Wuthering Heights Commentary

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Oral Presentation

Thesis Statement – Argument:

Wuthering heights is the most realistic novel that I have read so far. People argue that it’s a romantic master piece but id say it’s a more realistic master piece than its romantic. This is because bronte introduces the romance in an original, genuine and different way. how different?

 this passage explains that. In The 40 between my hands bronte shows the readers the other side of Catherine. Not the one that heathcliff and  we as readers would love. The other Catherine, the evil rude repulsive one. Bronte shows the bad Catherine on two different levels,  the way she addresses nelly in a petulant way and treats her rudely. And also the way she talks to heathcliff. This refers back to the point kristofer made earlier in his presentation about relationships.

  1. The way she addresses nelly and speaks to her in a very disrespectful way
  1. Catherine degrades nelly and disrespects her and shows literally no appreciation for nellys services. Infact she thanks nelly by "jerking her head away from her hands" and asking nelly to "leave her alone".
    and then when she doesn’t need her services she asks her to "take herself and her dusters off ".
  2. its clear that the way Catherine treats nelly is very inhumane and unreasonable to us  as modern readers. We might hate that fact. But as an English middle class reader at that time we wouldn’t really have much sympathy for nelly and we wouldn’t really consider this to be a problem since nelly is just a servant and the understanding at that time was that high class have the right to disrespect those who are lower than them and bronte intended to show that in the novel because bronte wanted to reflect the reality of life in that area at that time. So its not just a romantic novlel it also reflects social issues.
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  1. Also as I mentioned it was understood that high class can disrespect lower class and so we Catherine who is supposed to be a lady after spending 3 months at the lintons thinks that she has to disrespect Nelly inorder to achieve that level. But the truth is a lady must be noble and polite, but that’s not what we see from the way Catherine addresses Nelly. And so we see her tell Nelly "when company are in the house servants don’t commence scouring and cleaning in the room where they are"

  1. However, since nelly ...

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