The Purpose of this Blog

Your task on this blog is to write a brief summary of what we learned in class today. Include enough detail so that someone who was ill or missed the class can catch up with what they missed. Over the course of the term, these 'class scribe' posts will grow to be a guide for the course, written by students for students.

With each post ask yourself the following questions:
1) Is this good enough for our guide?
2) Will your post enable someone who wasnt here to catch up?
3) Would a graphic/video/link help to illustrate what we have learned?

Monday, 13 September 2010

13/09/2010- Wuthering Heights.

We started off the lesson with Kate Bush's disturbingly addictive song, Wuthering Heights. It is sung from Catherine's point of view, as she pleads to be let in through Heathcliff's window.



Not the actual video to the one we observed in class but this version truly captures the longing emotion through her facial expressions to demonstrate Catherine's emotions.
We then discussed the modern adaptations of Wuthering Heights such as the movie:



and whether or not the song just like the book is relatively 'Gothic'.

"Its hard to give a clear answer, as Wuthering Heights does have elements of the Gothic, but they are not clear and vivid enough to be categorised as a Gothic novel"
"Why is that? What about the dream? It involves a ghost doesn't it? so it must be Gothic?"
"Sure, but that could just be a dream."
echo's of 'yeah..' follows..

Its hard to say that Wuthering Heights is a Gothic novel, because it contains a great deal of realism. The story itself is based upon a tiresome love triangle and endless family disputes, factors which is present in our society today. By throwing in Gothic elements such as isolation, unattainable love, association of the supernatural etc. this blurs the lines between it being Gothic and not.

Then, we were put in groups of three and were given small cards which had key quotes on them and our task was to categorise them in any order which best reflected the book;
- Realism= social class/ family disputes
- Gothic= pathetic fallacy/ personification/ elements of the Gothic e.g. ghosts
- Romance= love/ exaggeration of emotions/ excessiveness
- Isolation= Wuthering Heights from the rest of society and the characters also confined by the 'moors'.

We then moved on to exploring the layering narrations of the book. This questions the reliability of the storey line as Nelly's version may have been changed by Lockwood's version.
"Just like Chinese whispers!"
Exactly. Bronte has probably done this to reflect the complication of the story itself and to warn the reader to reserve direct judgement.

HOMEWORK (Mr Sadgrove):
- Read article from e-magazine= "Lockwood a suitable guide?" narrative voice in Wuthering Heights.

Questions:
- What are the authors key points about Lockwood?
- What are Lockwood's failings as character/ narrator?
- How does Lockwood present himself? Is this realistic?

DUE MONDAY 20th
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