'Wuthering Heights' : Analysis

Résumé du document

Il s'agit d'un commentaire de texte rédigé en Anglais, portant sur un passage donné sur l'oeuvre littéraire 'Wuthering Heights' de E.M Bronte.
Niveau 2ème année LLCE Anglais - Littérature Britannique.

This excerpt is taken from the eleventh chapter of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights, which was published in 1848. This section is set after Heathcliff showed up at Thrushcross Grange and got into a three-side quarrel with Catherine and Edgar. After he was chased off, Catherine remains furious at how Edgar treated him and her mental health quickly deteriorates. It is interesting to notice that this passage is based on three relationships, three different dialogs which represent the escalation of the situation. How does this passage show Catherine's descent into hell? What will be the consequences of it?

Extraits

[...] This mere mentioning of the recent incident is enough to spark off Catherine, who cuts him off and stamps the floor. She herself makes a clear contrast between both of them, using to the metaphor of blood and temperature: she cannot control her hot temper (hot blood), especially at the sight of Edgar's composure and stolidity (cold blood). As a wild, free-spirited woman, who used to roam the moors in her younger years but now lives in a too-quiet environment with a phlegmatic husband, her veins are boiling like steam in a pressure cooker. [...]

[...] Not only is Catherine childish, she is also selfish. She does not care much about her husband's feelings ("Had Edgar never gathered our conversation, he would never have been the worse for and threatens to break her heart to break his and Heathcliff's if Edgar does not indulge her her tantrums, which is some sort of blackmail. We may figure out she does not care a lot either about the child she carries (as the scene is set in September and she delivers her baby in March, she is three-months-pregnant). [...]

[...] No surprise she outlives them all and raises Hareton and then Catherine the younger. But she is incautious as well, since she speaks aloud to Edgar, in the presence of her mistress, who overhears the conversation and suddenly rises up, well alive but looking insane ("her hair flying [ . her eyes flashing, the muscles [ . ] standing out preter-naturally"). Nelly also expects "broken bones, at least", which may be taken as sarcasm. Catherine ends her locking herself in her room, not letting Nelly in. [...]

[...] She remains a quiet servant, not an interlocutor, who could answer back and fully act like when she was triggered at the sight of Heathcliff kissing Isabella in the garden. Although she is used as a messenger to Edgar to talk him into accepting the situation, she does not agree with the method. II. Edgar's peaceful but firm position Instead of trying to calm things down and acting as a mediator, Nelly prefers not to inform her master about the latent conflict as he is about to join with his Catherine, so as not to frighten him. [...]

[...] Her strategy works, since Edgar is effectively frightened and feels remorse. After Nelly sprinkles her mistresse's face with water she refuses to drink, Catherine pretends to faint or be at agony, stiffening her body like a corpse, revulsing her eyes, and looking wan, which strongly contrasts with the red blood on her lips: Edgar shakes with terror. It has actually not taken long for Catherine to give in to her true nature, while Edgar has been unable to resist his wife, just like he only managed to strike Heathcliff in the neck but could not finish him off. [...]