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Some of the key themes in "Wuthering Heights" include love and obsession, revenge and hatred, social class and society, nature and the supernatural, and the destructive effects of unchecked passion. The novel explores how these themes intersect and drive the characters' actions throughout the story.

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βˆ™ 6d ago
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βˆ™ 11y ago

Mr Lockwood, a rich man from the south, has rented Thrushcross Grange in the north of England for peace and recuperation. Soon after arrival, he visits his landlord, Mr Heathcliff, who lives in the remote moorland farmhouse called "Wuthering Heights". He finds the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights to be a strange group: Mr Heathcliff appears a gentleman but his manners and speech suggest otherwise; the mistress of the house is in her late teens, an attractive but reserved, even rude woman; and there is a young man who appears to be one of the family although he dresses and talks like a servant.

Being snowed in, he has to stay the night and is shown to an unused chamber where he finds books and graffiti from a former inhabitant of the farmhouse called "Catherine". When he falls asleep, his dreams are prompted by this person and he has a nightmare where he sees her as a ghost trying to get in through the window. He wakes and is unable to return to sleep so, as soon as the sun rises, he is escorted back to Thrushcross Grange by Heathcliff. There he asks his housekeeper, Ellen Dean, to tell him the story of the family from the Heights.

The Childhood of Heathcliff (chapters 4 to 17)The story begins thirty years before when the Earnshaw family lived at Wuthering Heights consisting of, as well as the mother and father, Hindley, a boy of fourteen, and six-year-old Catherine, the same person that he had dreamt about and the mother of the present mistress. In that year, Mr Earnshaw travels to Liverpool where he finds a homeless, gypsy boy of about seven whom he decides to adopt as his son. He names him "Heathcliff". Hindley, who finds himself excluded from his father's affections by this newcomer, quickly learns to hate him but Catherine grows very attached to him. Soon Heathcliff and Catherine are like twins, spending hours on the moors together and hating every moment apart.

Because of this discord, Hindley is eventually sent to college but he returns, three years later, when Mr Earnshaw dies. With a new wife, Frances, he becomes master of Wuthering Heights and forces Heathcliff to become a servant instead of a member of the family.

Heathcliff and Cathy continue to run wild and, in November, a few months after Hindley's return, they make their way to Thrushcross Grange to spy on the inhabitants. As they watch the childish behaviour of Edgar and Isabella Linton, the children of the Grange, they are spotted and try to escape. Catherine, having been caught by a dog, is brought inside and helped while Heathcliff is sent home.

Five weeks later, Catherine returns to Wuthering Heights but she has now changed, looking and acting as a lady. She laughs at Heathcliff's unkempt appearance and, the next day when the Lintons visit, he dresses up to impress her. It fails when Edgar makes fun of him and they argue. Heathcliff is locked in the attic where, in the evening, Catherine climbs over the roof to comfort him. He vows to get his revenge on HIndley.

In the summer of the next year, Frances gives birth to a child, Hareton, but she dies before the year is out. This leads Hindley to descend into a life of drunkenness and waste.

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Two years on and Catherine has become close friends with Edgar, growing more distant from Heathcliff. One day in August, while Hindley is absent, Edgar comes to visit Catherine . She has an argument with Ellen which then spreads to Edgar who tries to leave. Catherine stops him and, before long, they declare themselves lovers.

Later, Catherine talks with Ellen, explaining that Edgar had asked her to marry him and she had accepted. She says that she does not really love Edgar but Heathcliff. Unfortunately she could never marry the latter because of his lack of status and education. She therefore plans to marry Edgar and use that position to help raise Heathcliff's standing. Unfortunately Heathcliff had overheard the first part about not being able to marry him and flees from the farmhouse. He disappears without trace and, after three years, Edgar and Catherine are married.

Six months after the marriage, Heathcliff returns as a gentleman, having grown stronger and richer during his absence. Catherine is delighted to see him although Edgar is not so keen. Isabella, now eighteen, falls madly in love with Heathcliff, seeing him as a romantic hero. He despises her but encourages the infatuation, seeing it as a chance for revenge on Edgar. When he embraces Isabella one day at the Grange, there is an argument with Edgar which causes Catherine to lock herself in her room and fall ill.

Heathcliff has been staying at the Heights, gambling with Hindley and teaching Hareton bad habits. Hindley is gradually losing his wealth, mortgaging the farmhouse to Heathcliff to repay his debts.

While Catherine is ill, Heathcliff elopes with Isabella, causing Edgar to disown his sister. The fugitives marry and return two months later to Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff hears that Catherine is ill and arranges with Ellen to visit her in secret. In the early hours of the day after their meeting, Catherine gives birth to her daughter, Cathy, and then dies.

The day after Catherine's funeral, Isabella flees Heathcliff and escapes to the south of England where she eventually gives birth to Linton, Heathcliff's son. Hindley dies six months after his sister and Heathcliff finds himself the master of Wuthering Heights and the guardian of Hareton.

The Maturity of Heathcliff (chapters 18 to 31)Twelve years on, Cathy has grown into a beautiful, high-spirited girl who has rarely passed outside the borders of the Grange. Edgar hears that Isabella is dying and leaves to pick up her son with the intention of adopting him. While he is gone, Cathy meets Hareton on the moors and learns of her cousin and Wuthering Heights' existence.

Edgar returns with Linton who is a weak and sickly boy. Although Cathy is attracted to him, Heathcliff wants his son with him and insists on having him taken to the Heights.

Three years later, Ellen and Cathy are on the moors when they meet Heathcliff who takes them to Wuthering Heights to see Linton and Hareton. His plans are for Linton and Cathy to marry so that he would inherit Thrushcross Grange. Cathy and Linton begin a secret and interrupted friendship.

In August of the next year, while Edgar is very ill, Ellen and Cathy visit Wuthering Heights and are held captive by Heathcliff who wants to marry his son to Cathy and, at the same time, prevent her from returning to her father before he dies. After five days, Ellen is released and Cathy escapes with Linton's help just in time to see her father before he dies.

With Heathcliff now the master of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, Cathy has no choice but to leave Ellen and to go and live with Heathcliff and Hareton. Linton dies soon afterwards and, although Hareton tries to be kind to her, she retreats into herself. This is the point of the story at which Lockwood arrives.

After being ill with a cold for some time, Lockwood decides that he has had enough of the moors and travels to Wuthering Heights to inform Heathcliff that he is returning to the south.

Epilogue (chapters 32 to 34)In September, eight months after leaving, Lockwood finds himself back in the area and decides to stay at Thrushcross Grange (since his tenancy is still valid until October). He finds that Ellen is now living at Wuthering Heights. He makes his way there and she fills in the rest of the story.

Ellen had moved to the Heights soon after Lockwood had left to replace the housekeeper who had departed. In March, Hareton had had an accident and been confined to the farmhouse. During this time, a friendship had developed between Cathy and Hareton. This continues into April when Heathcliff begins to act very strangely, seeing visions of Catherine. After not eating for four days, he is found dead in his room. He is buried next to Catherine.

Lockwood departs but, before he leaves, he hears that Hareton and Cathy plan to marry on New Year's Day.

it may be long but it sure does help alot...

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βˆ™ 12y ago

There isn't just one theme, there are many.

Most people would call Wuthering Heights a love story, while this is accurate, it is also one of revenge. Depending on how you read the book detrermines the answer to your question.

2) Really it depends on how you percieve the novel, some may say it's one of the greatest love stories of all time and rank Catherine and Heathcliff on the same level as Romeo and Juliet, others will not see how and may say it is a tale of revenge. I feel that is about a love that destroys everything, and everyone it touches.

The concept that almost every reader of Wuthering Heightsfocuses on is the passion-love of Catherine and Heathcliff, often to the exclusion of every other theme-this despite the fact that other kinds of love are presented and that Catherine dies half way through the novel. The loves of the second generation, the love of Frances and Hindley, and the "susceptible heart" of Lockwood receive scant attention from such readers. But is love the central issue in this novel? Is its motive force perhaps economic? The desire for wealth does motivate Catherine's marriage, which results in Heathcliff's flight and causes him to acquire Wuthering Heights, to appropriate Thrushcross Grange, and to dispossess Hareton. Is it possible that one of the other themes constitutes the center of the novel, or are the other themes secondary to the theme of love? Consider the following themes:Clash of elemental forces.

The universe is made up of two opposite forces, storm and calm. Wuthering Heights and the Earnshaws express the storm; Thrushcross Grange and the Lintons, the calm. Catherine and Heathcliff are elemental creatures of the storm. This theme is discussed more fully in Later Critical response to Wuthering HeightsThe clash of economic interests and social classes.

The novel is set at a time when capitalism and industrialization are changing not only the economy but also the traditional social structure and the relationship of the classes. The yeoman or respectable farming class (Hareton) was being destroyed by the economic alliance of the newly-wealthy capitalists (Heathcliff) and the traditional power-holding gentry (the Lintons). This theme is discussed more fully in Wuthering Heights as Socio-Economic Novel.The striving for transcendence.

It is not just love that Catherine and Heathcliff seek but a higher, spiritual existence which is permanent and unchanging, as Catherine makes clear when she compares her love for Linton to the seasons and her love for Heathcliff to the rocks. The dying Catherine looks forward to achieving this state through death. This theme is discussed more fully in Religion, Metaphysics, and Mysticism.The abusive patriarch and patriarchal family.

The male heads of household abuse females and males who are weak or powerless. This can be seen in their use of various kinds of imprisonment or confinement, which takes social, emotional, financial, legal, and physical forms. Mr. Earnshaw expects Catherine to behave properly and hurtfully rejects her "bad-girl" behavior. Edgar's ultimatum that Catherine must make a final choice between him or Heathcliff restricts Catherine's identity by forcing her to reject an essential part of her nature; with loving selfishness Edgar confines his daughter Cathy to the boundaries of Thrushcross Grange. A vindictive Hindley strips Heathcliff of his position in the family, thereby trapping him in a degraded laboring position. Heathcliff literally incarcerates Isabella (as her husband and legal overseer), and later he imprisons both Cathy and Nellie; also, Cathy is isolated from the rest of the household after her marriage to Linton.Study of childhood and the family.

The hostility toward and the abuse of children and family members at Wuthering Heights cut across the generations. The savagery of children finds full expression in Hindley's animosity toward Heathcliff and in Heathcliff's plans of vengeance. Wrapped in the self-centeredness of childhood, Heathcliff claims Hindley's horse and uses Mr. Earnshaw's partiality to his own advantage, making no return of affection. Mr. Earnshaw's disapproval of Catherine hardens her and, like many mistreated children, she becomes rebellious. Despite abuse, Catherine and Heathcliff show the strength of children to survive, and abuse at least partly forms the adult characters and behavior of Catherine and Heathcliff .The effects of intense suffering.

In the passion-driven characters-Catherine, Heathcliff, and Hindley-pain leads them to turn on and to torment others. Inflicting pain provides them some relief; this behavior raises questions about whether they are cruel by nature or are formed by childhood abuse and to what extent they should be held responsible for or blamed for their cruelties. Is all their suffering inflicted by others or by outside forces, like the death of Hindley's wife, or is at least some of their torment self-inflicted, like Heathcliff's holding Catherine responsible for his suffering after her death? Suffering also sears the weak; Isabella and her son Linton become vindictive, and Edgar turns into a self-indulgent, melancholy recluse. The children of love, the degraded Hareton and the imprisoned Cathy, are able to overcome Heathcliff's abuse and to find love and a future with each other. Is John Hagan right that "Wuthering Heights is such a remarkable work partly because it persuades us forcibly to pity victims and victimizers alike"?Self-imposed or self-generated confinement and escape.

Both Catherine and Heathcliff find their bodies prisons which trap their spirits and prevent the fulfillment of their desires: Catherine yearns to be united with Heathcliff, with a lost childhood freedom, with Nature, and with a spiritual realm; Heathcliff wants possession of and union with Catherine. Confinement also defines the course of Catherine's life: in childhood, she alternates between the constraint of Wuthering Heights and the freedom of the moors; in puberty, she is restricted by her injury to a couch at Thrushcross Grange; finally womanhood and her choice of husband confine her to the gentility of Thrushcross Grange, from which she escapes into the freedom of death.Displacement, dispossession, and exile.

Heathcliff enters the novel possessed of nothing, is not even given a last or family name, and loses his privileged status after Mr. Earnshaw's death. Heathcliff displaces Hindley in the family structure. Catherine is thrown out of heaven, where she feels displaced, sees herself an exile at Thrushcross Grange at the end, and wanders the moors for twenty years as a ghost. Hareton is dispossessed of property, education, and social status. Isabella cannot return to her beloved Thrushcross Grange and brother. Linton is displaced twice after his mother's death, being removed first to Thrushcross Grange and then to Wuthering Heights. Cathy is displaced from her home, Thrushcross Grange.Communication and understanding.

The narrative structure of the novel revolves around communication and understanding; Lockwood is unable to communicate with or understand the relationships at Wuthering Heights, and Nelly enlightens him by communicating the history of the Earnshaws and the Lintons. Trying to return to the Grange in a snowstorm, Lockwood cannot see the stone markers. A superstitious Nellie refuses to let Catherine tell her dreams; repeatedly Nellie does not understand what Catherine is talking about or refuses to accept what Catherine is saying, notably after she locks herself in her room. Isabella refuses to heed Catherine's warning and Nellie's advice about Heathcliff. And probably the most serious mis-communication of all is Heathcliff's hearing only that it would degrade Catherine to marry him.The fall.

Recently a number of critics have seen the story of a fall in this novel, though from what state the characters fall from or to is disputed. Does Catherine fall, in yielding to the comforts and security of Thrushcross Grange? Does Heathcliff fall in his "moral teething" of revenge and pursuit of property? Is Wutheirng Heights or Thrushcross Grange the fallen world? Is the fall from heaven to hell or from hell to heaven? Does Catherine really lose the Devil/Heathcliff (this question arises from the assumption that Brontë is a Blakeian subbversive and visionary)? The theme of a fall relies heavily on the references to heaven and hell that run through the novel, beginning with Lockwood's explicit reference to Wuthering Heights as a "misanthrope's heaven" and ending with the implied heaven of the ghosts of Heathcliff and Catherine roaming the moors together. Catherine dreams of being expelled from heaven and deliriously sees herself an exile cast out from the "heaven" of Wuthering Height-a literal as well as a symbolic fall. Heathcliff, like Satan, is relentless in his destructive pursuit of revenge. Inevitably the ideas of expulsion from heaven, exile, and desire for revenge have been connected to Milton's Paradise Lostand parallels drawn between Milton's epic and Brontë's novel; Catherine's pain at her change from free child to imprisoned adult is compared to Satan's speech to Beelzebub, "how chang'd" from an angel of light to exile in a fiery lake."

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βˆ™ 13y ago

gothic

Mabye Horror

Mabye romance

dunno

i know this wasnt much help but i tried really i did

xx

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βˆ™ 9y ago

That true love is eternal and, when gone wrong, can destroy everything and everyone around, causing one to seek revenge obsessively in a trial to substitute their unrequited passion.

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βˆ™ 12y ago

como influye el clima en el desarrollo de la novela?

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