on the moors.

Emily Bronte: Wuthering heights

WUTHERING HEIGHTS RIASSUNTO IN INGLESE

Romantic elements. The novel wasn’t immediately successful because of its content; Wuthering Heights explores human passions at different levels. The spirit of Romanticism and its concern with the human soul are still present in the correspondence between the violent passions of the character and the wild natural landscape; there are some Gothic aspects in the novel, like the sinister atmosphere of Wuthering Heights.
Opposing principles
All the novel is built around the contrast between the two houses:
·    Wuthering Heights reflects the nature of Heathcliff, who is severe, brutal and linked to local tradition and customs;
·    Thrushcross Grange reflects the conception of life of the Linton, which is based on stability, kindness and respectability.
The first one is based on the principles of storm and energy and the second one on the principles of calm and settled assurance.
They are also complementary and ideally they tend to unity. Finally, we can find harmony with the marriage of Cathy and Hareton.

WUTHERING HEIGHTS THEMES

The theme of death. Death is an important theme of the novel: it isn’t an end, but a liberation of the spirit; the writer also said that their characters aren’t died, but they are only sleeping.
The style of the novel
Emily uses dramatic irony; the narrative mode is like a system of Chinese boxes, a “concentric” system of narrative. The structure isn’t “concentric”: it employs two major narrator, outsider(Mr Lockwood) and insider (Nelly). The narrator doesn’t proceed according to chronological time, in fact there are a lot of flashbacks, that creates a mythical atmosphere.
The novel isn’t similar to others write during the same period (during Victorian literature); it’s more similar to a Shakespearean tragedy because of the themes.