A Student's Guide to Wuthering Heights by Emily BrontëA Student's Guide to Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte is a general introduction to one of the great English novels of the nineteenth century. Misunderstood by most critics and commentators upon its publication in 1847, the story of Catherine and Heathcliff and their peers and descendants slowly became recognized as the work of a genius and is now on nearly every list of recommended books for both high school and college students. However, many students today find the novel difficult to read and understand because of its language and its setting; especially challenging to some are the sections in which characters speak in the Yorkshire dialect. This guide provides an easy-to-use glossary of that dialect and translations of the dialogue. It also includes discussions of the social, economic, and political background of the period (the last part of the eighteenth and the first part of the nineteenth centuries).Combined with a thorough coverage of language and background, this guide offers a list of questions about the reading that are intended to lead the students to independent thinking about the work. Unlike some better-known guides, this text contains no detailed summary of parts of the novel. Students must read chapters of the novel itself in order to answer the questions. In a few instances, readers must go outside Wuthering Heights to answer a question; that is, some basic research is required. In addition, the appendices contain materials intended to enrich the novel and to deepen the appreciation of each student for this outstanding work. It is the desire of the author to make Wuthering Heights more readily accessible to students and at the same time to challenge them to engage in independent critical reading. |
Contents
Relationships in Wuthering Heights | 26 |
Wuthering Heights | 31 |
Wuthering Heights | 33 |
A Brief Glossary | 48 |
Translations from the Dialect | 52 |
A Students Selected Bibliography | 63 |
A Students Guide to Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë Mezo | 65 |
Religion in Wuthering Heights | 24 |
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Common terms and phrases
action Acton Bell Agnes Grey Anne aristocrat becomes behavior Branwell Brontë Brussels Byronic hero Catherine and Edgar Catherine and Heathcliff Catherine Earnshaw Catherine's Cathy and Hareton Cathy escape Cathy Linton Cathy's Cathy’s marriage Chapter Charlotte Brontë child December 19 devil dreary Edgar and Isabella Edgar Linton Edition of Wuthering Ellis Bell Emily Brontë's Poems Emily’s emotional Explain father fiction FRAME STORY Frances Earnshaw Gimmerton Haworth Heathcliff and Isabella Heights and Thrushcross Hindley Earnshaw Hindley’s household husbands Isabella Linton Jane Eyre Linton's death literature Lockwood London look marries Edgar marries Heathcliff master mother move narrative narrator Nelly Dean never night novel obsession person reader regarding relationship between Catherine religious Sampler servant sister social class society soul spirit status story tell Nelly There's Thorp Green Thrushcross Grange women words writing Wuthering Heights Yorkshire dialect young Zillah
Popular passages
Page 104 - No coward soul is mine, No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere: I see Heaven's glories shine, And faith shines equal, arming me from fear. O God within my breast, Almighty, ever-present Deity! Life— that in me has rest, As I— Undying Life— have power in Thee!
Page 104 - With wide-embracing love Thy spirit animates eternal years, Pervades and broods above, Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.
Page 79 - One day, in the autumn of 1845, I accidentally lighted on a MS. volume of verse in my sister Emily's handwriting. Of course, I was not surprised, knowing that she could and did write verse : I looked it over, and something more than surprise seized me — a deep conviction that these were not common effusions, nor at all like the poetry women generally write.
Page 93 - Be the work grim or glorious, dread or divine, you have little choice left but quiescent adoption. As for you - the nominal artist - your share in it has been to work passively under dictates you neither delivered nor could question - that would not be uttered at your prayer, nor suppressed nor changed at your caprice.
Page 93 - But this I know: the writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master - something that, at times, strangely wills and works for itself. He may lay down rules and devise principles, and to rules and principles it will perhaps for years lie in subjection; and then, haply without any warning of revolt, there comes a time when it will no longer consent to 'harrow the valleys, or be bound with a band in the furrow...
Page 93 - Wuthering Heights was hewn in a wild workshop, with simple tools, out of homely materials. The statuary* found a granite block on a solitary moor; gazing thereon, he saw how from the crag might be elicited a head, savage, swart, sinister; a form moulded with at least one element of grandeur - power. He wrought with a rude chisel, and from no model but the vision of his meditations.
Page 85 - I have seen nothing like it; but, indeed, I have never seen her parallel in anything. Stronger than a man, simpler than a child, her nature stood alone. The awful point was, that while full of ruth for others, on herself she had no pity; the spirit was inexorable to the flesh; from the trembling hand, the unnerved limbs, the faded eyes, the same service was exacted as they had rendered in health. To stand by and witness this, and not dare to remonstrate, was a pain no words can render.
Page 91 - If the auditor of her work when read in manuscript, shuddered under the grinding influence of natures so relentless and implacable, of spirits so lost and fallen; if it was complained that the mere hearing of certain vivid and fearful scenes banished sleep by night, and disturbed mental peace by day, Ellis Bell would wonder what was meant, and suspect the complainant of affectation.
Page 90 - And yet she knew them: knew their ways, their language, their family histories; she could hear of them with interest, and talk of them with detail, minute, graphic, and accurate; but with them, she rarely exchanged a word.