Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte essays

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte essays Wuthering Heights opens as a diary; according to Steinitz (2000), this serves as a means to establish a frame through which the story can be told. Steinitz also suggests that Bronte uses a personal diary to "articulate her preoccupation with space by locating all of her family members precisely" (Steinitz, 2000:1). She notes the exact positioning for example of her sister Anne's foot on the floor; likewise her character Catherine uses a diary not to place people, but rather as a means to detail a "series of struggles which replace emplacement with displacement" (Steinitz, 2000:1). The work goes on to discuss the displacement of a series of characters including the narrator, who rambles from time to time and seems to suffer from an "anxiety of place;" Lockwood, the narrator obviously uses the diary as a method of discourse, but also as a means perhaps to search for a space to put himself (Steinitz, 2000:1). These ideas are perhaps reflective of Ms. Bronte's own desire to find a place for herself. According to Gaskell (1857) Bronte's earliest years were passed amidst "peculiar forms of population and society" (p.9) whose impressions made upon her early life influenced her writing, including that in Wuthering Heights. Gaskell goes on to say that Bronte's observations of the "peculiar force of character which the Yorkshirement display" are evidenced in many of her characters, particularly Joseph in Wuthering Heights. Joseph is an individual that rarely requires the assistance of other; yet comes to depend upon them; he might be considered a member of the "short- sighted class" whose feelings are not easily roused, but "their duration is The characters in Bronte's Wuthering heights, primarily Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, have been described as "psychologically strange" yet intelligible (Levy, 1996:1). Joyce Carol Oates commented that ...