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Literary analysis of wuthering heights
Literary analysis of Jane Austen: Emma
Literary analysis of Jane Austen: Emma
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Setting and Tone First impressions mean everything! People base their opinion of people, books or anything on the first impression. The writer will often establish an interesting setting and tone at the opening line. Sometimes the setting is not introduced until the middle of the story. A literary analysis regarding setting and tone was completed on the following stories: “Emma”, “Wuthering Heights”, and “Jane Eyre”. The tone of a story is how the story will make the reader feel. The story teller needs to set the tone in the first sentence. (Kardos 341). The first sentence of “Emma” declared the tone. “Emma Woodhouse handsome, clever and rich with a comfortable home and happy disposition seemed to unite some of the best blessings “Emma” started in the middle or, in medias res, which means in the middle of things (Kardos 351). “Her father composed himself to sleep after dinner as usual and she had then only to think of what she had lost” (Austen 362). Emma and her father were left to dine alone and when dinner was over, her father went took a nap and she was left on her own to think. In the story “Wuthering Heights” the story started in the middle also. “A reader or viewer will be willing to remain confused only for so long before becoming frustrated” (Kardos 352) “Wuthering Heights” “began” on the third page of the story, near the end of the first chapter. “Joseph mumbled indistinctively in the depths of the cellar but gave no intimation of ascending so his master dived down to him leaving me visavas the rofiantly bitch and a pair of grim shaggy sheepdogs who shared with a her a jealous guardianship over all of my movement” (E. Bronte 370). The main character is sitting at the end of the hearthstone, alone with the dogs. The dogs attack him and he has to fight them off and then a “lusty dame” (C. Bronte 371) entered the room fighting off the dogs with a frying pan. “Jane Eyre” also starts in the middle. There are questions unanswered at the very beginning and by the end of the first chapter the reader is very compelled to continue reading. “A Breakfast room adjoined the drawing room, I slipped in there” (C. Bronte 373) Jane hides in a breakfast room behind the curtain, hoping she will not be bothered while she reads. The master’s son, a fat boy of fourteen years old, finds her and makes her give him the book. In return he hurls it at her and hits her head. Jane yells at him and the master’s wife comes and has her locked away in the red
Over a long period of time, an individual’s social status has always had a great impact on relationships between others. Relationships such as friendship, romance and even family relationships are greatly influenced by one’s social status. When people value social status to the utmost importance, it often acts as a barrier to further solidify relations with others. “Wuthering Heights” is a classic novel written by Emily Bronte which illustrates how social status gets in the way of relationships. This story (set in eighteen hundreds) displays the true nature of the people at that time because they excessive had pride. Since they had excessive pride, they often judged people based on their social class; hence changing their relationship between each other. In this novel social class was measured by observing an individual’s wealth, appearance and manners. Heathcliff happens to be the male lead character of this story that lacks social class due to his rebellious relationship with Hindley. Afterwards, Hindley degrades Heathcliff’s status this affects his connections with Catherine and Nelly. Since Heathcliff’s status diminishes, Catherine becomes reluctant to continue her affair with Heathcliff. Nelly also becomes wary of Heathcliff because his personality changes after restoring his own status. Thus, it is clearly seen that social class has an impact on the story by altering Heathcliff’s relationship between Hindley, Catherine and Nelly.
In Wuthering Heights, a novel by Emily Bronte, it talks about the outward conformity of deterioration of the body and the inward question of death to the human soul. Wuthering Heights deals with suffering brought upon the characters actions and deaths caused by a form of consumption. Death is a reoccurring topic through the novel, so it’s better understood when the symbolism of romance, social classes, and ghosts of the past are looked more in depth to explain this issue more clearly.
In conclusion, the changes in the actions and attitudes of the governess cause the tone to shift throughout the novel. The tone begins with being cheerful, changing to hostile and ending with sorrow. This concludes, that the literary device tone, effectively portrays the mood of the story through the governess to the reader. Tone is perhaps the best literary device’s author’s use, to connect the mood of the story to one’s heart. That in turn makes a reader feel closer to the characters in a story.
Analyse the methods Charlotte Brontë uses to make the reader empathise with Jane Eyre in the opening chapters. Reflect on how the novel portrays Victorian ideology and relate your analysis to the novel’s literary content.
Second, what is the mood of this story trying to portray with the setting. The setting c...
An Essay: On Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, and William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing
The three events that mark Jane as an evolving dynamic character are when she is locked in the red room, self reflecting on her time at Gateshead, her friendship with Helen Burns at LoWood, her relationship with Mr. Rochester, and her last moments with a sick Mrs. Reed. Brought up as an orphan by her widowed aunt, Mrs. Reed, Jane is accustomed to her aunts vindictive comments and selfish tendencies. Left out of family gatherings, shoved and hit by her cousin, John Reed, and teased by her other cousins, Georgina and Eliza Reed, the reader almost cringes at the unfairness of it all. But even at the young age of ten, Jane knows the consequences of her actions if she were to speak out against any of them. At one point she wonders why she endures in silence for the pleasure of others. Why she is oppressed. "Always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, forever condemned" (Bronte, 12). Jane’s life at Gateshead is not far from miserable. Not only is she bullied by her cousins and nagged by her aunt, but help from even Bessie, her nurse and sort of friend, seems out of her reach. In the red room scene Jane is drug by Ms. Ab...
The novel, Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte, has a plot that is filled with an extraordinary amount of problems. Or so it seems as you are reading it. However, it comes to your attention after you have finished it, that there is a common thread running throughout the book. There are many little difficulties that the main character, the indomitable Jane Eyre, must deal with, but once you reach the end of the book you begin to realize that all of Jane's problems are based around one thing. Jane searches throughout the book for love and acceptance, and is forced to endure many hardships before finding them. First, she must cope with the betrayal of the people who are supposed to be her family - her aunt, Mrs. Reed, and her children, Eliza, Georgiana, and John. Then there is the issue of Jane's time at Lowood School, and how Jane goes out on her own after her best friend leaves. She takes a position at Thornfield Hall as a tutor, and makes some new friendships and even a romance. Yet her newfound happiness is taken away from her and she once again must start over. Then finally, after enduring so much, during the course of the book, Jane finally finds a true family and love, in rather unexpected places.
Defining the novel is a challenging prospect because the act of naming means to circumscribe a genre that defies rigid codes. The novel's elasticity and readiness to incorporate other genres makes it slippery and untidy; nevertheless, the novelness of a text allows us to recognize a novel and distinguish it from other genres. As readers, we approach the novel with the expectation that it will possess novelistic attributes and judge the novel on its ability to master these. With this focus in mind, this essay explores how the following features in Jane Austen's Persuasion contribute to (or persuade us as to) the novelness of the text: the extensive treatment of its characters, a sense of cohesion and continuity present in a work of long prose fiction, and a vivid portrayal of the social order on the micro-level of the domestic scenes of everyday.
Narrative perspective and voice is a major aspect of a novella as Jeremy Hawthorn suggests in Studying the Novel, “[s]ource and medium affect the selection, the authority and the attitude towards what is recounted of the narrative” The narrative perspective can be used to shape or in some cases mis-shape the story. Looking at both Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and George Eliot’s Middlemarch, the narrators of these novellas hold a quality of influence over the reader. Through comparing and contrasting how the two different authors have used the narrative perspective to develop their novels, through voice, linguistic register, free indirect discourse and narrative distance in respect to the intimacy of the information shared with the reader.
Setting - Identify the physical (when/where) settings of the book. How do these settings affect the moods or emotions of the characters?
Emily Bronte was born on July 30, 1818 at Thronton, Bradford Yokshire. She was the 5th child of 6 children. When Emily was just three years old, her mother dies and her Aunt come to live with the family to take care of the children. Not much is know about Emily, except she was a very secluded and shy girl. Some information is collected about her from the few exisitng diary entries and letters, as well as her poems. Most of the information that is known about Emily is from her sister Charlotte’s biography as well as letters written to and from Charlotte to her friend.
Often in literature, the fictional written word mimics or mirrors the non-fictional actions of the time. These reflections may be social, historical, biographical, or a combination of these. Through setting, characters, and story line, an author can recreate in linear form on paper some of the abstract concepts and ideas from the world s/he is living in. In the case of Emily Bronte, her novel Wuthering Heights very closely mirrors her own life and the lives of her family members. Bronte's own life emerges on the pages of this novel through the setting, characters, and story line of Wuthering Heights.
The biographies about Jane Austen describe the facts of her life in a step-by-step manner. They tend to be repetitive since she did not leave behind a rich fabric of day-to-day life. Yet Jane Austen is known not because of the factual details of her life; she is not remembered two hundred years after her death because she had six siblings and was a wonderful aunt to her nieces and nephews. Rather, Jane Austen is remembered because of what she wrote, her "ouvre." Only through reading her literature does one get a taste of the real Jane Austen, the Jane Austen who dreamed and made plans for the future that failed to materialize. Therefore, I have attempted to describe the life of Jane Austen by interpreting her novels and picking three main characters who I feel most closely serve as her alter ego. A writer writes from his or her own experiences; only by analyzing Jane Austen's characters do we get an understanding of the true author.
Narratology divides a ‘narrative into story and narration’. (Cohan et al., 1988, p. 53) The three main figures that contribute a considerable amount of research to this theory are Gerard Genette, Aristotle and Vladimir Propp. This essay will focus on how Emily Bronte’s novel Wuthering Heights can be fully appreciated and understood when the theory is applied to the text. Firstly, I will focus on the components of narration Genette identifies that enhance a reader’s experience of the text. Secondly, I will discuss the three key elements in a plot that Aristotle recognises and apply these to Heathcliff’s character. In the final section I will apply part of the seven ‘spheres of action’, Propp categorises, to Heathcliff’s character. However, not all of Narratology can be applied to a text. This raises the question; does this hinder a readers understanding and/or appreciation of the text? This paper will also address this issue.