Wuthering heights-gothic?

Question

i'll be taking my A levels in english literature this year. my lit teacher insists that wuthering heights is not a true-blue gothic novel when compared to dracula ect. he said that although there are references to ghosts and devils and the like, the characters are essentially human. my teacher said that it does contain a gothic touch but that's that. true but other schools teach their students that it is gothic.

what are your opinions?

Answer 1

Certainly, Wuthering Heights uses elements of the traditional Gothic fiction of the 19th century, but I think your teacher is right: it is not a "true-blue Gothic novel." It goes well beyond that. If you are asked to discuss the Gothic elements in Wuthering Heights, I think a better approach is to develop how the novel builds upon its predecessors but adapts and modifies setting, character, and effect.

(1) The traditional Gothic novel focused on effects of an eerie setting (old castles, haunted houses, Gothic architecture--hence, the name). Wuthering Heights certainly depends upon setting for effect, particularly the Yorkshire Moors, but the focus is on the inner psychology of the characters and their relationships with one another, especially the enduring love/jealousy relationship of Heathcliff and Catherine. The manor houses in WH come to represent the elitist social order from which Heathcliff is rejected.

(2) Gothic fiction made use of stock characters (the villain, the madwoman, the "ghost" or supernatural) and emphasized melodramatic events. Wuthering Heights emphasizes character and develops the motivation of each of the main characters. Catherine is certainly no stereotypical "madwoman." Heathcliff is clearly a Byronic anti-hero (a strong, attractive male with an inner darkness, secrets, and what would now be called bipolar moodiness), but he is not the typical "demonized" Gothic villain. He is far more interesting, more realistic, and more complex. In fact, characterization in WH is closer to modern Freudian/Jungian psychology than conventional Gothic creatures.

The more interesting question about stock characters in WH is wether the legacy of oppression and social maltreatment can turn warm, open, imaginative youngsters into flat, stock characters. Catherine and Heathcliff suffer, but their individuality is not destroyed. But what about Cathy II and Hareton? Does a second generation of suffering and oppression flatten and narrow character? Will passion and the need for personal freedom survive? Will it erupt in some even more horrible, forbidden form? Does oppression engender oppression from one generation to the next?

(3) Gothic fiction depended upon supernatural horrors, which might or might not eventually be explained. The purpose was to involve the reader in a dark, thrilling sense of terror. The terror in Wuthering Heights is presented as it affects the minds of Lockwood and Nelly Dean, but again the emphasis is upon the passion of Heathcliff for Catherine, even after her death, and his obsession for revenge because of the way he has been treated as an "outsider" in the Grange.

The theme of WH is more subtle than traditional Gothicism. Dorothy Van Ghent, for example, sees the conflict in WH in philosophical terms: "The novel presents the collision between two types of reality, restrictive [oppressive] civilization and anonymous unrestrained natural energies or forces. This collision takes the form of inside/domestic versus outside/nature, human versus the 'other,' the light versus the dark within the soul. The novel repeatedly shows efforts to break through or cross the boundary of separation of the various dualities, like Lockwood's breaking the window in his dream or the figure of two children who struggle for union (Catherine and Heathcliff, Cathy and Linton, Cathy and Hareton)."

WH goes beyond the traditional Gothic not only in its psychological depth but because it explores the subtleties of horrific effects in the mind of Lockwood. Furthermore, Nelly Dean, the story-teller, is an interesting case in and of herself. What has been her relationship to Cathy and Heathcliff? How does she manipulate the telling of the story to develop her own point of view? Can her version be trusted? What is her power over Lockwood, her hearer?

The complexity, subtlety, and psychological realism of WH lift it well above conventional Gothic novels of the time, especially, and even of modern counterparts.

Answer 2

Wuthering Heights Gothic

Answer 3

I think you teacher is confused. Gothic novels are not only novels about ghosts and Dracula. Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen, is a take off of the Gothic novels which were very popular in her time (admittedly before the Brontes, but that shows how long they have been around). There tend to be mad women in the attic, love which cannot say its name, and general misery.

Answer 4

I think it's a definitive gothic. Maybe your teacher has confused goth and gothic. Look at the professional reviews on Amazon to see how people in the book industry categorize the books.

Answer 5

It's prettyyy cooool