Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice (Catherine Nevin and Samuel Sproule)

How Wuthering Heights challenges the constructs of the time.

Questions:

1. Why do you think books such as Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice have become standard readings while Wuthering Heights has not?
2. What is the significance of Heathcliff being of Gypsy descent?
3. How does the family construct of Pride and Prejudice mirror what the British were doing at the time?
4. How is Emily Brontë’s style different from Jane Austen’s?
5. Is Pride and Prejudice realistic or more of an ideal? And is Wuthering Heights reflective of real people?
6. How does Emily Brontë’s style resemble her sister’s?
7. Why do you think Wuthering Heights was so hated when it first came out?

What does this have to do with Imperialism?

Wuthering Heights:

1. Challenges the structure of a normal family at this time.
1. Catherine and Heathcliff are allowed to roam free over the moors whenever they want, and are not confined to the Heights
2. One of the main characters is not white.
1. Heathcliff is of gypsy descent.
2. Often described as wild.
3. The characters often push back against the society that constricts them

The book challenges many social constructs, and shows a darker side of living at this time, especially when one is not born with money and status, and has to work their own way up from nothing. Heathcliff pushes back against the constructs of society, and wants to marry Catherine. But, Catherine is unwilling to give up her reputation to marry him. It’s doesn’t matter that she says he, “Knows me better than I know myself.” She won’t give up the opportunity of money and status for Heathcliff. Or so he thinks.

Pride and Prejudice:

1. The first line
1. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”
2. The family structure:
1. Mr. Bennet spent his time trying to find husbands for all his daughters.
3. Everyone accepts the way things are.
1. Even Lizzie, who was so against marriage, eventually give in.

This book serves as more of an ideal than what really seems to happen in real life. A common theme with Jane Austen is a woman with little money and status managing to snag a man with both. Jane Austen also loves to create characters who seem a little too good to be true. People we can aspire to be, but not fully become. Elizabeth Bennet is a modern woman for this time period, often going against the wishes of her parents to please herself (when she will not marry Mr. Collins  etc.) but, by the end she has given in and does get married.