Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights Essay

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The adolescent reader . tends to remember Catherine and Heathcliff as the protagonists of the grand romantic passion of English fiction (Thormdhlen 183 . Love stories today are often filled with a gallant man taking a weakling woman into his arms and saving her from a dull life and a pitiable existence . Wuthering Heights certainly does not fit the mainstream version we have grown to accept as romance . Victorian era works of fiction are typically replete with lessons to learn and morals to uphold . If

much of the reading world thinks of Wuthering Heights as a classic romance , does the literary world also view it as such

The essential element of plot in romance is adventure , which means that romance is naturally a sequential and processional form (Frye 186 . The adventure in this case seems to be Heathcliff 's drive for acceptance and monetary power . If left to the streets where found perhaps Heathcliff would not have been a very interesting character at all . However , in his experiencing of a good , warm life during Mr Earnshaw 's philanthropy , Heathcliff craves a life he would have never otherwise imagined . The story details his adventure ' as beginning with nothing , gaining comfort and purpose , losing it at Mr , Earnshaw 's death , and the his subsequent battle to regain that footing . This is an essential element in his physical as well as romantic world

In romance , as in comedy , there seem to be four poles of characterization (Frye 196 . These four are the villain , the hero the damsel and the clown . In this case , the challenge of accepting Heathcliff as the hero and not the villain remains the only challenge to classifying the tale as a romance . From the beginning , Mr . Earnshaw refers to him as dark almost as if it came from the devil (Brontl 51 . When he returns with his accumulated wealth , everyone sees him as devil even more , as though he sold his soul for cash

Most analyses of Wuthering Heights assign the part of the prime mover to Heathcliff , and his actions certainly dominate most of the book (Thormdhlen 191 . In accepting Heathcliff as the main hero , the villain splits into two roles : Edward Linton who stands between the two lovers and Hindley Earnshaw who struggles to ruin Heathcliff from the onset of the tale . Catherine serves as the obvious damsel and Isabella the unwitting clown . Other delineations exist , and according to the traditional view of a hero , certainly would . Nevertheless , in re-framing the definitions , we can see the story begin to show itself as a true romance

The classification of a story as romance involves more than simple character identification . Plot summary also holds a framework the piece must adhere to , traditionally speaking . Frye identifies the birth of the hero as the initial stage in six distinct phases to romance (Frye 198 . Heathcliff 's birth ' in this story is retold in a mythical sense . The night is dark and dreary and the weather portends...