This paper discusses Emily Bronte’s `Wuthering Heights`, a novel demonstrating fragmentation through separation.
This paper explains that Emily Bronte’s novel, Wuthering Heights, is a work of contrasts, such as masculine versus feminine, the introvert versus the extrovert, and power over passivity. The author points out that the female desiring power in a patriarchal environment contrasts sharply with a male’s desire for the civilizing effect of culture. The paper relates, in detail, the portrayal of Catherine and Heathcliff as two sides of one being, which assists the reader in the discovery that `Wuthering Heights` is not a love story in the usual style.
`Heathcliff’s side is introversion. From the point of his introduction into the Height’s household, the boy is described as gibbering and unable to communicate. From this can be seen that the boy, however objectionable, is isolated. His initial treatment at the hands of Mrs. Earnshaw and the children heightens this isolation, and he becomes ostracized. Even Nelly Dean, the servant, refers to the child as `it` and describes him as a `sullen, patient child` (22). Heathcliff doesn’t seem to react to either emotional or physical bullying. Hindley repeatedly attacks him, but Heathcliff does not react. Rather he internalizes his reactions. He is pushed under the hooves of a horse and bears this with silence and coolness. Nelly mistakenly reads this reaction as being proof that the child is not vindictive, but later finds this not to be the case (23). The child has internalized and introverted his anger, not in order to diffuse it, but to store and hone it for later use.`