Five Types of Culture Studies

Name: Joshi Toral

Paper: E-E-205-B: Cultural Studies

Topic: Five Types of Culture Studies

SEM: 1, part 2.

Year: 2011-2012

Submitted to,

Dr.Dilip Barad,

Bhavnagar University,

Bhavnagar

·      Introduction:

                   The word culture is so different to pin down; “culture studies” is hard to define.

                             Elaine showalter’s “culture” model of feminine difference “culture studies” is not so much a discrete approach at all, but rather a set of practices.

Ø As Patrick Bran linger has pointed out, culture studies are not.

“A tightly coherent unified movement with a fixed agenda”

“A loosely coherent group of tendencies, issues, and question”

          Arising from the social tarmac of the 1960s. Cultural studies is composed of elements of Marxism, Poststrutralism and Postmodernism, feminism, genderstedies, anthropology, filmthory, urboanstudies and postcoloniclstudies

Ø Five Types of Culture Studies:-

·      British Culture Materialism:-

                                 Culture studies are referred to as “culture materialism” in the later nineteenth century Mathew Arnold sought to read fine the “givens” of British culture.

Edward Burnett Taylor’s pioneening a thropological study primitive culture argued that

“Culture or civilization, taken in its widest ethnographic sense is a complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”

                                  Claude Levi-Strauss influence moved British thinkers to assign “culture” to primitive people, and then with the work of British scholars link Raymond Williams, to attribute culture to the working class as well as the elite. As Williams memorably states:

“There are no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses.”

To appreciate the importance of this revision of “culture” we must situate it within the controlling myth of social and political reality of the British Empire upon which

     “The sun never set”

      In British also Feminism was also important for culture materialist in recognizing how seemingly “disinterested” thought is shaped by power structures such as patriarchy.

·       New historicism:-

Jonathan Swift Laputa-“the whore” men’s when the gave that name to the flying island in the third voyage of Gulliver’s Travels? It is a question that has tantalized readers since the 18^th century.

“If the 1970s could be called the age of Deconstruction.”

                   -Joseph Litvak.

“Some hypothetical survey of late 20^th century criticism might well characterize the 1980s as making the “Return to History,” or perhaps the recovery of the refemt”

“The text is historical, and history textual”

                                                -Michael Warner phrases

“Always histories”

                                                -Frederic Jameson

          As a return to historical scholarship, new historicism concerns itself with extra literary matters letters ideas    films painting medical looking to novel opposing historical tension in a text. New historical seek, “Surprising condenses” that may cross Generic historical and cultural lines in borrowing of metaphor ceremony or popular culture.

          New historicism versus old historicism.

The latter says, Porter show history as

                   “World views magisterially unfolding as a series of tableaux in a film called progress”

          Stephen Greenbelt, a Renaissance scholar and founding editor of the journal Representation may be credited with the coining of the term “New historicism”

“The moment of exchange”

                                      -H.Aram Veeser

          Laputa has at its center a giant lodestone on which the movement of the island depends. But eventfully the control over the feminine that drives Laputa because its own undoing for the men of the island try to restrict their women from traveling below to Barbican the more male impotence threatens Laputa society.

They also reflected the “rabbet-woman.”

·      American Multiculturalism:-

                 In 1965 the Watts race riots drew worldwide attention. The civil Rights act had passed in 1964.and the backlash was well under way in 1965 murders and other atrocities attended the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery. President Lyndon Johnson signed the voting rights act. The “long, hot summer” of 1966 saw. Violent insurrection in Newark.Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, Milwaukee.Atlanta, Sun Francisco the very television seemed ablaze.

          “The black panther party was founded. James Meredith, the first African American student to enroll at the University of Mississippi, was wounded by a white segregationist.

      The also an Interracial marriage was still illegal in many states.

“Every American should understand Mexico from the point of view of the history before the conquest….. No American should graduate from collage without a framework of knowledge that includes at least some construct of Asian history of African history.

·      Postmodernism and Popular Culture:-

Ø Postmodernism:-

Postmodernism, like poststrualism and deconstruction is a critique of the aesthetics of the preceding age, but besides more critique, postmodernism celebrates the very act of dismembering tradition. Postmodernism quests held to be true, arguing that it is all contingent and that most cultural constructions have served the function of empowering members of a dominate social group at the expense of “others.” Beginning in the mid-1980s, postmodernism merged in art, architecture, music, film, literature, sociology, communications, fashion, and other fields.

TV is now hard to distinguish from reality and from television entertainment.

Ø Popular Culture:-

                 There was a time before the 1960s when popular culture was not studied by academics when it was, well, just popular culture. But within American studies programs at first and then later in many disciplines, including, semiotics, rhetoric, literary, criticism, film studies, ethnic studies, and psychoanalytic  approaches, critics examine such auteur media as pulp fiction, popular music, and computer cyber culture. They assess how such factors as ethnicity, race, gender, class age, region, and sexuality popular culture.

        There are fore types of popular cultural analyses:

Ø Production analysis

Ø Textual analysis

Ø Audience analysis

Ø Historical analysis.

·      Postcolonial studies:

Post colonialism refers to a historical phase undergone by third world countries after the decline of colonialism.

Example:

          When countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean separated from the European empires and were left to rebuild themselves

Many third world writers focus on both colonialism and the changes create in a post colonial culture. Among the many challenges facing post colonial writers are the attend both to resurrect there culture and combat the pre-connection about their culture.

Among the most importance figure post colonial feminism is Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak who examine the effect of political independences upon “subaltern” or subprobetniam women is the third world.

·      Conclusion:

First of all it is a increasingly. Clear that by the year 2050 united state will be what demography calls a “majority-minority “population.

       

               

   

Theme,Motifs&symbol in Oliver Twist

Name: Joshi Toral

Paper: E-c-204: The Victorian Literature

Topic: Theme, Motifs and Symbols in Oliver Twist

SEM: 1, part 2.

Year: 2011-2012

Submitted to,

Dr.Dilip Barad,

Bhavnagar University,

Bhavnagar.

·     Theme

Ø The Failure of Charity:-

                           Much of the first part of Oliver Twist challenges the organization of charity run by the church and the government in Dickens’s time. The system Dickens describes was put into place by the poor law of 1834, which stipulated that the poor could only receive government workhouse. Were essentially if they moved into government. The workhouse operated on the principal that poverty was the consequence of laziness and that the dreadful conditions in the workhouse would inspire the poor to better their own circumstances. Yet the economic dislocation of the Industrial Revolution made it impossible for many to do so, and the workhouse did not provide any means for social or economic betterment. Furthermore as Dickens point out the officials who ran the workhouse blatantly violated the values they preached to her poor. Dickens describes with great sarcasm the greed, laziness and arrogance of charitable workers like Mr. Bumble and Mrs. Mann.  

“Being starved by a gradual process in the house or by a quick omit”           

Ø Society and Class :-

           "Society and Class" is one of the central themes of most of Dickens’s novels. In Oliver Twist, Dickens often shows how superficial class structures really are – at the core, everyone’s really the same, regardless of the social class into which they’re born. Dickens also exposes how callous and uncaring Victorian society was – folks just ignored the plight of the less fortunate because they were so self-satisfied, and so convinced that the systems they had in place to take care of the poor were the best and most humane systems possible.

Ø Institutional cruelty:-

The cruelty of institutions and bureaucracies toward the unfortunate is perhaps the preeminent theme of Oliver Twist, and essentially what makes it a social novel. Dickens wrote the book largely in response to the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, which represented the government's both passive and active cruelty to the poor and helpless. Although institutions show both passive and active cruelty in Oliver Twist, active cruelty is more prevalent, a move that serves to exaggerate and thus satirize this cruelty and make it seem intentional.

The cruelty of these institutions, however, is not separated from the cruelty of individuals. Although the parochial board that decides Oliver as future carelessly and without sympathy is largely anonymous, the man in the white jacket generally voices the specific cruel sentiments, so that they are not presented as having come from nowhere, or just from laws, but from the individuals in power. Similarly, Mr. Bumble is often directly involved in the institutional unkindness that Oliver faces. This cruelty is not nameless or faceless; it is just so prevalent that not all the perpetrators can be named.

·      Motifs:-

Ø Disguised or Mistaken Identities:-

                                

The lot of Oliver twist revoles around the various false identities that other characters impose upon Oliver, often for the sake of advancing their own interests Mr. Bumble and the other for workhouse officials insist on portraying Oliver, as something he is not an ungrateful, immoral pauper. Monks does his that Monks himself can claim Oliver’s rightful inheritance. Characters also disguise their own identities when it serves them well to do so. Nancy  pretends to be Oliver’s  middle-class sister in order to get him back to Fagin, while Monks changes his name and poses as a common criminal rather than the heir he really is scenes depicting the  manipulation of clothing indicate how it plays an impotent part in the construction of various character’s identities.

                   Nancy dons new clothing to pass as a middle-class girl, and Fagin strip Oliver of all his upper-class only when every characters identity is know with does the story achieve real closure.

Ø Oliver’s Face:-

Oliver’s face is singled out for special attention at multiple points in the novel. Mr. Sowerberry, charley Bates, and Toby crack it all comment on its particular appeal, and its resemblance to the portrait of Agnes Fleming provides the first alue to Oliver’s identity. The power of Oliver’s physiognomy combined with the facts that Fagin is hideous and Rose is beautiful suggested that in the world of the novel. External appearance usually given a fair impression of a person’s inner character.

·      SYMBOLS:-

Ø Character’s name:-

The name of the characters represents the inner qualities; Oliver-Twist himself is the most obvious example.  The name “Twist” though given by accident alludes to the outrageous reversals of the fortune that he will experience. Rose Maylie’s name is lighthearted reference to his chosen professions of breaking into houses.

Ø Mr. Bumble’s name connotes his bumbling arrogance.

Ø Mrs. Mann’s her look of maternal instinct.

Ø Mr. Grimwig’s his superficial grimness that can be removed as easily as swig.     

Explaining the Definition of Deconstruction by Derrida

Name: Joshi Toral

Paper: E-c-203: Literay Criticiam: Western&Indian Poetics-2

Topic: Explaining the Definition of Deconstruction by Derrida

SEM: 1, part 2.

Year: 2011-2012

Submitted to,

Dr.Dilip Barad,

Bhavnagar University,

Bhavnagar

Deconstruction

·      What is deconstruction?

Although the French philosopher teaches Derrida’s did not invent the term deconstruction. He found lectionary. It was an absolute and archaic need when he first started to used it in the 1960s wooly Allen’s Deconstructing Harry as in academic Jamul. The moue fawns our the urbane Parisian as the man who as the tag time put it, world change not just the way you think about addicting, but every thing about the way think. Deconstruction is sometimes used as a lobed For Clinical correlation and further evaluation what literary studies in general do to poems. Play and novels broking them dream to see how they work the implication often being that as for the child who takes apart their new days on their birthday meaning.  It may not proud passable to put think back together again. Derrida’s influxes in literary studies have been extremely controversial.

·      Deconstruction:

                      Deconstruction resist easy summary. This is Patty because of the breath of Derriere’s interests and Portly because Derides philosophical inspirations come from a traditional and idiom alien to most academic philosopher in Britain and the United states. Let alone to students and professors of literary studies,

          Deconstruction it should already be day is look would, suspiciris world and

Prominently away of the traditional philosophical interest in essences, ideas and abstract logics. It also recognizes the necessity of asking the kinds of auctions which can only be proved philosophically. As Derrida commented in an intrnieag 1968.

         

‘Derrida’s idea of ‘ghost’                      

            .

·      Deconstruction and writing:

      

            Derrida’s reuse of the concept of writing. Derrida’s essay “ Signature event context” (1972) address the difference between written and spoken communication, traditionally distinguished by philosophy- and by common sense- in terms of absence and presence. It seems natural to us that speaking should seem more spontaneous, more immediate, than writing and philosophy, underpinned by the same metaphysical assumptions, has tried to show that because writing can function in the absence of either the sender of a message or its receiver, is a secondary, dative from of oral communication.

          For Levi-Strauss in example analyzed at length in of grammatology the power of writing as a technology of communication comes at a cost.

            “Derrida argues in his book the post card: From Socrates to Freud and Bayous (1980).

            It doesn’t mean that no latter ever arrives or that nothing makes sense- merely that For Clinical correlation and further evaluation there to be communication, there must be the structural possibility of misunderstanding.

·      Deconstruction, literature and philosophy.

                  There are two issues both involve philosophy again.

1 Literary theory and criticism which like all our systems of interpretations and understandings, deepens on philosophical or metaphysical

Assumptions are viler able to deconstruction’s critical side.

2 Literature has an important place in deconstruction’s critical affirmative disruption of philosophy.

                 

                  Deconstruction has been convened by the German philosopher Jorgen Hagerman. For Clinical correlation and further evaluation seeking to reduce philosophy to literature by denying there is such a thing as truth. All philosophy becomes, like literature a mere word game. The American philosopher Richard Retry says something similar, but he sees this as the strength of deconstruction rather than its weakness of deconstruction has given up on the outmoded dream of philosophy as a way of knowing the world.

·      Literature and truth:

                  There is unhappy with the attentive posed by philosophy, and accepted by traditional and Romantic theories of literature, between truth and falsehood, deconstruction has been accused of all kind of terrible things. Much of the humor of

Oscar Wild’s play. The importance of Being Earnest (1895).

Ex. Depends on the comic inversion of the usual ways we interpret the world, ways which are consistent with the underlying philosophical frame work that we have been discussing hear.

Gwendoden remark:

                 

                  In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital things.

              The entire play stages and re-stages this upheaval as a perplexing of front to common an earnest nature, as it a name expresses some essential attribute of that to which it refers.

              But reminds us that there is really no difference between being earnest and being called: Ernest, between being true and simulating truth, at least in world where people believe that names actually ‘mean’ something.

               We laugh at Lady Cracknel’s sudden change of heart regarding Cecily’s suitability as a bride For Clinical correlation and further evaluation her nephew when she hears of her fortune, it is not because such fickleness is not unheard of, but because it is all too familiar.

              The Victorian writer “Thomas Carlyle’s” extraordinary work sartor- Resartus (1831) raises similar problems.

              .

·      Deconstruction and Post Structuralism:

            

              Because it refuses not only philosophical but historical determnalism in the process affirm that deconstruction in the sense of inerrability or resistance, is at work there. The way we organized our experience of temporality in terms or past, present and future is a major target of deconstruction, so to approach Derrida’s work in terms of its precursors will always be some what misleading.

              Two most common strategies For Clinical correlation and further evaluation appropriating deconstruction by tying it to a particular set of influences: Specifically as the successor of structuralism and in a border sense as one of the modernist critics of the enlightenment.

“The Language of criticism” and “The séances of man”.

                 

Published under that title in 1968. Although by the 1970 edition the book’s subtitle had taken presence.

      “The structuralist controversy”

                  Deconstruction has deurlopred out of insights originally made by structuralist.

              The label “post –structuralist” is often applied to Derrida such as the critic Roland Barters’ and the historian Michel Foucault- Derrida had never proclaimed any allegiance to ‘Structuralism’.

 

                 

                             

  

     

             

           

Gender Discrimination in 'Tara'

                         Name: Joshi Toral

Paper: E-c-202: Indian Writing in English-Post Independence

Topic: Gender Discrimination in ‘Tara’

SEM: 1, part 2.

Year: 2011-2012

Submitted to,

Dr.Dilip Barad,

Bhavnagar University,

Bhavnagar.

·      Introduction:

                  Mahesh Dattani frequently takes as his subject the complicated dynamics of the modern urban family. His characters struggle for some kind of freedom and happiness under the weight of tradition. Cultural constructions of gender, and repressed desire. Their dramas are played out on multi level seats where interior and exterior become one, and geographical locations are collapsed in short, his settings are as fragmented as the families who inhabit them.

                 In his plays, Dattani takes on what he calls the “invisible issues” of Indian society. In an interview, Dattani says, you can talk about feminism, because I a way that is accepted. But you can’t talk about gay issues because that is not Indian, doesn’t happen here. You can’ talk about a middle class housewife fantasizing about having sex with the cook or actually having sex life - that isn’t Indian either that is confrontational even if it is Indian.

·      Gender discrimination in ‘Tara’:

                 By pulling taboo subjects out from under the rug and placing them on stage for public discussion, Dattani challenges the constructions of “Indian” and “Indian” as they have traditionally been defined in modern theatre.

         Alyque Padamsee, calls

                  “Mahesh Dattani, as one of the most serious contemporary play wrights. At last we have a play Wright who gives sixty million English” ashes Dattani has presented the bizarre reality of the woman playing second fiddle to man. This play opens with Chandan changed into Dan in order to absolve himself from the guilt of killing his sister. He has to bear the brunt of his grandfather`s and mother`s cruelty .He considers himself responsible for his sister`s death. In this play Dattani plays with the idea of female infanticide that is prevalent among the Gujarat’s and also suggests Patel`s hegemonic patriarchy when he insists that proper division in the gender roles be made Tara gives us a glimpse into the modern society which claims to be liberal and advanced in its thought and action. In a society which claims that its mothers are educated today and have `Devis ` like Durga, Kali, Saraswati , Lakshmi etc whom not only women but men also pay obeisance , differentiate between a male child and a female child. All the propagandas of equality between male and female, equal opportunities to women in all the fields are belied. Dittany’s deep preoccupation with gender issues leads to the emergence of the idea of the twin side to one`s self –quite literally embodied in one body and the separation that follows Mahesh Dattani mentioned in one of his interviews with Lakshmi Subramanian:

``I see Tara as a play about the male self and female self. The male self is being preferred in all cultures .The play is about the separation of send the resultant angst``

This is why the play generates a death like response from Tara when she learns the truth, she was discriminated against, because of her gender, but not by her father- it was Bharart`s decision that deprived her of what she wanted more than anything else in the world- a second leg.Bharati`s father further strengthened his indulgence for male grandchild by leaving his property after his demise to Chandan and not a single penny to Tara.

Chandan and Tara`s maternal grandfather was a wealthy man. He was in politics and came very close to becoming the Chief Minister. His will is a testament of the kind of treatment that is meted out to girls in Indian society.Mr. Patel and Chandan are talking,

``PATEL. He [grandfather] left you a lot of money.

CHANDAN. And Tara?

PATEL. Nothing

CHANDAN. Why?

PATEL It was his money. He could do what he wanted with it.

It is noteworthy that discrimination against Tara continues even after her death. Chandan, who was always interested in writing, and who has come to England for higher studies, has transferred into Dan .He turns the story he writes into his own tragedy. Dan apologizes to Tara for doing this ``Forgive me, Tara .Forgive me for making it my tragedy. ``

·      Conclusion:

                 Mahesh Dattani let her characters evolved somewhat different. Mahesh Dattani’s play are different from others in language, subject matter and he also deal with social problem.

                  Mahesh Dattani’s plats are

 “Man to be performed not read”.   

Theme,Motif&symbols in Wuthering heights

Name: Joshi Toral

Paper: E-c-201: The Romantic Literature

Topic: Theme, Motif and symbols in Wuthering Heights

SEM: 1, part 2.

Year: 2011-2012

Submitted to,

Dr.Dilip Barad,

Bhavnagar University,

Bhavnagar

·      Introduction:-

                             Wuthering Heights is written by a Emily Bronte. Wuthering Heights is a gothic novel also realist fiction Wuthering Heights publication in 1847.

                             Today, Wuthering Heights has a secure position in the canon if world literature.

                             Emily Bronte is raved as one of the late eighteenth century, a style of literature that featured supernatural encounters, crumbling ruins, moonless night, and grotesque imagery, seeking to create effects of mystery and fear.

·      Theme:-

vThe Destructiveness of a Love That Never Changes:-

Catherine and Heathcliff’s passion for one another seems to be the center of Wuthering Heights, given that it is stronger and more lasting than any other emotion displayed in the novel, and that it is the source of most of the major conflicts that structure the novel’s plot. As she tells Catherine and Heathcliff’s story, Nelly criticizes both of them harshly, condemning their passion as immoral, but this passion is obviously one of the most compelling and memorable aspects of the book. It is not easy to decide whether Brontë intends the reader to condemn these lovers as blameworthy or to idealize them as romantic heroes whose love transcends social norms and conventional morality. The book is actually structured around two parallel love stories, the first half of the novel centering on the love between Catherine and Heathcliff, while the less dramatic second half features the developing love between young Catherine and Hareton. In contrast to the first, the latter tale ends happily, restoring peace and order to Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. The differences between the two love stories contribute to the reader’s understanding of why each ends the way it does.

Moreover, Catherine and Heathcliff’s love is based on their shared perception that they are identical. Catherine declares, famously, “I am Heathcliff,” while Heathcliff, upon Catherine’s death, wails that he cannot live without his “soul,” meaning Catherine. Their love denies difference, and is strangely asexual. The two do not kiss in dark corners or arrange secret trysts, as adulterers do. Given that Catherine and Heathcliff’s love is based upon their refusal to change over time or embrace difference in others, it is fitting that the disastrous problems of their generation are overcome not by some climactic reversal, but simply by the inexorable passage of time, and the rise of a new and distinct generation. Ultimately, Wuthering Heights presents a vision of life as a process of change, and celebrates this process over and against the romantic intensity of its principal characters.

vThe Precariousness of Social Class

As members of the gentry, the Earnshaws and the Lintons occupy a somewhat precarious place within the hierarchy of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British society. At the top of British society was the royalty, followed by the aristocracy, then by the gentry, and then by the lower classes, who made up the vast majority of the population. Although the gentry, or upper middle class, possessed servants and often large estates, they held a nonetheless fragile social position. The social status of aristocrats was a formal and settled matter, because aristocrats had official titles. Members of the gentry, however, held no titles, and their status was thus subject to change. A man might see himself as a gentleman but find, to his embarrassment, that his neighbors did not share this view. A discussion of whether or not a man was really a gentleman would consider such questions as how much land he owned, how many tenants and servants he had, how he spoke, whether he kept horses and a carriage, and whether his money came from land or “trade”—gentlemen scorned banking and commercial activities.

Considerations of class status often crucially inform the characters’ motivations in Wuthering Heights. Catherine’s decision to marry Edgar so that she will be “the greatest woman of the neighborhood” is only the most obvious example. The Lintons are relatively firm in their gentry’ status but nonetheless take great pains to prove this status through their behaviors. The Earnshaws, on the other hand, rest on much shakier ground socially. They do not have a carriage, they have less land, and their house, as Lockwood remarks with great puzzlement, resembles that of a “homely, northern farmer” and not that of a gentleman. The shifting nature of social status is demonstrated most strikingly in Heathcliff’s trajectory from homeless waif to young gentleman-by-adoption to common laborer to gentleman again (although the status-conscious Lockwood remarks that Heathcliff is only a gentleman in “dress and manners”).

·      Motifs

v Doubles

Brontë organizes her novel by arranging its elements—characters, places, and themes—into pairs. Catherine and Heathcliff are closely matched in many ways, and see themselves as identical. Catherine’s character is divided into two warring sides: the side that wants Edgar and the side that wants Heathcliff. Catherine and young Catherine are both remarkably similar and strikingly different. The two houses, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, represent opposing worlds and values. The novel has not one but two distinctly different narrators, Nelly and Mr. Lockwood. The relation between such paired elements is usually quite complicated, with the members of each pair being neither exactly alike nor diametrically opposed. For instance, the Lintons and the Earnshaws may at first seem to represent opposing sets of values, but, by the end of the novel, so many intermarriages have taken place that one can no longer distinguish between the two families.

.

vThe Conflict Between Nature and Culture

In Wuthering Heights, Brontë constantly plays nature and culture against each other. Nature is represented by the Earnshaw family and by Catherine and Heathcliff in particular. These characters are governed by their passions, not by reflection or ideals of civility. Correspondingly, the house where they live—Wuthering Heights—comes to symbolize a similar wildness. On the other hand, Thrushcross Grange and the Linton family represent culture, refinement, convention, and cultivation.

 However, Brontë tells her story in such a way as to prevent our interest and sympathy from straying too far from the wilder characters, and often portrays the more civilized characters as despicably weak and silly. This method of characterization prevents the novel from flattening out into a simple privileging of culture over nature, or vice versa. Thus in the end the reader must acknowledge that the novel is no mere allegory.

_{·       Symbols}

Symbols are objects, characters, figures, and colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.

vMoors

The constant emphasis on landscape within the text of Wuthering Heights endows the setting with symbolic importance. This landscape is comprised primarily of moors: wide, wild expanses, high but somewhat soggy, and thus infertile. Moorland cannot be cultivated, and its uniformity makes navigation difficult. It features particularly waterlogged patches in which people could potentially drown. (This possibility is mentioned several times in Wuthering Heights.) Thus, the moors serve very well as symbols of the wild threat posed by nature. As the setting for the beginnings of Catherine and Heathcliff’s bond (the two plays on the moors during childhood), the moorland transfers its symbolic associations onto the love affair.

vGhosts

Ghosts appear throughout Wuthering Heights, as they do in most other works of Gothic fiction, yet Brontë always presents them in such a way that whether they really exist remains ambiguous. Thus the world of the novel can always be interpreted as a realistic one. Certain ghosts—such as Catherine’s spirit when it appears to Lockwood in Chapter III—may be explained as nightmares. The villagers’ alleged sightings of Heathcliff’s ghost in Chapter XXXIV could be dismissed as unverified superstition. Whether or not the ghosts are “real,” they symbolize the manifestation of the past within the present, and the way memory stays with people, permeating their day-to-day lives.

.