Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights: An Important Literary Work

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Recommended: Literary devices and their effects

“The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish,” said Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island. Any person can write a book, but to be able to write what you mean and affect your readers is very difficult. A writer simply can’t just drop dialogue into a character’s mouth without having any context of the dialogue. If an author has his or her character saying “I’m broke,” what does this really mean without any context? To Oprah Winfrey, being broke may mean she can’t buy a Silk Jet, a winery, or a country. To a middle- class American, being broke may mean they can’t buy a new pair of shoes that week, buy a new car, or get their hair done. This simply means that they would have to manage their money until their next pay check. To an Ethiopian, being broke may mean they don’t have the money for food, clothes, or shelter. However, Emily Bronte does affect her readers ‘precisely as she wishes’ in her novel, Wuthering Heights, and she affects her readers through the literary devices she employees: setting, theme, and mood. But first, before looking at her devices, one should have a brief overview of her novel (Bronte).

Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights was published in December 1847. It is a story of unchecked desires, voracious love, and vengeance. Heathcliff is adopted by the Earnshaw family at a young age, but at Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff endures cruel torment from Hindley, the eldest of the Earnshaw children. Heathcliff finds solace in the surrounding moors and in his relationship with Catherine. She was the upper class girl Heathcliff was fondly in love with. Their adventures on the moors lead to a dog bit...

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...because of the different elements and vocabulary any person can apply.

Works Cited

Bronte, Emily. "Theme." Free Web Page. John Wiley & Sons, 07/5/2007. Web. 25 Mar 2011. <1. http://www.pinkmonkey.com/booknotes/monkeynotes/pmWuthering73.asp>.

BRONTË, Emily. "OVERVIEW OF EMILY BRONTË." Emily Bronte. cuny, 09/03/2011. Web. 28 Mar 2011. http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_19c/wuthering/index.html

Bronte, Emily. "Setting." WebNet. Princeton University, 03/02/2011. Web. 28 Mar 2011. http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=setting

Bronte, Emily. "Robert Louis Stevenson quotes." Thinkexist.com. ThinkExist, 1999-2010. Web. 28 Mar 2011. http://thinkexist.com/quotation/the_difficulty_of_literature_is_not_to_write-but/14621.html

Bronte, Emily. "Mood." Dictionary.com. LLC, 2011. Web. 28 Mar 2011. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/mood

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