Element Of Para Gothocism Charlotte Bronte’S Jane Eyre And Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights
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Element Of Para Gothocism Charlotte Bronte’S Jane Eyre And Emily Bronte Wuthering Heights
The English Gothic Novel: A Brief Overview
According to Oates (2003), The English Gothic novel originated with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1765), which was tremendously successful and swiftly emulated by other novelists and soon became a recognizable form.
To most modern readers, however, The Castle of Otranto is dull reading; save for the villain Manfred, the characters are insipid and lifeless; the action moves at a quick rate with no emphasis or tension, despite the magical manifestations and a young maiden’s flight through dark dungeons.
But contemporary readers found the novel electrifyingly original and thrillingly suspenseful, with its isolated setting, its use of the supernatural, and its medieval trappings, all of which have been so frequently duplicated and so poorly reproduced that they have become cliches.
The genre draws its name from Otranto’s medieval–or Gothic–setting; early Gothic novelists liked to put their works in remote ages like the Middle Ages and in remote countries like Italy (Matthew Lewis’s The Monk, 1796) or the Middle East (William Beckford’s Vathek, 1786).
What characterises a work Gothic is a combination of at least some of these elements:
A castle, damaged or intact, haunted or not (the castle plays such a major part that it has been termed the principal character of the Gothic tale),
Ruined buildings which are frightening or which generate a delightful melancholy, dungeons, underground tunnels, crypts, and catacombs which, in modern dwellings, become spooky basements or attics,
Labyrinths, gloomy corridors, and winding stairs,
Shadows, a shaft of moonlight in the blackness, a flickering flame, or the single source of light failing (a candle blown out or, today, an electric failure),
Extreme landscapes, like rugged mountains, thick forests, or icy wastes, and extreme weather,
Omens and ancestral curses,
Magic, supernatural manifestations, or the hint of the supernatural,
A passionate, determined villain-hero or villain,
A curious heroine with a tendency to faint and a need for frequent rescue,
A hero’s true identity is revealed by the end of the novel.
Horrifying (or terrifying) events or the possibility of such occurrences.
The Gothic evokes feelings of gloom, mystery, and suspense, and tends towards the dramatic and sensational, such as incest, diabolism, necrophilia, and nameless terrors. It transcends boundaries such as daylight and darkness, life and death, consciousness and unconsciousness (Henessy, 1978). It portrays transgression, taboos, and fears, both implicitly and explicitly–fears of violation, imprisonment, social instability, and emotional collapse.
Most of us recognise the Gothic style (even if we don’t know what it is) when we see it in books, poems, plays, films, and television shows. For some of us—including myself—safely experiencing dread or horror is thrilling and enjoyable.
Gothic elements have permeated mainstream literature. Romantic poets such as Samuel Coleridge’s “Christabel,” Lord Byron’s “The Giaour,” and John Keats’s “The Eve of St. Agnes” include these elements into their works. Southern Gothic refers to the macabre and weird tendencies found in writers such as William Faulkner, Truman Capote, and Flannery O’Connor.
Wuthering Heights as a Victorian Novel
Wuthering Heights is in the same ethical and moral tradition as the other great Victorian novels. Its criticism of society is as sharp as Charlotte Bronte’s or Dickens’ [Much] of the same spirit interfuses the books of Charlotte and Emily Bronte. For both writers, society and what passes for civilization are identical with selfishness.
Both present family life as a form of open warfare, a terrible struggle for money and control. Both perceive organized religion as inefficient or hypocritical or so cold and severe as to be inhumane and distracted from actual Christian goals.
The characters in Charlotte Bronte’s first two works have to face many of the same challenges confronting the characters in Wuthering Heights, and they reach the same conclusions.
Both William Crimsworth (in The Professor) and Jane Eyre reject the master-slave relationship as static and stultifying and come to the teacher-pupil relationship as the one that allows for growth and the fulfillment of human potential.
Similarly, Catherine Linton and Hareton Earnshaw sense the futility of Heathcliff’s desire for retribution and dominance (his seeing the world purely in terms of the master-slave connection after love fails him) and reinforce civilization and civilized values in terms of the teacher-pupil relationship.
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