Literary Criticism of Emily Brontes Wuthering Heights :: Wuthering Heights Essays

Literary Criticism of Wuthering Heights   Wuthering Heights is not safe a love story, it is a window into the human soul, where one sees the privation, suffering, self discovery, and triumph of the characters in this novel. Both the Image of the Book by Robert McKibben, and Control of discernment in Wuthering Heights by John Hagan, strive to prove that neither Catherine nor Heathcliff are to blame for their wrong doings. Catherine and Heathcliffs ardent nature, intolerable frustration, and overwhelming loss have ruined them, and thus stripped them of their humanities. McKibben and Hagan take different approaches to Wuthering Heights, but both approaches work together to form one unified concept. McKibben speaks of Wuthering Heights as a whole, while Hagan concentrates on only sympathies role in the novel. McKibben and Hagan both touch on the topic of Catherine and Heathcliffs passionate nature. To this, McKibben recalls the scene in the bear when Catherine is in the th roes of her self-induced illness (p38). When asking for her husband, she is told by Nelly Dean that Edgar is among his books, and she cries, What in the name of all that encounters has he to do with books when I am dying. McKibben shows that while Catherine is making a scene and crying, Edgar is in the library handling Catherines death in the only way he knows how, in a mild mannered approach. He lacks the passionate ways in which Catherine and Heathcliff handle ordeals. During this scene Catherines mind strays back to childhood and she comes to realize that the Lintons are alien to her and exemplify a completely foreign mode of perception (p38). Catherine discovers that she would never belong in Edgars society. On her journey of self-discovery, she realized that she attempted the impossible, which was to live in a world in which she did not belong. This, in the end, lead to her death. Unlike her mother, when Cathy enters The Heights, those images of unreal security found in her bo oks and Thrushhold Grange are confiscated, thus leading her to scream, I feel like death With the help of Hareton, Cathy learns not to place her love within a self created environment, but in a real life where she go away be truly happy. The characters then reappear as reconciled, and stability and peace once more return to The Heights. Hagan, when commenting on Catherines passionate nature, recalls the same scene when Catherine is near death.