AWEJ for Translation & Literary Studies, Volume 5, Number3.  August  2021                                Pp. 40-54
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awejtls/vol5no3.4                

Full Paper PDF 

Gothic Reality: A Study of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights 

Roumaissa Moussaoui
Department of English, University of Ali Lounici  ( Blida 2)
Blida, Algeria
Email: roumaissamoussaoui@yahoo.fr

 Received:  5/18/2021              Accepted: 7/31/2021              Published:8/25/2021

Abstract
Emily Bronte’s novel, Wuthering Heights, is a gothic novel with an innovative stance. Gothic elements permeate the story, but it is not a gothic novel in the traditional sense of the word. The fantastic tales so popular in the eighteenth century alienated the reader by creating  phantasmagorical worlds. Emily Bronte, however, grounded her gothic world firmly in reality. Through an analytical approach, the author aims to show, in this article, how Emily Bronte reversed gothic conventions to create a gothic reality whose message is still relevant today. The author  will show that her use of the gothic mode was an attempt to capture the real essence of life, anticipating the metaphysical theories of D. H. Lawrence, who wrote at the end of the nineteenth century. By highlighting her innate understanding of human  nature , this article will focus on her affinity with Lawrence and the  celebration of  man’s powerful primal instincts. This article hinges on the premise that she deplored the mechanical restrictions of the society in which she lived. The author aims to show that her Gothicism is, paradoxically, synonymous with a search for life.
Keywords: Wuthering Heights, being, Lawrence’s metaphysics, The essence of life, Gothicism, gothic reality, Yorkshire moors

Cite as:  Moussaoui, R. (2021). Gothic Reality: A Study of Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights.
Arab World English Journal for Translation & Literary Studies 5 (3) 40-54.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awejtls/vol5no3.4

References

Axelrod, M. (1999). The Poetics of Climate in Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. In The Poetics of Novels (pp. 55-76).
Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Botting, F. (1996). Gothic. London: Routledge.

Brontë, E. (2009). Wuthering Heights. Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition.

Brontë, C., Brontë, E., & Brontë, A. (2005). Selected works of the Brontë sisters. Wordsworth Editions.

Brontë, E., & Hatfield, C. W. (1995). The complete poems of Emily Jane Brontë. New York: Columbia University Press.

Clery, E. (2010). Horace Walpole, the Strawberry Hill Press, and the Emergence of the Gothic Genre. ars & humanitas, 4(1-2), 93-111.

Conger, S. M. (1983). The Reconstruction of the Gothic Feminine Ideal in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. The Female Gothic, 91-106.

Dickens, C. (1848). Dombey and son (Vol. 1). Createspace Independent Publishing Platform.

Disraeli, I., & Disraeli, B. (1868). The calamities and quarrels of authors: With some inquiries respecting their moral and literary characters, and memoirs for our literary history. New York: W.J. Widdleton.

Fu, H. (2013). An Interpretation of Emily Bronte’s Gothic Complex in Wuthering Heights. Studies in Literature and Language, 6(3), 53-59.

Gold, L. (1985). Catherine Earnshaw: Mother and Daughter. The English Journal, 74(3), 68-73.

Homans, M. (1978). Repression and sublimation of nature in Wuthering Heights. Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 9-19.

Horner, A. (2010).Women, Power and Conflict: The Gothic heroine and “Chocolate-box Gothic“. Caliban. French Journal of English Studies, URL: https://journals.openedition.org/caliban/2218

Lawrence, D. H. (2013). Delphi Complete Works of DH Lawrence (Illustrated) (Vol. 3). Delphi Classics.

Lawrence, D. H., Squires, M. (1994). Lady Chatterley’s lover: A propos of “Lady Chatterley’s lover”. London: Penguin Books.

Lawrence, D. H. (2004). Psychoanalysis and the Unconscious’ and ‘Fantasia of the Unconscious (Vol. 31). Cambridge University Press.

Lawrence, D. H. (2002). The letters of DH Lawrence (Vol. 8). Cambridge University Press.

Lawrence, D. H. (1987). Women in love (Vol. 9). Cambridge University Press.

Mohammed, A. R. M. (2016). The Influence of Gothic Elements on the Characters of the Novel Wuthering Heights (Doctoral dissertation, Sudan University of Science and Technology). URL: http://repository.sustech.edu/handle/123456789/13968

Oda, Y. (2010). Emily Brontë and the Gothic: Female Characters in Wuthering Heights. Revue LISA/LISA e-journal. Littératures, Histoire des Idées, Images, Sociétés du Monde Anglophone–Literature, History of Ideas, Images and Societies of the English-speaking World, 1-19. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/lisa/3496

Qiao, W. (2019). How is Wuthering Heights a Gothic Novel. International Journal of English and Literature, 4, 1578-1583. URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.22161/ijels.45.48

Walpole, H. (1791). The castle of Otranto: A Gothic story. Parma: printed by Bodoni, for J. Edwards, Bookseller of London.