Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights shares several notable similarities and differences with both Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Montaigne’s Of Friendship. After reading extended excerpts from Ethics and Of Friendship, it became rather clear that Brontë obviously borrowed from the philosophers several themes and ideals about the dynamics of relationships and love. Wuthering Heights effectively demonstrates how most relationship forms, through an interconnected web of entangled lives, work to reveal people in their basest forms. Though the works are separated by hundreds, if not thousands of years, the age-old trials of love, friendship, passion, and revenge link Wuthering Heights with the foundational treatises. More specifically, Brontë 's …show more content…
Montaigne mentions this in Of Friendship when he discusses the difference between romantic and platonic love. His assertion, to the effect of, once romantic love enters into the arena of friendship, the quality of love grows weakened and doesn’t stand up to the scrutiny of time. The pleasures of physical love grow tedious and tiresome, thus diminishing the relationships importance. However, platonic friendship is strengthened and enhanced by time, enjoyment, and personal engagement with the intimate act of friendship appears to be play-by-play of the turbulent relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine (60). Brontë’s approach to Heathcliff and Catherine’s relationship mirrors the love, adoration, and mutual love of what Montaigne called a “perfect friendship,” but as the two allowed romantic love to intrude into the realm of platonic love friendship their relationship turned sour and dangerous, being founded on misplaced obsession, rather than real, soul connecting …show more content…
It is no longer an innocent love, but a consuming need to be together, regardless of the social implications. Their early friendship, before the messiness of romantic love enters the equation, seems to be Montaigne 's exemplary "…perfect friendship…[which] is indivisible: each one gives himself so wholly to his friend that he has nothing left to distribute" (67). However, in their treatment of one another, it remains throughout the novel that the relationship dynamics are unequal. Catherine is very wishy-washy and selfish in her feelings and attitude toward Heathcliff, and the hot and cold leaves him confused, frustrated, and unwilling to move on. The inequity that reigns over their relationship can be viewed as a relationship of utility, which as Aristotle says, "those who love for the sake of utility love for the sake of what is good for themselves…thus, these friendships are only incidental…Such friendships, then, are easily dissolved, if the parties do not remain like themselves; for if the one party is no longer pleasant or useful the other ceases to love him” (129). The “perfect relationship” that Brontë seems to be after is nothing more than a façade. She borrows concepts and themes from both Aristotle and Montaigne but fails to implement
As shown in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, love can often lead to a life of anguish; even so, the experience is worth the pain. Jane’s adoration for both Mr. Rochester and Helen helped her grow as a person; they gave her hope for a brighter future. When her faith is at its climax, she loses them and is forced to endure the agony of resentment, regret, and solitude. Even so, love is a powerful emotion that can influence anyone given time and devotion and it should be cherished, appreciated and pursued no matter the consequences or the reprecussions.
Throughout the majority of “Othello”, “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” and “The Great Gatsby”, Shakespeare, Lawrence and Fitzgerald seem to have this common focus on the changes in society in terms of relationships. It appears that each text has a major event in which the dynamics of the relationships change due to some aspect in society in which they are set. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” is pervaded by the idea that relationships between classes are highly influenced negatively by society. Connie is having this very sexual and passionate relationship with her gamekeeper Oliver Mellors, who is of a lower status to her. To many reader’s surprise, Mellors is a man who, as one critic quotes, “remains impervious to the pettiness and conventional society” suggesting this to be a reason for Connie and Mellors relationship to be so strong compared to that of, for instance, Othello and Desdemona and Daisy, Tom and Gatsby’s relationships.
In the gothic novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, the author hides motifs within the story.The novel contains two major love stories;The wild love of Catherine, and Heathcliff juxtaposing the serene love of Cathy,and Hareton. Catherine’s and Heathcliff's love is the center of Emily Bronte’s novel ,which readers still to this day seem to remember.The characters passion, and obsession for each other seems to not have been enough ,since their love didn't get to thrive. Hareton and Cathy’s love is what got to develop. Hareton’s and Cathy’s love got to workout ,because both characters contained a characteristic that both characters from the first generation lacked: The ability to change .Bronte employs literary devices such as antithesis of ideas, and the motif of repetition to reveal the destructiveness of wild love versus a domestic love.
Heathcliff's love for Catherine transcends the normal physical "true love" into spiritual love. He can withstand anything against him to be with her. After Hindley became the master of Wuthering Heights, he flogged Heathcliff like a slave. Although Heathcliff could have simply run away, his decision to endure the physical pains shows his unrelenting devotion to Catherine. Fortunately, Catherine feels as deeply for Heathcliff as he does for her, explaining to Nelly that "Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same…" Their love for each other is so passionate that they can not possibly live apart. At Catherine's death, Heathcliff hopes that she will not rest, but will haunt him until he dies. This absurdity contradicts the traditional norm that one should pray that the dead rest in peace. Near the end of the novel, we learn that Catherine has haunted Heathcliff, allowing him only fleeting glances of her. This shows that despite their physical separation, nothing can part them spiritually. When Heathcliff dies and unites with Catherine once again, the neighbors see them haunt the moors. We finally see the power of their love; Not only does this love transcend physical barriers, it transcends time as well...
Heathcliff is a character who was abused in his childhood by Catherine’s brother, Hindley, because of his heritage as a “gypsy”, and Hindley was jealous of the love that Heathcliff got from Mr. Earnshaw, Hindley’s father. This is also selfishness upon Hindley’s part since he only wanted his father’s love for his sister and himself. So to reprimand Heathcl...
Wuthering Heights is not just a love story, it is a window into the human soul, where one sees the loss, suffering, self discovery, and triumph of the characters in this novel. Both the Image of the Book by Robert McKibben, and Control of Sympathy in Wuthering Heights by John Hagan, strive to prove that neither Catherine nor Heathcliff are to blame for their wrong doings. Catherine and Heathcliff’s passionate nature, intolerable frustration, and overwhelming loss have ruined them, and thus stripped them of their humanities.
Definitive criteria for judging the success or failure of a work of fiction are not easily agreed upon; individuals almost necessarily introduce bias into any such attempt. Only those who affect an exorbitantly refined artistic taste, however, would deny the importance of poignancy in literary pieces. To be sure, writings of dubious and fleeting merit frequently enchant the public, but there is too the occasional author who garners widespread acclaim and whose works remain deeply affecting despite the passage of time. The continued eminence of the fiction of Emily Bronte attests to her placement into such a category of authors: it is a recognition of her propensity to create poignant and, indeed, successful literature.
His assertion focuses on how their relationship is a displaced version of symbiotic relationship between mother and child. Emotionally, Heathcliff is the world to Catherine just as a mother is to a child and a child to a mother. (p. 366). This statement is supported by a passage in the novel in which Heathcliff has left and she seeks him calling for him at intervals and crying hard enough to beat out any child (p. 88-90). Upon Heathcliff’s return, Brontë uses language that Wion believes depicts the cessation of their relationship’s development in the Freud’s oral stage of libidinal development (p. 368). Brontë uses phrases such as “drank from hers” when discussing them gazing at each other and “They were too much absorbed in their mutual enjoyment…” (p. 99, 368). The use of this language is interesting and begs us to question if its use was intentional to display the basicness and necessity of their relationship as if to say that they could just as easily not be together as they could stop consuming sustenance. The novel demonstrates many times that the relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff is fundamental to their existence. A major piece of evidence supporting this is Catherine’s breakdown when Heathcliff leaves as well as when Heathcliff and Edgar’s disagreement reaches a point where Edgar forces Catherine to decide between himself and
The basic conflict of the novel that drives Heathcliff and Catherine apart is social. Written after the Industrial Revolution, Wuthering Heights is influenced by the rise of new fortunes and the middle class in England. Money becomes a new criterion to challenge the traditional criterias of class and family in judging a gentleman’s background. Just as Walpole who portrays the tyrannies of the father figure Manfred and the struggles of the Matilda who wants to marry the peasant Theodore, as depicted in the quote “(…) improbability that either father would consent to bestow his heiress on so poor a man, though nobly born”(p. 89), Brontë depicts a brutal bully Hindley who torments Heathcliff and separates Catherine from him. Heathcliff, a gypsy outcast picked u...
The famous saying that from a true love to a great hatred is only a
On the face of it, it would seem that the relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff is self-destructive to an extreme. Due to the lovers’ precarious circumstances, passionate personalities and class divisions, it seems that fate transpires to keep them apart and therefore the hopelessness of their situation drives them to self destruction. However, although the relationship is undeniably self-destructive, there are elements within it that suggest the pain Heathcliff and Catherine put each other through is atoned for to an extent when they share their brief moments of harmony.
“Wuthering Heights is a strange, inartistic story”(Atlas, WH p. 299). “Wuthering Heights is a strange sort of book” (Douglas, WH p.301). “This is a strange book” (Examiner, WH p.302). “His work [Wuthering Heights] is strangely original” (Britannia, WH p.305). These brief quotes show that early critics of Emily Bronte’s first edition of Wuthering Heights, found the novel baffling in its meaning - they each agreed separately, that no moral existed within the story therefore it was deemed to have no real literary value. The original critical reviews had very little in the way of praise for the unknown author or the novel. The critics begrudgingly acknowledged elements of Wuthering Heights that could be considered strengths – such as, “rugged power” and “unconscious strength” (Atlas, WH p.299), “purposeless power” (Douglas, WH p.301), “evidences of considerable power” (Examiner), “power and originality” (Britannia, WH p.305). Strange and Powerful are two recurring critical interpretations of the novel. The critics did not attempt to provide in depth analysis of the work, simply because they felt that the meaning or moral of the story was either entirely absent or seriously confused.
Remoteness and Loneliness in Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte Emily Bronte loved nature and spent most of her childhood on the remote Yorkshire Moors near her home in Haworth. Emily found that the Moors were a place of peace and sanctuary where she could retreat to relax and follow one of her most favourite past times, which was writing. However she knew that in a matter of seconds the Moors could change into a wild and savage wilderness. Emily chose this ever-changing setting for her only novel "Wuthering Heights". "Wuthering Heights" tells the tale of two families living in and around the bleak Yorkshire Moors near a small village, very similar to Haworth, called Gimmerton.
Heathcliff and Catherine have loved each other since their childhood. Initially, Catherine scorned the little gypsy boy; she showed her distaste by “spitting” at him (Brontë 27). However, it was not long before Heathcliff and Catherine became “very think” (Brontë 27). They became very close friends; they were practically brother and sister (Mitchell 122). Heathcliff is intent upon pleasing Catherine. He would “do her bidding in anything” (Brontë 30). He is afraid of “grieving” her (Brontë 40). Heathcliff finds solace and comfort in Catherine’s company. When Catherine is compelled to stay at Thrushcross Grange to recover from her injury, she returns as “a very dignified person” (Brontë 37). Her association with the gente...
Emily Bronte, on the surface, appeared to be a very withdrawn woman and is said to be reclusive throughout her entire life. She was even incredibly embarrassed when her sister, Charlotte Bronte, found her book of poetry, even though Charlotte was incredibly impressed by it. Beneath the surface lies a woman full of passion and capable of powerful emotions, though she had never felt such emotions, to write a novel that is still discussed today and is regarded as a literary classic. Novels are often regarded as a window to the souls of the authors, and Wuthering Heights is no exception. Wuthering Heights is often seen as a type of construct of Emily’s life and personality, because of the similarity of characters to people in Emily’s life, and how the events that occur at Wuthering Heights are secluded in their own right, much like Emily’s own life.