英美文学导论期末论文.docVIP

Comment on Wuthering Heights 刘亚男 （皖西学院外国语学院，专升本1001班 2010010017） Abstract: Wuthering Heights was written by Emily Bronte in Victorian period, published in 1847, not well received by the reading public, many of whom condemned it as sordid, vulgar, and unnatural--and author went to her grave in 1848 believing that her only novel was a failure. Even so, Wuthering Heights continues to divide readers. The Bronte Sisters also show us a type of novels. Key words: Love and Passion, Revenge, Violence and Cruelty, Class Conflict Nature, Supernatural The story is cruel, violent, dark and brooding, and many people find it extremely unpleasant. And yet--it possesses grandeur of language and design, a sense of tremendous pity and great loss that sets it apart from virtually every other novel written. By reading his novel and seeing the film, I would like to show the themes of this novel. I. Love and Passion Passion, particularly unnatural passion, is a predominant theme of Wuthering Heights. The first Catherines devotion to Heathcliff is immediate and absolute, though she will not marry him, because to do so would degrade her. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Lintons is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire. Although there has been at least one Freudian interpretation of the text, the nature of the passion between Catherine and Heathcliff does not appear to be based on sex. David Daiches writes, Ultimate passion is for her rather a kind of recognition of ones self — ones true and absolute self — in the object of passion. Catherines passion is contrasted to the coolness of Linton, whose cold blood cannot be worked into a fever. When he retreats into his library, she explodes, What in the name of all that feels, has he to do with books, when I am dying? II. Revenge Heathcliffs devotion to Catherine, on the other hand, is ferocious, and when frustrated, he conceives a plan of revenge of enormous proportions. Catherines brother