Wuthering Heights & How to Read Literature Like a Professor

January 30, 2021 by Essay Writer

Books can be very confusing sometimes (especially a book written in the late 1840’s). It’s not deniable that a highschool student can get bored reading these sort of books (the oldies) because not only are most of them really hard to understand but they’re also very descriptive about things sometimes, which can be overwhelming. Well, apparently it’s not just the writer trying to waste ink, it’s actually there with a purpose. How To Read Literature Like A Professor does really well explaining how basically these details matter. It does it by enlightening the reader with other examples in literature. This helps the reader understand what more there is going on in ANY literature work. Making the reading more interesting and more relatable to the reader even if the book is over a century old. In the book Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte’s factors of her specific choice of how and what she decided to describe and write, is what makes her book be able to have intertextuality with How To Read Literature Like A Professor. Wuthering Heights uses the weather and geography to tell the main conflicts without directly addressing them, this confirms the textual analyzation from How To Read Literature Like A Professor in which weather and geography are described for a reason.

Very early on in Wuthering Heights, the reader finds a very lengthy description of Wuthering Heights. Wuthering Heights is not described very pretty like a beach house, it is actually described as dark, twisty and cold. In the beginning of the novel, Lockwood goes to take a visit to Wuthering Heights and is not very welcomed the first time, in fact Lockwood actually describes the feeling of the unwelcoming sentiment of ‘go to deuce’ (apparently is the oldies way of saying go to hell). But yet, decides to go back after having an unwelcoming experience. On his second visit he is not very welcome (again) and is faced with the conflict of the snowstorm, which ends up getting him stuck there, forcing him to spend the night there. This is very early on in the book and the story hasn’t really officially started but Bronte already gave the reader one of the main conflicts. In how to read literature like a professor, snow can mean as much as rain, there is many ways rain can be seen as, in this case rain/snow can be seen as an obstacle or barrier that prevents Lockwood from getting out of there, almost like pulling him towards Wuthering Heights. This foreshadows the inner conflict of how Mr. Heathcliff is basically trapped in that place. Mr. Heathcliff is never really over the love of his life; Cathy. Even when Mr. Heathcliff does go away for 3 years he ends up coming back, due to the inner conflict with himself. Bronte started this novel by having it start in a future time rather than the actual time of the story, she did this to foreshadow through the weather the future conflict.

There is only two main settings in the novel; Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. These two settings are very different but both have ties to them. Like said before, Wuthering Heights is dark, twisty and cold. In the other hand, Thrushcross is the exact opposite, for example, it is more welcoming than Wuthering Heights. The geography of both places is very different and Bronte takes the time to discuss the geography for a reason. Wuthering Heights is on top of a hill where it is exposed to really bad weather where even the limbs need to stretch out because they crave the sun. Meanwhile, Thrushcross Grange is described as very beautiful and upper class like and is set to be at the valley below the hill. In other words, Thrushcross Grange is not in the stormy weather like Wuthering Heights but rather in a beautiful valley. Bronte also lets the reader know that these places are exactly four miles apart, suggesting that there is not much distance between them. In How To Read Literature Like A Professor, there is a suggestion on how geography can frequently fit into the plot of the story. Bronte writes this information for a reason, she does this to give the reader the information of the conflict of social class and how these two places have relativity. The reader can analyze the difference of classes by the geography of these two places. The home of Edgar Linton is situated in a beautiful valley and a very peace like setting, this represents the upper class. The home of Mr. Heathcliff, Wuthering Heights, is in a hill with terrible weather conditions, that shows that even though now he has money, he is still seen in the lower social class and not in the upper class like the Thrushcross Grange (aka the Lintons), this is specially seen in the eyes of Cathy.

Wuthering Heights and How To Read Literature Like A Professor show how both, weather and geography are the intertextuality between the two books. Bronte does this by writing what may seem unnecessary descriptions but, in reality, she is informing the reader of the bigger conflicts in a different way that is not necessarily direct. The book How To Read Literature Like A Professor, helps the reader look for these conflicts that are not exactly very direct to find, the book does this by providing examples of other literature works with similar descriptions and walks the reader through the thought process in order to understand more about Wuthering Heights.

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