Withering High 4 questions
Question 1
Discuss the narrative technique. Consider for instance: Who is the narrator(s)? Does
the narrative point of view shift? Discuss the use of narrative frames. (See the
definition of “Frame narrative or frame” in the “Useful Terms” document.) What is
the effect of these narrative techniques on how you interpret events and characters?
In your answer, use at least one quotation from/reference to the novel and at least
one reference to Eagleton or Alexander.
Question 2
According to Eagleton, class relations, political relations were changing in the
Victorian period and these changes can also be seen in the novel. How does social
change appear in Wuthering Heights? In what ways do the characters and/or the two
estates/houses, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, reflect such changes? In
your answer, use at least one quotation from/reference to the novel and at least one
reference to Eagleton or Alexander.
Question 3
In what ways does Wuthering Heights incorporate elements of the Gothic novel? To
what extent is it characteristic of the Romantic period? In what ways does the novel
NOT seem to be Gothic/Romantic? You may wish to refer to Terry Eagleton’s
discussion of the novel in your answer (look at his remarks on ‘Heights critics’ and
‘Grange critics’, for example.)
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Question 4
The male persona in Lord Byron’s poetry became the basis for what is known as the ‘Byronic
hero’. In The Norton Anthology of English Literature (7th edition) the Byronic hero is described
as follows:
[H]e is an alien, mysterious, and gloomy spirit, superior in his passions and powers
to the common run of humanity, whom he regards with disdain. He harbors the
torturing memory of an enormous, nameless guilt that drives him toward an
inevitable doom. He is in his isolation absolutely self -reliant, pursuing his own ends
according to his self-generated moral code against any opposition, human or
supernatural. And he exerts an attraction on other characters that is the more
compelling because it involves their terror at his obliviousness to ordinary human
concerns and values. This figure, infusing the arch -rebel in a nonpolitical form with
a strong erotic interest, was imitated in life as well as in art and helped shape the
intellectual and the cultural history of the later nineteenth century. (552)
To what extent does Heathcliff match this description? To what extent does he NOT match
this description? What do you think the book says about the idea of the Byronic hero?
Provide examples from the novel in support of your answer.
