Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights

Transcription

1 Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights VIRGINIA WOOLF The me:lilillg of a hook, which lies so often apart from what hap. pens and what is saill and consists rathcr in some connection which things ill thclllselvcs diffcrellt have had for the writer, is necessarily hard /22 1/ to grasp. Especially this is so when, like thc Hrontes, thc writer is poetic, and his meaning insep'lrable from his language, ;lild itself rather a liiood than a particular observation. Wlillicril1g Heights is :t more dillicull book to understand th;tn Jane Eyre, becau!;c Emily was a greater poet than Charlotte. \VhclI Charlottc wrotc she silid with eloquellce and splcji(lollr and passion "I lovc", "I hate", "I sulfer". Her experience, though more intensc, is on a level with our own. Bllt there is no "I" in JVlIlhcrillg Heights. There :Ire III) g()verncs~es. There are no employers. Thcre is love, bu t it is 1I0t the love of men and women. Emily was inspired by some morc general conception. The impulse which urged hcr to creatc was liot her OWII suffering or her own injurics. She looked out upon a world ddt into gigantic disorder and felt within her the power to ullite it in a book. That gigantic ambition is to be felt throughout the Ilovel-a stntggle. half thwarted but of superb con viction, to say something through the mouths of her characters which is not merely "I 100'c" or "I hatc", but "we, the wholc human racc" and "you, thc eternal powers..." the sentence rcmains un finished. It is not strange that it should be so; rathcr it is astonish ing that she can make us feel what she had it in her to say at all. It surges up in the half-articulate words of Catherine Earnshaw. From The COII/"'Oll lunda by Virginia Woolf. roppighl, 192:., by Harcourt, Ilrace" Co.; reuewed, by I.l onard woolr. Itt'prinled by permissioll or Har c:oun, Urace &: Wodd, Inc., Nt'w Yurko "If all else perished and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger; I should not seem part of /225/ it". It breaks out again in the presence of the dead. "I see a repose that neither carth nor hell can brcak, and I feel an assurancc of the endless and shadowless herc;tflcr-thc eternity they have en tered-where life is boundless in its duration, and love in its sym pathy and joy in its fulness." It is this suggestion of power underlying the apparitions of human naltlre, and lifting thcm up into the prcsence of greatness that gives the book its huge stature among other novels. But it was not enough for Emily Bronte to write a few lyrics, to litter a cry, to express a creed. In her poems she did this once and for all, and her poems will perhaps outlast her novel. But she was novelist as well as poet. She must take upon herself a more laborious and a more ungrateftil task. She must face the fact of other existences, grapple with the mcchanism of extcrnal things, build up, in recognisable shape, farms and houses :111<1 report the speechcs of mcn and women who existed indtpendently of herself. And so we real'll these summits of emotion not hy rallt or rhapsody but by hearing a girl sing old songs to herself as shc rocks in the branches of a trce; by watching the 1Il0or sheep crop the turf; hy listening to the soft wind breathing through the grass. The lifc at the farm with all its absurdities ;lild ils improbability is I;lid open to us. \Ve are given cvcry opportnnity of comparing WlIlhcring Heights with a real farm and Heathdiff with a real man. How, we are allowed to ask, can there be truth or insight or the finer shades of emotioll in men and womell who so lillie resemble /226/ what we have seen ourselves? But even as we ask it wc see in Heathcliff the brother that a sister of genius mi~ht have seen; hc is impossible we say, but lieverthcless no hoy in literature has so vivid an exist ence as his. So it is with the two Catherines; never could wolllcn feci as they do or act in their manner, we say. All the same, thcy are the most lovable women in English fiction. It is as if she could tear lip all that we know human beings by, and fill these unrecog nisable transparences with such a gust of life that they transcend reality. Hers, then, is the rarest of all powers. She could free life from its dependence on facts; with a few touches indicatc the spirit of a face so that it needs no body; by speaking of the moor make the wind blow and the thunder roar. /227/ Questions lor Disctlssion and JVl'iting 1. What docs Mrs. Wool[ mean whcn she says, "Thcre is no '}' in Wuther ing Heights"" (pagc 225) What have olher critics said about this? 2. What does 1\-Irs. WooU mcan by saying that the love in JVlIlhering Heigllts "is not the )O\'C of mcn ami womcn"? (pagc 225) 3. Exprcss in YOllr OWIl wor(ls what YOIl thillk Mrs. \VoolC is saying about Emily Bronte's genim 011 pagcs Support or attack thc criticism with cllidencc frolll the IlOlid. 4. Starting with Mrs. \VoolC's statements on Emily Bronte as a person and :IS an..mhof, discllss portraits which critics have drawn of the writcr of Wutlterillg IIeights.

2 Wuthering Heights E. F. BENSON To turn then to the book itself, which is among the greatest works of fiction the world has ever seen, the composition and construction arc inconceivably awkward, :lild this awkwardness is entirely due to the mallller in which it begins. It opens-dated 1801-with the first hand narrative of ~Ir. Lockwood, the tenant of Thrushcross Grange, who goes to visit his landlord Heathcliff :It Wuthering Heights, ami it is clear that the intelllioll of the writer was to make him a personage in the story. He pays;1 second visit next day and is immensely struck with the younger Catherine, whom he has not seen before. lie pities her ror being buried alive with these savages: he thinks she is Haretoll's wire. She has throwjl herself,iway 011 that boof Ihe feflects} from sheer igno. rance that heller individuals existedl A s,u.l pity-i mllst hcware how I cause her to rej.;rl t Ill'r choice. The Joist rellection liiay seem conceited: it was 1I0t. l\iy nl'ij.;hhour stnh k Ille :is hordering on repulsive; I knew through experienn.' that J was tolerably attractive... It is impossihle to imagine a clearer indication or the writer's intention to make a motif out or Catherine's beauty aiiii LockwoOlI's complacellt ~lisceptibility. But nothing happcns; the intention was scrappcd. I.(l( kwoot! rct urns to Thnl~h(T()ss Grange Hex t lliorning, after sollle hi Hcr noll um:i1 ex pcrienccs, a nl! asks his housekeeper Nellie 1)e;1I1 to tell him Illllrc ah'j11l this strallge ramily. Thereupon she becollles the narrator, all{1 talks to him that day ror eighty pages. Next day he falls ill, and is a month in bed. \Vhell he gets better, she resumes her narrative, he liierely listening. She began it from lilt earliest years alld 1I0W l'ollll'ietes it lip to the date at which tile stofy opells, gi"illg him the eillire history of the Earnshaws, of the Lintons, ami of Heatl!dilf. \\'e lose sight of Lockwood altogether; he only listens to Nellie Dean as she repeats verbatim /174/ long conversations, telling this voluminous history at first hand as she witnessed it. She reads him a letter of eleven pages, which Lockwood reproduces word for word; she oversees, she overhears, and it is not till page 367. quite near the end of the book, that the. original narrator appears again to tell us that l\irs. Dean's story, which has lasted for twenty seven chapters, is over. Then Lockwood narrates one chapter, describing his third visit to Wuthering Heights, and leaves the district. After a break he dates his next chapter 1802, and when he visits the Heights once more, Nellie Dean again tells him what has happened while he has been away. From first page to last he has had nothing whatever to do with the story to which, instead of narrating it himself, as he began to do, he is merely audience, and writes down what Nellie Dean has told him. He has no more to do with it than the occupant of a stall in the theatre has to do with the action on the stage. No single author could have planned a book in so topsy-turvy a manner. It begins, in point of time, nearly at the end, the original narrator drops completely out, and the actual narrator, whose story forms the bulk of the book, tells it to him. But supposing that, for some reason, the first few chapters had to be retained, this complete change of plan, though productive of endless awkwardnesses, was necessary in order to tell the story at all. Lockwood, the newly arrived tenant who autobiographically opens the book, could not know the previous history of Heathcliff and the rest. So Nellie Dean must recount it to him, and it takes so long that he must needs fall ill so that his convalescence may be beguiled with it. Nobody planning a story from the first could have begun with an episode so misplaced that such an awkward device must be resorted to. l\ioreover, though from first to last Lockwood has nothing to do with the story at all, there are those sure indications in the early /175/ chapters that he was meant to' playa part in it. He warns himself that he must not make himself too attractive, and cause the enchanting Catherine (married, so he fancies, to the boorish Hareton) to fali in love with him. /176/ Questions for Discussion and Writing 1. Use the comments on construction here as b.. of the preponderance of critical... a ;gmnmg for an evaluation. opinion on this aspect of the novel 2. Jusufy the retaining of the first few Chapters.. 3. What does Benson mean by "the writer's intention to make a molif out of Catherine's beauty"? (page 1 i4) What have other critics said of C:nherine's beauty that supports or conhicts with Benson's idea of her beauty as a rnotift 4. Identify those qualities in Lockwood which lead Benson to believe that the ch3ractcr "\\'as meant to playa part" in the novel much more impor- Lant than the one he now plays. 5. Benson questions the organization of H'lIillrring Heigilis and Emily Bronte's handling of time in the novel. With the use of recent critical opinion, make a case {or the organization and time sequence of Wulllering Heigllts. From (;I...rlul/e Dnmti (Londull ami New YOI k; LUIIJ;llIans, Green COllillallY. 193:1). j,.. ' -'

3 Character Who are the characters in the novel? Wuthering Heights Elements ofthe Novel- 6 th Six Weeks Point of View From what point of view is it written? Setting What is the setting ofthe novel? Symbol List some ofthe symbols and tell what they mean. (Be sure to tell what chapter and page number.) I I I ImaKery List some images and tell what senses they appeal to. (Be sure to tell what chapter and page number.)

4 Plot Give a chapter by chapter account ofthe plot. Chapter 1 Wuthering Heights Elements ofthe Novel- 6 th Six Weeks Chapter 2 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 napier 6 i nanrer 7 T Chapter 8 IChap'"9 ~-- Chapter 10

5 Wuthering Heights Elements ofthe Novel 6 th Six Weeks r:hapt"t 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 21

6 Chapter 22 Wuthering Heights Elements ofthe Novel- 6 th Six Weeks i Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30.~ ~ Chapter 33 Chapter 34

7 Wuthering Heights Elements of the Novel- 6 th Six Weeks Now write a (very) brief summary of the entire book. It should fit in this box.

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