In the beginning of the "A Critical History" section I found it really interesting that Bronte was accused writing a novel that raised moral questions. Her novel was described using phrases such as "the disgusting coarseness" or " an ill-mannered contempt for the decencies of language." (Both cited on page 334) I think I was initially surprised because today many of the things Bronte writes about are things we hear about every day on the news or by reading a newspaper. I then began to think back to what I have learned about the nineteenth century and realized that Wuthering Heights probably did raise some questions of morality. In some places it seems as though Bronte was obsessed with evil behavior and shows that in Heathcliff almost the whole way through the novel.
Another question the Critical Analysis answered was the dispute about the message the book was trying to get across. Some believed that it's message was one of poor morality and therefore some had a problem with the book. Emily Bronte's sister tried to stand up for her sister saying that she had not known what she had written and the interpretation it received. I thought that was very interesting because usually when I write I am able to read my writing expecting what people will say about it. Once I began to think about that I realized that just because an author writes with a specific intention. My friend from Illinois has a blog and one day I read it and got really mad at what I was reading. Turns out his intention of the blog was drastically different then how I had understood it. oops! I think that if I had lived during the time of Wuthering Heights release date I probably would have questioned it as well!
Speaking of interrupting this novel I thought it was really interesting that three different people thought three completely different things about the ending of the book. It is really interesting to see what people think about this book and how different it is from what I thought about the book, it puts a lot of different perspectives on one text. I like how it helps me to keep an open mind.
I also find it interesting how Brontë’s contemporaries found her work to be “moral confused.” They probably didn’t expect a novel like Wuthering Heights, one that didn’t make its “message” clear. Today, people read Wuthering Heights and aren’t too surprised about events in the novel that her contemporaries would have found shocking. It seems like there are so many crazy things happening in the world now, so Wuthering Heights loses some of its shock value. It also talked about in that section how many of her critics pretty much gave sort of vague critiques of her novel because they didn’t know what to make of it or how to interpret it. Wuthering Heights was ahead of its time and deeply penetrated familial and social relationships, making the novel seem real.
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