The term “uncanny” has always been difficult to define. Many people have struggled which a precise definition for the world so it offend used to describe “whatever excites dread.” (Freud, 1919). To begin to uncover the meaning of the word it is useful to examine its etymology. Uncanny is a translation of the german “unheimliech” meaning unhomely. The term was first used in the phycological sense by Ernst Jentsch in his 1906 essay On the Psychology of the Uncanny. He defined it as the sense of uneases aroused by “psychical uncertainty” (Jentsch, 1906:7). meaning “uncanny would always be that in which one does not know where one is, as it were.” (1906:7?) However, this definition was still not viewed as definitive. Sigmund Freud in his 1919 essay The Uncanny disagreed with Jentsch’s definition …show more content…
Wuthering Heights initially appears very “familiar” to the reader, in fact, Miller argues “it is, in its extreme vividness of circumstantial detail, a masterwork of “realistic” fiction” (in Bronte 2003:362). This realism is particularly evident in the opening of the novel. The introduction takes great pains to establish the temporal setting of the novel “1801- I have just returned from a visit to my landlord“ (WH:1). The initial description of the Wuthering Heights focuses in on minutiae such as “grotesque carving lavished over the front”. This attention to detail establishes the authenticity of setting, making the novel appear firmly grounded in reality. Our introduction to the Heights is lead by the novel’s first narrator Lockwood, a tenant of Heathcliff 's. He lists a catalog the interior’s contents of “immense pewter dishes… silver jugs and tankards” (WH:3) His words “I detected… I observed” (WH: 3) suggests that this in factual recording of the surroundings, the Heights appears to be the “abode” of a “homely northern farmer” (WH: 2). The Heights is established as a heimlich
In order to discuss the literature of the uncanny we must first be able to define "uncanny", and trying to grasp a firm understanding of the term "uncanny" is problematic; since as accepted reference works such as the Oxford English Dictionary filter down into popular culture the meaning subtly alters, or becomes drawn towards only one aspect of what was originally a much broader definition. To illustrate this, the Oxford Complete Wordfinder, Reader's Digest (1999), defines: "uncanny adj. seemingly supernatural; mysterious * see EERIE" and my word-processor contributes:
Wuthering Heights went through its own transformation throughout the novel. Wuthering Heights is a good novel to show that everyone and everything has the ability to change. Almost every character’s appearance or personality is altered in some way.
Virginia Woolf and Emily Bronte possess striking similarities in their works. Both works have inanimate objects as pivotal points of the story line. For Bronte, Wuthering Heights itself plays a key role in the story. The feel of the house changes as the characters are introduced to it. Before Heathcliff, the Heights was a place of discipline but also love. The children got on well with each other and though Nelly was not a member of the family she too played and ate with them. When old Mr. Earnshaw traveled to Liverpool he asked the children what they wished for him to bring them as gifts and also promised Nelly a “pocketful of apples and pears” (WH 28). Heathcliff’s presence changed the Heights, “So, from the beginning, he had bred bad feeling in the house” (WH 30). The Heights became a place to dream of for Catherine (1) when she married Linton and moved to the Grange. For her it held the memories of Heathcliff and their love. For her daughter, Cathy, it became a dungeon; trapped in a loveless marriage in a cold stone home far away from the opulence and luxury of the home she was used to. Then, upon the death of Heathcliff, I can almost see, in my minds eye, the Heights itself relax into the warm earth around in it the knowledge that it too is once again safe from the vengeance, bitterness, and hate that has housed itself within its walls for over twenty years.
According to Freud, "the uncanny is that class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar. (Freud 220) In other words, the uncanny can be expressed by "the distinction between imagination and reality is effaced" (Freud 244) and "an actual repression of some content thought and a return of this repressed content" (Freud 220). Moreover, he posits the uncanny moment as one in which two ostensibly opposing figures, elements, or definitions appear to coalesce, or in which one is mistaken for the other, revealing the fundamental instability of their distinction. (Alison 32) Besides, it involves the infantile complexes which was formerly repressed but are later revived and gen...
Freud, Sigumund. "The Uncanny." Literary Theory: An Anthology. Ed. by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. New York: Blackwell, 1998.
In the novel Wuthering Heights, author Emily Brontë portrays the morally ambiguous character of Heathcliff through his neglected upbringing, cruel motives, and vengeful actions.
Wuthering Heights is a classic in which Emily Bronte presents two opposite settings using the country setting. Country settings are often used as a place of virtue and peace or of ignorance and one of primitivism as believed by many city dwellers. But, in the novel Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte has used Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights to depict isolation and separation. Wuthering Heights setting is wild, passionate, and strong and Thrushcross Grange and its inhabitants are calm, harshly strict, and refined and these two opposite forces struggle throughout the novel.
strong magnetism representing savagery and Thrushcross grange with its refinement and pleasant appearance representing civility. Wuthering heights has the characteristics of being very strong. prominent structure and is described by Mr Lockwood as being a misanthropists in heaven and beyond. It is a very desolate and lonely place up on a hill exposed to stormy weather with no real beauty and can be seen as an uncivilised place to live. Thrushcross Grange is a very classy, civilised estate and a lovely home.
Wuthering Heights is a novel which deviates from the standard of Victorian literature. The novels of the Victorian Era were often works of social criticism. They generally had a moral purpose and promoted ideals of love and brotherhood. Wuthering Heights is more of a Victorian Gothic novel; it contains passion, violence, and supernatural elements (Mitchell 119). The world of Wuthering Heights seems to be a world without morals.
The presentation of childhood is a theme that runs through two generations with the novel beginning to reveal the childhood of Catherine and Hindley Earnshaw, and with the arrival of the young Liverpudlian orphan, Heathcliff. In chapter four, Brontë presents Heathcliff’s bulling and abuse at the hands of Hindley as he grows increasingly jealous of Heathcliff for Mr. Earnshaw, his father, has favoured Heathcliff over his own son, “my arm, which is black to the shoulder” the pejorative modifier ‘black’ portrays dark and gothic associations but also shows the extent of the abuse that Heathcliff as a child suffered from his adopted brother. It is this abuse in childhood that shapes Heathcliff’s attitudes towards Hindley and his sadistic nature, as seen in chapter 17, “in rousing his rage a pitch above his malignity” there is hyperbole and melodrama as the cruelty that stemmed from his abuse in childhood has been passed onto Isabella in adulthood.
The setting is the backbone for a novel it sets the tone and gives the reader a mental image of the time and places the story takes place. The Wuthering Heights Estate in Emily Bronte’s novel “Wuthering Heights” is one of the most important settings in the story. Wuthering Heights sets mood for the scenes taken place in the house, and reflects the life of Heathcliff through its description, furniture, windows, gates, and the vegetation.
Dreams play a large role in the story of Wuthering Heights. During Lockwood's first visit to the Heights, he has a night full of dreams and nightmares. Each one related to what Heathcliff had just read on the windowsil...
Wuthering Heights. 1847. The. Ed. Richard J. Dunn, Ph.D. 4th ed.
In conclusion, Bronte uses the supernatural and ghosts in Wuthering Heights to emphasise the power of love between Cathy and Heathcliff and proving that love exists beyond the grave and that the quality of love is unending. Furthermore, ghosts are used to assist in the storytelling, to help in enhancing the setting and develop characterisation, particularly in the character of Heathcliff, Nelly and Lockwood. The use of the supernatural enables the reader to be intrigued by the confusing use of extraordinary beings.
Emily Bronte wrote Wuthering Heights in the latter part of the Romantic Period. The novel also contained elements that could be seen as Victorian. The novel is described as a narrative structure because it is told through another's point of view. The first character, Lockwood introduces the reader to his new landlord, Heathcliff by his entries in his diary.