Wuthering Heights - Social Stereotypes

A detailed Summary of Wuthering Heights - Social Stereotypes

What conclusions do you draw about Brontė's

Brontė's novel seems to contain all the typical, traditional Victorian social values and divisions such as the master of the house with servants below him and so on. Social distinctions were very much more marked and rigidly respected. We first glimpse what Brontė might think of social stereotypes and divisions, right at the start of the book through Lockwood, and later through other narrators such as Nelly Dean.

Lockwood is seen as the epitome of Victorian social values and ideals, he is a normal Victorian gentleman an agreeable but shallow character. He is perhaps a sketchy attempt to portray a sophisticated townie. He is a well meaning but rather confused and superficial person, who is naive but also shows signs of maturity and intelligence inspite of moments of conceit. Lockwood is an honest narrator with no hidden agenda, his ordinariness, like Nelly contributes to the credibility of the events he is caught up in and hears of. Lockwood is used by Brontė to show what Victorians would think of what they saw or heard, using their social values. Right from the beginning of the book Lockwood tries to place Wuthering Heights into his own conceptions

Heathcliff is a character would the reader could either sympathise with, or who can be seen as evil. In Heathcliff there is almost a Satanic hero, an idea which may have come to Brontė from Byron, in such verse tales as Lara and The Giaour. The Satan figure develops other characteristics: He is defiant, anti social, and his origins are hidden and he is associated with fatal love. These traits are applicable to Heathcliff as a tragic hero, "the fallen angel". It could be said that Heathcliff is the non-human element of man, natural but detached and impersonal. Brontė could also have made Heathcliff a political statement in that he is a poor child transformed to a wealthy landlord, or a symbol of the working class degraded by an uncaring Victorian society. In my view Brontė views Heathcliff as worthwhile. As the (depressingly boring) poet William Wordsworth wrote; "The child is the father of the man" , and I think this paradox applies to Heathcliff in that his boyhood experiences, i.e. neglect and ill treatment determine his character when mature, and this is why I think Brontė thinks him worthwhile and why the reader has a degree of sympathy for him. Lockwood views Heathcliff as having "A genuine bad nature" and by Nelly (when a landowner) as "rough as a saw-edge and hard as whinstone". The way Heathcliff acts is such that it seems that he has no regard for social conventions, as with Catherine when a child until her stay at Thrushcross Grange where she picks up the Lintons social values and is "Socially seduced." As an adult she regards Heathcliff as inferior to her, something beneath her social status.

Lockwood views Wuthering Heights as a fairly unfriendly place, and his narrative of the place and the people in it suggests strangeness, conflict an

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1189
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English