Bronte - Wuthering Heights

A. Choice of words (diction)

B. Story vs. discourse


1. How is a story presented?

2. Why might a story be presented in a certain way?

3. What is the effect of the story being presented in that way?

C. Mise en abyme/Self-reflexive texts


1. Frame narratives

2. Scenes of reading

D. Close reading of beginning paragraphs

A. Lockwood and Nelly as characters


1. Lockwood


a. Attempts to penetrate Wuthering Heights

b. Uses books/reading as escape/defense

c. Afraid of women, of love, of desire

2. Nelly Dean


a. Family member?

b. Servant?

B. Lockwood and Nelly as narrators: reliability


1. Lockwood is inept

2. Nelly is subjective/biased

C. Appropriation of the story


1. Lockwood and Nelly are continually vying for how the story should be told.
2. Nelly Dean is main storyteller


a. Appropriation of power through language

b. Lockwood is merely a transcriber.

A. Reading as escape or consolation for loss

B. Reading as acquisition/possession

C. Reading: To possess or to be possessed?

D. Reading as transformative

E. Reading as status/improvement

A. Origins

B. Acquisition


1. Heathcliff’s “revenge”


a. Collecting “Catherine”

b. Masochistic memorabila

2. Problems with Heathcliff’s economy


a. Excess of value = no value

b. Signs as avenue or barrier?

c. Destroying signs

d. Lose/Lose situation

C. Male/Female roles

1. “Living up to one’s name”


a. Heathcliff

b. Hareton

2. “There’s no place like home”


a. Double bildungsroman - definition

b. Catherine’s trajectory

c. Inability to recognize herself

d. Returning home