英语毕业论文A-Brief-Analysis-of-Heathcliff’s-Characters-in-Wuthering-Heights.doc

简要分析《呼啸山庄》中希斯克利夫的性格

A Brief Analysis of Heathcliff’s Characters in Wuthering Heights

Contents

Abstract……………………………………………………………………1
Key words…………………………………………………………………....1
I. Introduction………………………………………………………………2
1. The background of the era and the writer…………………………………2
2. Purpose of the paper………...……………………………………..…..2
II. Literature Review…………...…………………………………………...4
III. Plot Summary………………..……………………………………......5
IV. The Reasons for Heathcliff to Form His Special Characters..............7
1. The nature and social environment……………………………………...7
2. The love between Heathecliff and Catherine……………………………9
3. The special characters dooms the special fate……………………………9
V. Conclusion…….…………………………………………………………10
References……………………………………………………………..……11

A Brief Analysis of Heathcliff’s Characters in Wuthering Heights
A Brief Analysis of Heathcliff’s Characters in Wuthering Heights

Abstract: This paper discusses several reasons for Heathcliff to form his special characters as follows: the special natural environment and social environment that created the special characters of Heathcliff who was a powerful and villainous man, capable of extreme cruelties. And it was the special characters that doomed his special fate. On the other hand, the love between Heathcliff and Catherine was so overwhelmingly strong that Catherine’s betrayal forced Heathcliff to take the extreme measures to get revenge to Catherine and the society. The writer Emily Bronte lived in such an era when Britain was in the social turbulence of the times. Although Emily Bronte never participated in any campaign, this spirit had affected her. This thesis described the process and the reasons for Heathcliff to form his characters in order to expose how the capitalist society put a man into an evil person. When Heathcliff realized that it was the money and the social position that result in his loss of dignity, especially the love of Catherine. He decided to use cruel punishment or treatment to anyone who had relationship with Catherine or anyone he hated.
Key words: Heathcliff; characters; extreme love and hatred

摘　要：这篇论文阐述了形成希斯克利夫特殊性格的几个原因：第一个同时也是最重要的一个原因是特殊的环境即特殊的自然环境和社会环境造就了他强大，邪恶和极度残忍的性格。就是这种特殊的性格形成了他特殊的命运。另一方面， 凯瑟琳和希斯克利夫之间的爱情是那样强烈以至于凯瑟琳的背叛促使希斯克利夫用极端的手段去报复凯瑟琳和这个社会。作者爱米莉.勃朗特生活在英国社会的动荡时期。尽管她没有参加任何活动，但是当时的思想却影响着她。这个论文描述了希斯克利夫性格形成的原因，通过分析这个原因来揭露资本主义社会怎样把一个人变成一个魔鬼。当希斯克利夫认识到是金钱和地位使他失去了尊严，特别是凯瑟琳的爱时，他就决定用残酷的手段来惩罚所有和凯瑟琳有关的以及他恨的人。
关键词：希斯克利夫；性格；极度的爱和极度的恨；

I. Introduction

1. The background of and the writer
Emily Bronte was one of the most famous women writers in the history of English literature. She was the younger sister of Charlotte Bronte and lived in the moorland village of Haworth, Yorkshire of North England. This bleak wild was the daily environment in which Brontes lived, and then it became the setting of Wuthering Heights. When she was three years old, her mother died. Her father was a church rector and her aunt who fostered the Bronte children after their mother died, was deeply religious. Emily Bronte did not like her aunt’s Christian fervor. Maybe the character of Joseph was based on her aunt. When she grew older, her family sent her to a boarding school to obtain the knowledge. All the surroundings, especially the family misfortunes, the poor life and the bleak village environment made her become reserved, morose, sensitive and solitary. These fostered her tendency to seclusion and wild imagination. Wuthering Heights was the only novel of Emily Bronte. It was published in December 1847. Apart from Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte had created 193 poems. When Emily Bronte wrote this novel, the Great Britain was in the social turbulence of the times, and the English economy was severely depressed. The capitalist society had a rapid development. With the contradiction of the society, a lot of flaws were exposed under the sunshine. The violent social contradiction, the cruel and complex social realities were all mixed together. Although Emily Bronte never joined in any campaign, the disturbed society and the revolt spirit influenced her deeply. Emily Bronte tried to use the artistic form to explain the oppression to the spirit of the human being in the nineteenth capitalist society. She created a real life scene which covered the completely twist, terror and despair. The writer believed that people’s desire for happiness was natural and rational. Most of us had such dream. However, the society restrained the reasonable desire and put the restrained desire into a deformed growth. The bad result was that it made the healthy and positive element change into the ill and negative one, and also broke up the society. Heathcliff was such a man who was twisted by the capitalist society When the warm-hearted Heathcliff suffered the insult and torture, he saw through the cruelty of the life and the society. Then he became a devil. The double characters were formed completely as the result of social oppression.

2. Purpose of the paper
This novel was written in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The writer wanted to expose the cruelty of the society by analyzing the reasons why Heathcliff formed such characters and revealed the distorted human nature in the deformed society. This paper will analyze the reasons for Heathcliff to form his special characters. We should find out the relationship between the special environment first, only in this way can we understand the hero more about his characters and his behaviors. It is the prerequisite for the analysis of Heathcliff’s characters.
Heathcliff had a double character; there are several reasons for him to form the characters. We should analyze the hero’s characters in different views. There are different factors in different environments that would generally lead to the formation of his special characters. Only when we analyze the hero’s characters from the different point of views can we understand more about his characters.
We can also understand Heathcliff’s special characters by analyzing the love between Heathcliff and Catherine. This was not a usual love; it surpassed the love of the average people in our life. It was the love that never changed. Catherine and Heathcliff’s passion was stronger and more lasting than any other emotions displayed in other novels, and it was the major conflicts that structure the plot of the novel. Actually, the betrayed love was another reason for the development of Heathcliff’s characters. Catherine was the sole hope of Heathcliff to live in this world. Catherine’s betrayal made Heathcliff’s extreme love turn into extreme hated, and began his constant revenge. We can say that, it was the betrayed love that made Heathcliff see through the cruel society and decided to use the extreme measures to revenge the society and to revenge everything related to Catherine, and finally he won. Love is the eternal theme. Life is based on the everlasting love. The writer described a special love between Catherine and Heathcliff and led us to have a deep thinking of the life. This thesis wants to analyze the different reasons why Heathcliff formed such characters. The changed characters would expose the complex and cruel society that twisted the human nature, and also displayed the relationship between the environment and human beings. The significance is that we can understand the real reasons of the tragedy, and by analyzing the love between Heathcliff and Catherine, we can have a deep understanding of our life, and we can also analyze the hero’s characters through Heathcliff’s pursuit of love.
The special characters doomed the special fate. The hero’s special characters, the extreme love and the extreme hated doomed his cruelty and the extreme revenge to his lover and the social environment. Such strong characters doomed his miserable fate. Through this ending, we can have a deep thinking of the life. This is one of the most important reasons for me to write this essay. Only by describing how the hero walks into this special destiny can we get the significance of life.
Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights was considered the most peculiar novel in the history of English literature. The writer described a bumpy and rough love between Heathcliff and Catherine to display the oppression to the cruel society to the people and it was the special value of people in that era that distorted the human nature. We wanted to expose the cruelty of the capitalist society and the disruption to the human beings, and analyze the true reasons of Heathcliff’s tragedy. On the other hand, we want to let readers think more about the life by analyzing the love between Heathcliff and Catherine. This tragedy of the love between Heathcliff and Catherine was the tragedy of the society and the era.
All in all, we should take a detailed analysis of Heathcliff’s special characters and the reasons for Heathcliff to form such characters. First, we should briefly narrate the social and natural environment in which the writer and the hero lived. For this is the basic preparation to analyze Heathcliff’s characters. Second, we should analyze his special characters in different views to help us to understand this protagonist more clearly. Third, we should analyze the love between Heathcliff and Catherine. For their love was surpassing our tradition and convention. It was the extreme love that led to the extreme hated. It was the hated that changed Heathcliff’s characters. We should consider all these aspects. Only in this way can we have a deep understanding of the theme.

II. Literature Review

At the beginning, Wuthering Heights suffered a violent criticism from the critic and some of the comments showed the prejudice and suspicion of the novel. This novel had been misunderstood until the late nineteenth century. But in the 20th century especially after 1930, lots of critics regarded Emily Bronte as the greatest novelist among her sisters, and there appeared lots of articles to comment on the writer, Such as R. Crump, Charlotte and Emily Bronte. Maugham: This World’s Ten Greatest Novels. And there were lots of comments on this novel such as Wuthering Heights: a Casebook, and Rod Mengham: Wuthering Heights (penguin critical studies, 1988). At the beginning Wuthering Heights was described as a gloomy, unmoral and full of abnormal state novel. Some critics even said this was a horror and sacking novel and the title should be Withering Heights instead of Wuthering Heights. In addition, the characters of Heathcliff and his extreme love, hate and the violent revenge were not understood by the common people at that time, so it was regarded as a poorly written novel. But now it is often considered as a rarer artistic product even than Jane Eyre. Wuthering Heights is noted for its intense psychological description. And the last meeting between Heathcliff and Catherine is the climax of the novel. It is regarded as “the harshest and most touching”. This work is also noted for its poetic quality. The recognition of the protagonist is different in those comments. The socialists try to understand the novel by analysis of the oppression of the social class. The psychologists try to find the answer through the writer’s mentality and personality. This novel has been studied, analyzed and discussed from every critical perspective, and while the novel’s symbolism, themes, structure, and language will encourage people to explore it, and the popularity may rest on its unforgettable characters. The doomed love between the fiercely passionate Catherina and Heathcliff becomes one of the most haunting love stories in all of literature. In one word, the understandings of the hero are different. Through this we can see that the research to the Wuthering Heights is continuing and the understanding of this novel is more and more profound.

III. Plot Summary

In the winter of 1801, a man named Lockwood rent a house called Thrushcross Grange which was located on a bleak country of England. Here, he met his dour landlord, Heathcliff. He was a rich man and lived in the Wuthering Heights, four miles from Grange. In this stormy country, Lockwood asked his housekeeper, Nelly talk something about Heathcliff and the odd people in the Wuthering Heights. Nelly consented, and Lockwood wrote down the story in his diary. These written recollections were the main part of Wuthering Heights.
One day Mr. Earnshaw came back from Liverpool with a gipsy waif he had rescued from the streets. Mr. Earnshaw gave him a name—Heathcliff, and raised Heathcliff with his own children. At first, Earnshaw’s son Hindly, and Earnshaw’s daughter Catherine detested the dark-skinned Heathcliff, a few days later, Catherine quickly fell in love with him. But Hindly hated him. For after his entering the Earnshaw’s family, he became Mr. Earnshaw’s favorite and was passionately befriended by Catherine. So he often insulted Heathcliff. When old Earnshaw died, Hindly took over the farm and became the master of the Wuthering Heights. He began to keep Heathcliff from playing with Catherine, and treated him as a common laborer. At that time, Heathcliff got a deep hatred to Hindly.
One night, Heathcliff and Catherine wandered to Thrushcross Grange, and met the faromsread master Edgar Linton. From then on, Edgar often visited Wuthering Heights and quickly fell in love with Catherine, at that time Catherine became infatuated with Edgar. The relationship between Catherine and Heathcliff grew more complicated. Finally, Edgar Linton proposed to Catherine. Although she loved Heathcliff, she couldn’t ignore the poverty of Heathcliff. Because Heathcliff was only a servant, if she married Heathcliff, she would be degraded. When Heathcliff found it impossible for him to be united to Catherine, he left Wuthering Heights. Three years later, Heathcliff came back.
When Heathcliff returned, he started to revenge on the people who had wronged him. Because he became a rich man, having a vast wealth, he lent a lot of money to the drunken Hindly, he knew that it would aggravate Hindly’s debts and push him to the hopeless despondency. When Hindly died, Heathcliff became the master of the Wuthering Heights. In order to occupy the Thrushcross Grange, he married Isabella Lincon, whom he treated very cruelly. After seeing Heathcliff, Catherine became ill, and gave birth to a daughter, and died. Heathcliff begged Catherine’s soul to stay with him and haunted him like the ghost, but did not leave him alone in the world. Shortly thereafter, Isabella Linton escaped to London to avoid the torture from Heathcliff and gave birth to Heathcliff’s son, named Linton after her family. Then she kept the little baby with her. Thirteen years passing by, Nelly became the nursemaid of Catherine’s daughter at Thrushcross Grange. Young Catherine was beautiful and willful like her mother. But there was a quiet nature in her characters l