MOCKS WH and MD full essay plans

desire structure + key context

1. desire in the context of love
2. desire to manipulate position or perception
3. desire to transcend

\
key context

• moment of being

in detail of points

1) how C+H’s love is all consuming but C+S and L+S is momentary; how water imagery shows this

2) how narration by Lockwood/Nelly and by Woolf herself aim to alter perception; how characters such as Heathcliff and Kilman try to alter their positions in the novels

3) how death brings transcendence; how preservation of the self as immortal brings transcendence

para 1 - desire in the context of love + quotes/context

all consuming love

• ‘I am Heathcliff’

• ‘whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same’

• ‘for every thought she spends on Linton, she spends a thousand on me’

  </p>

momentary love

• ‘like a match burning in a crocus’
• ‘had not that, after all, been love?’ - uncertainty
• ‘he had a beautiful fresh colour […] of a young hawk’

\
context

• moment of being, for characters in MD they experience miniature moments of being away from overwhelming London, but in WH they are in an eternal moment of being

\
water imagery

• ‘the sea could as readily be contained in that horse trough as her whole affection could be monopolised by him’ - permanent sea
• ‘the kiss of a wave’
• ‘waves which threaten to break’ - modulating, temporary

para 2 - desire to manipulate position and perception + quotes/context

narration

• ‘she probably cannot appreciate a better class of people, when she meets them’
• ‘Miss Cathy is of us - I mean, of the Lintons’ boosts her social position
• ‘the repulsive brute, with the blood red nostrils’
• ‘Dr Homes had told her to make him notice real things, go to a music hall, play cricket’ - mocking

\
context

• woolf’s own struggle with mental illness allowed her to form a sharp criticism of the way mental illness is treated which comes through here

\
characters

• ‘retained no marks of former degradation’
• ‘overmastering desire to overcome her’
• ‘the odious Kilman would destroy it’
• ‘we’ll see if one tree won’t grow as crooked as another’
• ‘if she could clasp her, if she could make her hers forever’

\
context

• the wills act 1837 means that property comes under the control of the mortgager, allows Heathcliff to seize Wuthering Heights

para 3 - desire to transcend physical bounds + quotes/context

death

• ‘where would it descend?’
• ‘the world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames’
• ‘vigorously, violently’
• ‘like a child reviving and sinking again to sleep’ (‘I wish I were a girl again’)

\
context

• ‘like a child reviving’ forms a cyclical pattern of life to death we also she reflected in Heathcliff’s rise and fall, this is reflected in Woolf’s use of the circadian novel (she writes in a whole day defined by hours to create an equally cyclical effect)

\
preservation

• ‘bleak hilly coal country’
• ‘tore the pillow with her teeth’
• ‘the larks were silent’
• ‘the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive’
• ‘as he had often seen her, in a doorway’
• ‘being laid out, like a mist, between the people she knew best’
• ‘soft wind breathing through the grass’ ‘moths fluttering among the heath’
• ‘wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth’
• ‘for there she was’

\
context

• modernist vs gothic - explained supernatural (Ann Radcliffe ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’) vs the narrative that does not attempt to discover the truth but simply makes sense of events

alienation structure + key context

1. alienation from one’s identity
2. alienation due to non-conformity
3. alienation from the physical world

\
context

• modernist vs gothic treatment of transcendence

in detail of points

1. how marriage alienates C and C (also I); how a lack of value or property leads to alienation from character for H and P
2. how placeless people are alienated; how passion and emotional alienates people
3. how death and transcendence are forms of alienation from the physical world

para 1 - alienation from identity + quotes/context

marriage

• ‘not even Clarissa anymore; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway’
• ‘like a nun withdrawing’
• ‘like iron, like flint, rigid up the backbone’
• ‘an exile, an outcast’
• ‘I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free’
• ‘there’s nothing in the world so bad for some women as marriage’

\
context

• Isabella cannot leave her marriage with Heathcliff as the Matrimonial Causes Act came into force in 1857, Clarissa can't leave hers because it offers security in modernising London

\
value

• ‘little Lascar, or American or Spanish castaway’
• ‘they entirely refused to have it in bed with them’
• ‘from the very beginning he bred bad feeling into the house’
• ‘moments of pride in England’
• ‘men of business’

\
context

• the British Empire is sinking, Queen Victoria died in 1901 and Darwin publishes ‘The Origin of Species’ to question God

para 2 - alienation due to non-conformity + quotes/context

placeless people

• ‘the voice of an ancient spring sprouting from the earth’
• ‘she probably cannot appreciate a better class of people when she meets them’

\
context

• social commentary on homelessness, in the 1920s there was a culture of dehumanising the homeless vagrants, this was a social convention at the time and we see Clarissa conforming

\
passion

• ‘impudent, loose-lipped, humorous’
• ‘still there was time for a spark between them’
• ‘I am Heathcliff’
• ‘moths fluttering among the heath’
• ‘soft wind breathing through the grass’
• ‘vigorously, violently’

para 3 - alienation from the physical world + quotes/context

death

• ‘where would it descend?’
• ‘the world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames’
• ‘vigorously, violently’
• ‘like a child reviving and sinking again to sleep’ (‘I wish I were a girl again’)

\
preservation

• ‘bleak hilly coal country’
• ‘tore the pillow with her teeth’
• ‘the larks were silent’
• ‘the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive’
• ‘as he had often seen her, in a doorway’
• ‘being laid out, like a mist, between the people she knew best’
• ‘soft wind breathing through the grass’ ‘moths fluttering among the heath’
• ‘wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth’
• ‘for there she was’

\
context

• modernist vs gothic - explained supernatural (Ann Radcliffe ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’) vs the narrative that does not attempt to discover the truth but simply makes sense of events

social status structure + key context

1. loss of traditional social order and social status groups
2. the power of those with a reduced social status
3. the insignificance of social status

\
context

• decline of the yeomanry and aristocracy

in detail of points

1. the decline of the aristocracy and the yeomanry; the oncoming tide of change seen in H and modernity/the youth in E
2. placeless people; joseph and miss kilman
3. people with a higher social status are not better off

para 1 - the loss of traditional social order + quotes/context

aristocracy/yeomanry

• ‘for the young people could not talk’
• ‘emigration had become, in short, Lady Bruton’
• ‘now’t’ ‘gut fur now’t’

\
context

• the yeomanry is in decline as the new capitalist class beings to replace the traditional farming structures in the late C18th

\
oncoming change

• 'bleak, hilly, coal country’
• ‘if you are called upon in a court of law’
• ‘I, being your legal protector’
• ‘something of a cloud’s sudden sobriety’
• ‘the beautiful body […] like the figure-head of a ship’

\
context

• the wills act 1837, before this the property came under control of the mortgager allowing H to claim Wuthering Heights and disrupt Earnshaw property lines

para 2 - the power of those with a reduced social status + quotes/context

placeless people

• ‘the voice of an ancient spring sprouting from the earth’
• ‘impudent, loose-lipped, humourous’
• ‘your wife, I mean’ ‘Mrs Heathcliff is my daughter in law’
• ‘she probably cannot recognise a better class of people, when she meets them’

\
context

• cult of sensibility - a mid 18th century movement that encouraged exploration of romance and feeling, Lockwood clings to novels such as Henry Mackenzie’s ‘Man of Feeling’ which leads him to form a romantic view of Wuthering Heights setting him further apart as he fails to appreciate the complex tumult of Wuthering Heights

\
Joseph/Kilman

• ‘the odious Kilman would destroy it’
• ‘if she could clasp her, if she could make her hers forever’
• ‘overcasting desire to overcome her’
• ‘gut fur now’t’

\
context

• Calvanism - a branch of protestantism that broke from the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th century, it entails living an austere life dedicated to work in order to reach predestined Heaven; Joseph finds power in this and is able to influence main characters

para 3 - insignificance of social status + quotes/context

people of higher status not better off

• ‘like a nun withdrawing’
• ‘like iron, like flint, rigid up the backbone’
• ‘like a match burning in a crocus’
• ‘the sea could as readily be contained in that horse trough as her whole affected be monopolised by home’
• ‘whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same’
• ‘she is dead’
• ‘the kiss of a wave’ - temporary

\
context

• moment of being, Clarissa cannot access it due to being confined by her status in modernising London

suffering structure + key context

1. how loss brings suffering
2. how women suffer in both novels
3. what provides an escape from suffering

\
context

• matrimonial causes act
• different treatment of transcendence from gothic and modernist

in detail of points

1. loss of value brings suffering; and this is also layered on loss of love which stems from it
2. how marriage causes suffering; how repression of youth causes suffering as fertility and vitality is lost
3. how death is an escape; how transcendence provides an escape

para 1 - how loss brings suffering

loss of value

• ‘a little Lascar, or American or Spanish castaway’
• ‘they entirely refused to have it in bed with them’
• ‘from the very beginning he bred bad feeling into the house’
• ‘moments of pride in England’
• ‘as dear to him as a personal possession’
• ‘men of business’
• ‘he had heard Catherine say it would degrade her to marry him, and then he staid to hear no farther’
• ‘closing his knife with a snap’

\
context

• the decline of the British Empire, in this time the British Empire is falling, Queen Victoria died in 1901 and even religion is beginning to be questioned due to Darwin’s publication of ‘The Origin of Species’

\
loss of love

• ‘so she left him’
• ‘never, never had he suffered so internally’
• ‘I have not broken your heart - you have broken it - and in breaking it, you have broken mine’
• ‘why make him suffer, when she had tortured him so infernally?’
• ‘why did you betray your own heart Cathy?’
• ‘why did you despise me?’
• ‘I am alone! I am alone!’
• ‘she had grown so thin’

para 2 - how women suffer + quotes/context

marriage

• ‘not even Clarissa anymore; this being Mrs Richard Dalloway’
• ‘like a nun withdrawing’
• ‘like iron, like flint, rigid up the backbone’
• ‘an exile, an outcast’
• ‘I wish I were a girl again’
• ‘I am alone, I am alone!’
• ‘his wife would never, never tell that he was mad’

\
context

• Matrimonial Causes Act 1857, the women are stuck in their marriage in Wuthering Heights due to this act being yet to arrive, in Mrs Dalloway Clarissa is stuck in her marriage due to the security it provides her with

\
loss of youth

• ‘cool as a vault’
• ‘like a nun withdrawing’
• ‘as soft and pure in its bloom as a wild rose’ vs ‘pity for the loss of roses’
• ‘a happy creature, an angel’ vs. ‘like a nun’
• ‘lolloping on the waves’

para 3 - escape from suffering + quotes/context

death

• ‘where would it descend?’
• ‘the world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames’
• ‘vigorously, violently’
• ‘like a child reviving and sinking again to sleep’ (‘I wish I were a girl again’)

\
transcendence

• ‘bleak hilly coal country’
• ‘tore the pillow with her teeth’
• ‘the larks were silent’
• ‘the unseen part of us, which spreads wide, the unseen might survive’
• ‘as he had often seen her, in a doorway’
• ‘being laid out, like a mist, between the people she knew best’
• ‘soft wind breathing through the grass’ ‘moths fluttering among the heath’
• ‘wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth’
• ‘for there she was’

\
context

• modernist vs gothic - explained supernatural (Ann Radcliffe ‘The Mysteries of Udolpho’) vs the narrative that does not attempt to discover the truth but simply makes sense of events