Wuthering Heights

Love & Revenge
• Wuthering Heights is the name of the farmhouse on the North York Moors where the story unfolds. The book's core theme is the destructive effect that jealousy and vengefulness have, both on the jealous
Theme
• ●From the social point of view， Heathcliff is a rebel against the bourgeois matrimonial system---" a full human life in a capitalist society was impossible of attainment." • ●As a love story， this is one of the most moving： the passion between Heathcliff and Catherine proves the most intense， the most beahearted,tender, inartificial, immortal love to Heathcliff
• Catherine Earnshaw: First introduced to the reader after her death, through Lockwood's discovery of her diary and carvings. The description of her life is confined almost entirely to the first volume. She seems unsure whether she is—or wants to become—more like Heathcliff, or more like Edgar. It is as if she wants both, even perhaps cannot be fully herself without both, and yet society or human nature makes that impossible. Some critics have argued that her decision to marry Edgar Linton is allegorically a rejection of nature and a surrender to culture—a choice with fateful consequences for all the other characters. Literary critics have examined her character through many different lenses, including those of psychoanalytic theory and feminist theory.
or vengeful individuals and on their communities.
Opening (chapters 1 to 3)
• In 1801, Mr Lockwood, a wealthy man from the south of England, rents Thrushcross Grange in the north for peace and recuperation. He visits his landlord, Mr Heathcliff, who lives in a remote moorland farmhouse, "Wuthering Heights," where he finds an odd assemblage: Heathcliff seems to be a gentleman, but his manners are uncouth; the reserved mistress of the house is in her midteens; and a young man seems to be a family member yet dresses and speaks like a servant.
• Wuthering Heights is a novel by Emily Brontë, written between October 1845 and June 1846, and published in 1847 under the pseudonym （笔名） Ellis Bell. It was her first and only published novel: she died the following year, at age 30. The decision to publish came after the success of her sister Charlotte's novel, Jane Eyre. After Emily's death, Charlotte edited the manuscript of Wuthering Heights, and arranged for the edited version to be published as a posthumous second edition in 1850.
Critical response
• Early reviews of Wuthering Heights were mixed in their assessment. Whilst most critics at the time recognised the power and imagination of the novel, they were also baffled by the storyline and found the characters extremely forward and uninhibited for Victorian times. Published in 1847, at a time when the background of the author was deemed to have an important impact on the story itself, many critics were also intrigued by the authorship of the novels.Henry Chorley of the Athenæ um said that it was a "disagreeable story" and that the "Bells" (Brontës) "seem to affect painful and exceptional subjects".
No coward soul is mine…
我的灵魂无所畏惧
------Emily Brontë
Heathcliff：self-abased,selfish, jealous, sensitive, cruel, brutal, immortal love to Catherine
Characters
• Heathcliff: Found, presumably orphaned, on the streets of Liverpool and taken to Wuthering Heights by Mr Earnshaw and reluctantly cared for by the family. He and Catherine grew close. Their love is the central theme of the first volume. His revenge against the man she chose to marry and its consequences are the central theme of the second volume. Heathcliff has been considered as a Byronic hero, but critics have pointed out that he re-invents himself at various points, making his character hard to fit into any single "type." Because of his ambiguous position in society and his lack of status—underlined by the fact that "Heathcliff" serves as his given name; he has no surname—his character has been a favourite subject of Marxist criticism.
Wuthering Heights
Brontë Sisters
Emily Jane Brontë (/ˈbr ɒnti/ 30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848)was an English novelist and poet, best remembered for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. Emily was the third eldest of the four surviving Brontë siblings, between the youngest Anne and her brother Branwell. She wrote under the pen name Ellis Bell.