英语专业毕业论文The analysis of the character in Wuthering Heights.doc

IntroductionSince the publication of Wuthering Heights, it has long been under great dispute for its tragic love and the much-criticized character Heathcliff. The character of Heathcliff and his weird personalities has been a major research direction since 1880s.Since the 80s19th, scholars started to put their focus on the analysis of Heathcliffs distortion and the arguments could be summered up to such as the reasons that his living alone in other's home without the care from family, the blow of the betrayed love and his miserable background and so on. But such arguments have their limitations as they just try to analyze the factors of forming Heathcliffs tragic characters in only one or two aspects or take the external factor as the primary one to cause Heathcliff and Catherines tragic love. Although Wuthering Heights is a novel which deals with tragic love, but the influence of love attaches importance to the tragic characters of Heathcliff. In other words, as love is the soul and theme in the novel, it may have a deep relationship between Heathcliffs tragic characters and his tragic love with Catherine. Yet many critics take sorted of factors as the primary factors which form Heathcliffs tragic characters, the author of the present paper argues that the primary factor of forming Heathcliff's tragic characters is related to the tragic love between Heathcliff and Catherine and Catherine's choice of love ultimately forms Heathcliffs distortion. The thesis is composed of four parts. The first part makes a brief review of previous studies about Wuthering Heights. The second part and the third part are devoted to the analysis of Heathcliff and Catherines tragic love and both external and internal factors of forming their tragic love. The last part will give a summary of this thesis.1 Twisted soul Heathcliff1.1 Two generation of person's loveEmilyBronte is world-famous for her wonderful novel Wuthering Heights. Her novel is famous for its love theme, filled with mysterious breath, the extraordinary artistic charm tightly attracted readers heart. Most of its readers intend to allocate it into “horror fiction”, because there are too many horrible plots and terrified atmosphere which shade its tender emotion to some degree. No one can escape the creepy feeling from the content; however, it is just this point that really attract its readers. From another way of speaking, the background of a love story mixed with many horrible feelings. Each love story has its romantic color, no matter how gloomy or tragic it is, also contains a soulful and beautiful content. Then we can also find something special from the novel. The novel tells the story of all kinds of characters and emotion, yet the love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, and how this unresolved passion eventually destroyed both themselves and many people around them. First, it is a love tragedy from which Emily presented a life of a deformed society and draws the outline of humanity that was warped by the abnormal society, and a series of terrible events caused by it. From this angle we can know that the romantic ingredient is rare especially. This novel will give a detailed comment on the Romanism in Wuthering Heights by analyzing some main characters and the environment, as well as the whole background of this novel. And more is very worth for us to feel the sweet or bitter of love. This novel gives its readers a lot of thinking space.1.2 A little boy changed into an angry manHeathcliff his name is made up of two English words "heath" (steep) and "cliff" (cliff) in English，only from his name can let us feel a bit cruel and cold. He played a boy was adopted by home, without a background in the society. After the old master died, Catherines brother abuse and oppression him that made his personal character into abnormal condition, hostile to humans, even hostile to the world. At the beginning of the novel about the tree of wilderness, and it is distorted the abnormal condition, it is the most intonate, natural generated. In the novel, the description of the nature occupied an important position of the novel, the author through the person's personality characteristics, the heart of the nature of the storm wind storm corresponding description, shows the close relationships between man and nature. Nature is the external environment of survival as people, not only affects the character's psychological and character, and the performance of the natural phenomena are commonly used to show the characters inner storm. Heathcliff is produced under the complex environment of a very complex character. He is the civilization of the social vision, a foreigner of capitalist society, it means and British ideal personality completely different spirit temperament. Heathcliff is all environments by, he is the tree of wilderness, efforts to survive, resisting of wind and rain. His character temperament and full of storm deserts consistent and is cruel, ruthless, violent but vibrant. In the growth process setbacks, by the abuse and his desire and the emotion of setbacks, and gradually made him into a “Villain hero ". The old master died, his son becomes the master of Wuthering heights, this change made Heathcliff drop to a servant, his poor again. The difference is, he now has the love of Catherine, he put all his love to Catherine, in addition, and he has nothing, even dignity. For a man living in this kind of environment, Catherine almost is his life, is his life of all hope. He in the wild fluctuations between and civilization, as Catherine in Wuthering heights and thrush farmstead, in heathcliff and Linton wandering between. The latter reflects the civilized and harmonious order made with relative frenzy, troubled soul, and the passion is full of human nature of the fusion of nature storm. However, this love and did not last long, Catherine subject to the secular society, subject to the temptation of money, finally decided to marry the grange master-Linton. When Heathcliff hear Catherine said: "marry to Heathcliff will reduce my identity", with Gnashing grieved this a few word to describe his then the mood also is not thought. At the night of the left Wuthering heights, Heathcliff had nothing, except for a passion to torture enough sorrow, was a desperate love to body and mind every tear broken. The hearts of that Catherine heathcliff life finally love disappear, strong love into the intense hate, strong hate into his strong personality-hard, defiant, and cruel. 1.3 Heathcliffs cruelty, selfish and hatredAs is known to all Heathcliff loved Catherine so much. he have tried all his best to make his beloved Catherine happy. However, his love drove him into cruel and made his heart full of hatred. He changed his strong but frustrated love to cruelty. When he became rich, he changed into a powerful, fierce and cruel man, he acquired a fortune and used his extraordinary powers of will to acquire both Wuthering Heights and Thrush cross Grange, the estate of Edgar Linton. He killed Hindley and also took revenge on Catherine, Harleton, Cathy and Linton. He loved Catherine so much, but he didnt think for her, in his heart love made his heartbroken. So he is also very selfish. He abused Isabella who was the sister-in-law of Catherine just to win Thrush cross Grange. So Heathcliff himself was a contradiction. He had natural kindness, but he became very cruel when he returned Wuthering Heights and started taking revenge on others; He had strong love of Catherine in the inner heart, and he loved Catherine more than himself, but he didnt think for Catherines life, and made Catherine heartbroken. His heart was full of hatred, so he took revenge on people whom he hated. Heathcliffs inner world changed with the unfair life, misery experience and lost of her beloved Catherine. Catherines choice of love, her fondness of wealth, position and social distinction in other words, are the primary reason for forming Heathcliffs tragic characters.1.4 A success revenge Three years after, Heathcliff returned with money, he was no longer a poor boy but a creature of revenge. He revenged himself not merely on Hindley and Linton but also on their relatives. He made all of them suffer even more than he had. He married Isabella but treated her cruelly. He forced little Cathy to marry his dying son-and seized the right of inheritance to the property of Lintons family at the same time. Isabella is innocent; in fact, to all of this, she is just a victim of this insane revenge. Heathcliff has Hindley and his son Hareton in his power and treats Hindley brutally as a sort of revenge for Hindleys cruel treatment of himself during his childhood. Revenge remains Heathcliffs only margin of reference for its survival of self. From another aspect, Heathcliff is to be perceived as absolute, illimitable lover. When Heathcliff brings his plan of revenge to fulfillment, or before it is virtually completed, he turns his energy back to Catherine. He is driven by, in a true sense, a destructible passion for Catherine, whose hold on him does not diminish even after her death. Heathcliff can be regarded as a faithful but tortured love. The love between Catherine and Heathcliff is bound to fail because it is against the conventional moral value. Heathcliff and Catherine are receivers of the irrational as they seek to abandon themselves to the confining world of conventions. Their love goes beyond the ordinary passion of traditional romance to encompass elements of violence, revenge, primitive and a longing for absolute freedom. Above all, the tragedy of Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff and Catherine are not only the productions of their destructive natures but as the victims of a fate beyond their control. And Catherine clearly shows that she considers her marriage a convenience, but not a matter that takes her away from Heathcliff. The author, Emily Bronte, does not blame them, but portrays them with cruel truth. Catherine naively thinks that she could both own Edgars fame, social state and Heathcliffs love, on the contrary, her choice of love becomes the detonation cord that forms Heathcliffs tragic characters.2 Women's confused Catherine2.1Woman's emotional confusionWuthering Heights is a touching love story, our feelings is changed by the characters of the novel. There are all kinds of emotional conflicts, and more in the novel, we can see that the woman's emotional confusions, and can be also called the emotional confusions. Heathcliff can be considered her raw emotions, because at the start of most shows raw emotions between them, this emotion is really pure and free from outside interference. And Linton can be as her emotions in the real world. Because she can give her the real life she wants. Therefore we can say that Catherine's choice is between ideal and reality. At the beginning of the novel, people appears to be living in the simple life, without modification, treason, when Catherine as a child, she is rebellious, and can not be uncontrolled. She often against her father. After the death of her father, she continued to resist brother's authority. In the process, she and Heathcliff gradually fall in love each other. Hindley hate Heathcliff, didnt give him the opportunity of education, caused he became a "savage". When Catherine grows up, she began to get tired of the life without a purpose. When she touched Linton's civilization life, she was attracted, she believe this life is she longing for. She wants to live in rich world. So she changed her mind to marry Linton. She said she is going to be rich, and become one of the greatest women of the near place. She believes that Linton's life is the life she wanted. She chooses him as her husband also means choosing a lifestyle. She chose him as her husband; Linton can give her social status and economic status, so as to meet the practical needs of her in the real life. She betrayed her real love. So at last she did not happy in living rich world.2.2Catherine's loveIn the heart of Catherine, although she used to betray Heathcliff because of the old conception, which will be discussed later, Heathcliff makes a quite important position of the novel. Her love towards her husband and Heathcliff is different in her real heart. In that rainy night when Heathcliff leaves home, Catherine exposes her in the rain doggedly and cries so hard. So we can say she loves Heathcliff.Her monologue tells us who her true lover is: "In this world, my biggest sorrow is Heathcliff's grief, and from the beginning, I have realized and felt it. In my life, he is the center of my thoughts. If all of the other things were destroyed, but he still stays, I can continue to live; if all other things to stay but him, the world for me will become a very strange place. I am not like a part of it. My love towards Edgar is like the leaves in woods: I completely know, the coming of winter changes trees while time changes leaves. But to Heathcliff, my love is as the constant rock, although it seems that it can not give you much pleasant, but those a bit is necessity. Nelly, I am Heathcliff, he lives in my heart forever and forever.” She misses Heathcliff every second, she says: "He will never know how much I love him: we know and feel the love from the very beginning because he knows me better than myself. Whatever our souls are made from, his and mine are the same.” In the novel, Catherine's love is not presented in combination of life emotionally, but through the body and the soul struggling painfully the expression is performed. Catherine loves Linton in her empirical ago, while transcendental ago is Heathcliff. In order to realize the value of self transcendentalism, she chooses to marry Linton. To marry handsome and rich Linton, she can become a lady, living in a happy life of the Thrush cross Grange, isn't it a heaven on earth? However, her soul was struggling to moan "I know clearly I was wrong, if in heaven I will be painful desperately, my marrying Edgar Linton is like in paradise in that kind of ill-match.” If she marries Heathcliff, Heathcliff will intermittently suffer from the oppression and torture of her brother Hindly. It will be the biggest hurt in Heathcliff's life, as he is such an ambitious man. To Catherine, the meaning of the whole world is her love to Heathcliff, and to prove her deeply love, help Heathcliff to raise his head again and avoid the insult from her brother, she married Linton only for her money, with her mind breaking the spirit of soul. This poignancy and noble love is the transcendence of perceptual individuals, love is a thing we can not know what it really is. Embodies a kind of transcendentalism romantic temperament. Transcendentalism love in the world of deductive experience is only tragedy. Catherine's "break" and premature death tore Heathcliff's soul in pieces. Heathcliff is almost mad in Catherines death, night