Wowzer. Sandra Gilbert's, Emily Bronte's Bible of Hell opened my eyes to a lot of interesting parallels between the novel Wuthering Heights and for the most part the religious realm, but also between nature and culture.
First, I will begin with some of the more confusing aspects of this reading. Consistently, Susan makes parallels between Catherine and HeathCliff as characters. Often she ties in the fact that HeathCliff is "female in his monsrosity", to Catherine's feminine personality. For me anyways I always thought of HeathCliff as representing manhood and masculinity in this novel. Which also is confusing because they compare HeathCliff to Satan and Catherine to Eve; which makes sense and has a lot of validity, but when i envision satan I believe in a masculine empowerment, one that for me HeathCliff represents throughout Wuthering Heights. I have absolutely no reason to believe that HeathCliff shows any representation of femininity; He's rough, mean, manipulative(maybe female quality?hah), self-empowering, big in stature, dark, twisted; and overall just manly, probably even has a lot of chest hair to go along with his manliness.
When First reading this, she talks a lot about a Miltonic View; one which after researching and looking into makes a heck of a lot more sense. Milton's parallel to the bible portrays Satan with many heroic qualities when matter of factly in the end he of course does not turn out to be the hero, thus opening the parallel with our favorite man, HeathCliff. Satan/HealthCliff is the ruler of Hell/Wuthering Heights? While Thrusscross Grange seems to be heaven in a sense? These questions seem to me to make sense, however in Sandra's view she often complicates the two and if fact on pg. 389 when she is discussing the children looking into Thrusscross Grange and speculating that if they were inside, " we should have throught ourselves in heaven!" Then sandra goes on to say that, "once the children have experienced its Urizenic interior, they know that in their terms this heaven is hell. This for me was a confusing parallel, because in my eyes I liked at the two places although similiar in many aspects as basically heaven and hell, thrusscross grange and wuthering heights. However she then goes on to say that the hierarchy of being at the Grange signifies and represents a westernized heaven, whereas the chaotic and overbearing environment of the house and house itself, not to mention the owner, represent a satanic Hell.
Hell seems to be a near invevitable fate for all characters in the story. Thus, the difference of the two houses and seemingly between heaven and hell, in reality(of the book) have no difference at all. All characters run as far as they can as Sandra says, but only come closer to the fate which they are trying to escape.
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