Wuthering Heights Context

Historical Context

• Coverture and Primogeniture

• Cruelty and the moral movement against cruelty

• Class

• Religion - Methodism, Calvinism, Evangelicalism

• Patriarchy

Literary Context

• Romanticism and the Gothic

• Byron

• 19th Century Novels

• Cross-overs between other Bronte novels

• Emily Bronte’s Poetry

Biographical

• The Bells

• Gondal and their shared writing

• The Brontes

Coverture

• Legal doctrine where, upon marriage, a woman’s legal rights and obligations were subsumed by those of her husband

• Husband and wife are one person

• Married Women’s Property Acts

The Matrimonial Causes Act 1857

• Established a model of marriage based on contract rather than sacrament

• Widening the availability of a divorce

• The Bronte’s novels were published shortly before the establishment of the Matrimonial Causes Act, helping prepare the way for subsequent laws like this, and revealing stories of unjustly trapped women in oppressive legal unions

Primogeniture

• Only the eldest male child inherited

• The inheritance laws worked in favour of men and against women’s interests in the 18th century

• Heathcliff is so keen for Cathy and Linton to marry for once they are married and Cathy is his daughter-in-law, her property automatically becomes his

Class

• Unemployment as a result of mechanisation was rife, poor pay and working conditions

• Growing unrest in Britain

• The Peterloo Massacre (1819) - revolution of the working class leading to reforms in government

Heathcliff as representation of capitalism

• Stripping the Lintons of their inheritef property rights

• Cruelty in pursuit, vampiric impact

• Capitalism destroys rural communities

• Heathcliff acquires wealth without the need for inheritance or education

Religion

• Calvinism: God pre-ordains who is to be offered salvation before birth

• Methodism: Salvation as possible for all

• Higher clergy were often absent as well as being opponents to political reform, creating some resentment towards the Church

• Calvinism is mocked in Wuthering Heights (Josephy, Lockwood’s Branderham dream)

• Joseph’s opposition to Cathy and Heathcliff’s self-determinism

Religion in Wuthering Heights

• Joseph

• Cathy and Heathcliff pursue their own version of spirituality and morality, negating the salvation of heaven and thus confronting society’s ideas on punishing damnation

• Emily doesn’t try to make suffering part of a religious/redemptive narrative, instead allowing good in the novel to prevail only after huge suffering

Patriarchy

• Victorian women writers had been largely prevented from writing social or political criticism

• The rural setting of Wuthering Heights = women isolated from culture and modern industry

• Many women published under pseudonyms to prevent unfair criticism based on gender

Literary Context

• Romanticism and the Gothic

• Byron

• 19th Century Novels

• Cross-over with other Bronte novels

• Emily’s poetry

Romanticism

• In reaction to the Enlightenment, the emphasis of feeling and nature arose

• Wordsworth and Blake immersed themselves and their work to understand nature, and highlight the corrupting and draining energy of the industry

• The focus on the importance of childhood experience in determining adult life was particularly WOrdsworthian

• Relying on self knowledge

The Gothic

• Psychological Realism

• Gothic features - kidnapped heroines, haunted houses, ghosts and visitations - combined with psychological realism elements

Byron

• Byronic Hero

• Fatal charm to women, ruthlessness and drive for power

19th Century

• Optimistic belief in moral self-improvement

• Why was Wuthering Heights set in the past?

• Does Bronte offer a positive ending?

Emily’s Poetry

• Gondal

• ‘No Coward Soul is Mine’ - affirmation of God’s presence in all aspects of his created universe

• Pantheism

Biographical Context

• Publishing non-gendered pseudonyms

Branwell Bronte

• Alcohol and opium

• Branwell as a Byronic outcast figure

Patrick Bronte

• Death was graphically present in the young Brontes’ lives

• Keeping his distance from his children, speaking very little and eating alone