Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte – Analysing Quotes

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

Note: Students can annotate the following quotations with relevant features and terminology on an interactive whiteboard. This activity works best when given as feedback with first drafts and could be used/adapted to help students develop more detailed textual analysis of quotations already chosen for any Wuthering Heights essay.

Analysing quotations

Whenever you are writing about a text for GCSE English (e.g. the AQA A Prose Study essay), you should support your argument with evidence. For example, a discussion of the outsider’s view of Wuthering Heights given by Mr Lockwood in Chapters 1, 2 and 32 could contain quotations which you then analyse to show how he makes many mistakes about the place and the characters.

Chapter 1: examples

Mr Lockwood expects the dogs at Wuthering Heights to be pets but – the dog ‘was sneaking wolfishly to the back of my legs…’ • the verb sneaking suggests an element of surprise or ambush • the adverb wolfishly compares the dog to a wild animal.

Mr Lockwood assumes his landlord Heathcliff is a respectable gentleman but - in the sitting room were ‘sundry villainous old guns, and a couple of horse-pistols’ • specific reference to weapons suggests this may be a violent household • the adjective villainous suggests the weapons are connected to crime.

Mr Lockwood is renting the isolated Thrushcross Grange in Yorkshire because - he is running away from ‘a most fascinating creature: a real goddess’. His language reveals he is threatened by women and doesn’t relate to them as people… • the superlative and adjective show he sees women as special, perfect • the noun choices show he sees women as above being human.

Chapter 2: practice

Now analyse these quotations from chapter 2 and think about how Brontë presents Mr Lockwood as jumping to conclusions about the place, characters and atmosphere of Wuthering Heights whilst revealing a lot about his himself and his attitudes:

1. The sitting room is a ‘huge, warm, cheerful apartment’. 2. Catherine has ‘small features, very fair; flaxen ringlets, or rather golden, hanging loose on her delicate neck…’ 3. Hareton’s description: ‘his thick, brown curls were rough and uncultivated, his whiskers encroached bearishly over his cheeks…’ 4. Lockwood says ‘The vehemence of my agitation brought on a copious bleeding at the nose.’

Analysing quotations from chapter 32

You should be able to show, through your analysis of quotations that: 1. Wuthering Heights has changed when Mr Lockwood returns almost a year later. 2. Mr Lockwood hasn’t changed, despite now knowing the whole story (except for the death of Heathcliff), of Wuthering Heights.

Analyse the following quotations, commenting on word choice, punctuation, literary techniques and what Brontë reveals about Lockwood as an outsider:

Worked example:

‘I turned away and made my exit, rambling leisurely along, with the glow of a sinking sun behind…’

• we are reminded it is now September, harvest time, symbolic of reaping the benefits of Heathcliff no longer being alive • it is dusk, signalling that Brontë is coming towards the end of her story • ‘the glow of sun’ is an example of pathetic fallacy and prepares us for warmer emotions at Wuthering Heights.

Practice

1. ‘A fragrance of stocks and wall flowers, wafted on the air, from amongst the homely fruit-trees.’ 2. “ ‘Con-trary!’ said a voice, as sweet as a silver bell.” 3. ‘I bit my lip in spite, at having thrown away the chance I might have had of doing something besides staring at its smiling beauty.’ 4. ‘feeling very mean and malignant, I skulked round to seek refuge in the kitchen.’ 5. “ ‘Heathcliff dead?’ I exclaimed, astonished.”

Can you add any relevant quotations of your own?