Email: reecejordan98@hotmail.co.uk
Total Article : 168
About Me:18-year-old sixth form student, studying English Literature, History and Government and Politics. My articles will broadly cover topics from the current affairs of politics to reviews of books and albums, as well as adding my own creative pieces, whether it be short fiction or general opinion.
It was not the fall from grace, as is depicted in the Bible, that caused the deterioration of her psyche, but rather her fall into grace.
Volume 1 ends with Lockwood thinking whether the “daughter turned out a second edition of the mother”, thus underpinning the second volume. With Cathy’s derisory remarks towards Hareton’s lack of education and Linton reducing her to merely singing, it seems as though Cathy 2 would “turn out a second edition of the mother”. However, it is the ending of the novel that offers a portion of hope, of regeneration – the butterfly from the caterpillar. In chapter 32, towards the end of the novel, Nelly’s story has finished and Lockwood is walking up to the Heights “with the glow of a sinking sun behind, and the mild glory of a rising moon in front – one rising, and the other brightening”, which initiates the notion of a ‘new day’. Lockwood walks in and hears that Cathy is teaching Hareton the word “contrary”, and this is apt; this scene is ‘contrary’ to that from the first volume – there is “homely fruit trees”, “a fragrance of stock and wall flowers” and “unobstructed admittance”. It is then revealed that the two have fallen in love in the dynamic of “pupil and teacher”, a relationship of dual respect and nourishment.
We are later told that apple trees have recently been grown – “dwarf apple trees [were in] full bloom” in their “little garden”. This image is similar to that of the book of Genesis, with Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. This biblical story was founded on the creation of the world, and its inhabitants, and therefore lends to the argument that Bronte perceived this creation at the end of her novel to be the ‘butterfly’ the ‘new world, and the world before to be the caterpillar. What is poignant is that this metamorphosis, this ‘new world’, where the hierarchy of men and women is blurred, where education and learning flourish, where there is “unobstructed admittance” to such relationships never came about in her lifetime. We would have to wait almost 150 years for such a new creation, new ‘Eden’ to emerge, where women have ownership over property, and are not compelled into a loveless marriage due to wealth and status.
0 Comment:
Be the first one to comment on this article.