Today, strong articles on some of the following topics will be Featured:
Wednesday, August 1: Creative Non Fiction; Essays about Writing or Publishing; Dramatic Scripts: Playwriting; Memoir
Wednesday, August 15: Poetry
Wednesday, August 29: Memoir or Fiction
So, today, August 1: Please send in your memoir, creative non-fiction, dramatic scripts, or essays about writing or the publishing industry. I am looking to feature strong articles in those content/genre areas.
Of course, ANY article in the content/genre areas of fiction, poetry, memoir, creative non-fiction, dramatic scripts, or essays about writing or publishing will always be accepted into Writing Essentials Wednesday.
The themes pertain to Features only.
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As a bonus, today I am giving a brief look at Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights.
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Discussion of Wuthering Heights
Emily Bronte published Wuthering Heights in 1847 under the pen name of Ellis Bell. Like some other women authors of the era, Emily believed her chance of publication and literary success was greater if she published under a man's name. Emily's sister Charlotte later edited a posthumous edition of the book, using Emily's real name.
Taking place in the Yorkshire region of England on the highland moors, the title's Wuthering comes from an old Yorkshire word that refers to stormy weathy, a worthy metaphor for the physical as well as psychological underpinnings in the novel.
As many know, the central story in Wuthering Heights centers in part around the impossible match between the foundling Heathlcliff and the wealthy Catherine Earnshaw, and the depths to which thwarted passion will destroy all those around them, including each other.
(Also worthy of mention here is the noble film version of the book directed by William Wyler in 1939 and starring Sir Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff and Merle Oberon as Catherine Earnshaw. If you have not seen this version, hie thee quickly to a theatre or l
ibrary showing it.)
Literary critics often discuss the novel's use of the nested plot, oftening likening it to Matroshka dolls, in which the smallest (and cutest, most lovable) doll is inside a series of ever larger dolls, which one must carefully remove to get to the fruit - the smallest Matryoshka doll.)
The narrative involves the artful use of flashbacks, with two different narrators. The action begins in 1801, with one narrator renting a house from Heathcliff, now a surly older man living at Wuthering Heights. Lockwood, as narrator, asks the housekeeper, Nellly, to tell him the story of Heathcliff and Wuthering Heights. Nelly then tells the story of how Heathcliff, then a foundling from the streets of Liverpool, as brought to Wuthering Heights, and rasied by Mr. Earnshaw (the owner) as his own son.
Heathcliff becomes fast friends with Earnshaw's daughter Catherine until jealousy rears its ugly head in the form of Catherine's brother, Hindley. Hindley takes over Wuthering Heights and forces Heathcliff to manual labor; Catherine becomes friend with a wealthy family nearby; it is the wealthy gentleman Edgar Linton who attempts to win Catherine's hand in marriage.
Heathcliff plays a mighty role in this triangle, as Catherine becomes increasingly torn between her primitive, wild nature and fierce attraction to the masculine Heathcliff and between her sense of duty, responsibility and gentility, which steer her toward Edgar. Knowing that it would degrade her to marry Heathcliff, Catherine finally decides to marry Edgar; Heathcliff has overheard this converstion and storms out of Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff apparently either never heard or never gave credence to Catherine's proclamation that her spirit was tied to Heathcliff's as much as the moors were a part of England.
Heathcliff returns two years later to Wuthering Heights, with the intent on destroying all who stand in his way of being with Catherine. In the interim between his initial withdrawal from Wuthering Heights and his return, Heathcliff has become wealthy; this gives him the necessary upper hand in his negotiation to become the rightful heir of Wuthering Heights. Catherine dies in childbirth, Heathcliff has eloped with Edgar's sister, Isabella - a blatant attempt to psychologically cuckold Edgar. After Catherine's death, Heathcliff becomes even more surly and vindictive.
Two years later, Heathcliff returns, intent on destroying those who prevent him from being with Catherine. He has, mysteriously, become very wealthy, and has duped Hindley into making him the heir to Wuthering Heights. Intent on ruining Edgar, Heathcliff elopes with Edgar's sister Isabella, which places him in a position to inherit Thrushcross Grange upon Edgar's death.
The plot further thickes when Heathcliff raises Hareton, the young son of Catherine's brother, Hindley, and swears he will raise Hareton with as much neglect as he himself suffered at the hands of Hindley.
Heathcliff's wife Isabella asks Edgar to raise the son she and Heathcliff sired, but Heathcliff discovers this plot and takes the boy, Linton, to Wuthering Heights. Through a semi-botched attempt at getting Catherine's daughter Cathy to marry the young Linton (a bold and blatant psychological move that surfaces as Heathcliff fullfilling his desire to marry Catherine); however, Cathy refused to marry Lindon and Heathcliff essentally forced the two to marry. Edgar Linton and the young Linton soon die, leaving Cathy a widow with Heathcliff in control of Wuthering Heights.
Cathy does fall in love with Hareton, who was her uneducated cousin, much like her mother fell in love with her uneducated adotive brother, Heathcliff. Heathcliff finally lets go of his lifetime of vindictive behavior, but dies broken and tormentd.
Cathy and Hareton marry, and Heathcliff becomes buried next to Cathy's mother, Catherine.
Wuthering Heights is a melodramatic novel and a precursor to many Romance novel formulas, but is so artfully and skillfull done,
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Important: Please include the word "writing" to your tags, as well as the word or words, poetry, fiction, memoir, or creative-non fiction, so that we know your article is relevant.
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About Kathryn
Kathryn Esplin Oleski kathryneo.gather.com
Kathryn Esplin-Oleski was raised in Salt Lake City, but moved to Montreal with her family, where she finished high school and college. Kathryn has a BA in English Literature from McGill University and a Master of Science in Journalism (MSJ) from the Medill School of Journalism, at Northwestern University, in Evanston, Ill.
Kathryn's articles have appeared in The Montreal Gazette, The Globe and Mail, and Kathryn covered Utah politics at Medill from Washington, D.C. for The Ogden Standard-Examiner.
She freelanced for numerous computer/business publications, including a stringer story for Newsweek magazine on graft in the music industry.
Kathryn worked as a reporter and senior editor for International Data Group (IDG) for several years, and then continued to freelance computer/business articles.
She copyedited a technical book, Raggett on HTML 4.0, published by Addison-Wesley Longman, 1998.
Kathryn's fiction, The Quill Speaks, was published in Pieceworks, a literary magazine, in 2003.
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Comments: 33
Ten stars, my friend!
Thanks for the great review here!
If you remember the screenplay scene I had word processing/Gather tech problems with last week, I posted it to Writing Essentials for Monday. Only two people viewed it probably because I flagged it for adult content-though it's just two women chasing a runaway vibrator around a restaurant table.
Anyway, it's at Bounty Mom if you want it.
Thanks, thoroughly this........
Thanks, Carol. I read it in college but saw the movie several times. More melodramatic than I had remembered, but still excellent.
"Patrick Branwell Brontë (26 June 1817 – 24 September 1848) was a painter and poet, the only son of the Brontë family, and the brother of the writers Charlotte, Emily and Anne.
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Branwell Brontë was the fourth of six children and the only son of Patrick Brontë and his wife, Maria Branwell Brontë. He was born in Thornton, and moved with his family to Haworth when his father was appointed to the perpetual curacy in 1821.
Of the four Brontë siblings who survived into adulthood, Branwell Brontë seems to have been regarded within the family as the most talented, at least during his childhood and youth. While four of his five sisters were sent to Cowan Bridge boarding school (resulting in the death of his two oldest sisters, Maria and Elizabeth), Branwell was kept at home to be privately educated by his father, who gave him a classical education suitable for admission to Oxford or Cambridge.
Brontë collaborated as a writer with his sisters in childhood and adolescence, creating fictional worlds. His surviving juvenilia shows that he collaborated most closely with Charlotte on their imaginary world Angria.
[edit] Adulthood
As a young man, Branwell Brontë was trained as a portrait painter in Haworth, and worked as a portrait painter in Bradford in 1838 and 1839. His most famous portrait is of his three sisters (he seems to have painted himself out).
In 1840, Brontë became a tutor to a family of young boys in Broughton-in-Furness but was dismissed within six months. During this time he did a translation of Horace. He was then employed on the Luddenden Foot railway station in 1841 but was dismissed in 1842 due to a deficit in the accounts attributed to incompetence rather than theft. During his period of employment both as a tutor and on the railways he harboured literary ambitions and published poetry under various pseudonyms in the Yorkshire press.
In 1843 Brontë took up another tutoring position in Thorp Green, appointed as the tutor to the Robinson family's young son. He gained this position through his sister Anne, who was the governess to the Robinson's two older daughters. During this time he corresponded with a number of old friends about his increasing infatuation with Lydia Robinson. He was dismissed on unspecified charges in 1845. It is thought, according to his account to his own family, the Robinson family's silence on the reason for his dismissal, and subsequent gifts of money from Mrs. Robinson through her servants, that he had an affair with Mrs. Robinson and that the affair had been discovered by her husband.
Brontë returned home to his family at the Haworth parsonage, now known as the Brontë Parsonage Museum. He was devastated by Mrs. Robinson's abandonment and the increasing unlikelihood of a reunion and turned to alcohol. He became an alcoholic and was thought to be addicted to laudanum. His behaviour became irrational and dangerous as he developed delirium tremens. Charlotte's letters from this time demonstrate that she was angered by his behaviour, but that her father was patient with his broken son. Although it was at this time that his sisters' first novels were being accepted for publication, it is not known whether he was even informed.
Brontë's severe addictions masked the onset of tuberculosis, and his family did not realise that he was seriously ill until he collapsed outside the house and a local doctor identified him as being in the disease's terminal stages. He died shortly after, intriguingly, while standing up and leaning against a mantlepiece, purely in order to prove that it could be done.[1]
Emily Brontë died of the disease in December of that year and Anne Brontë the following May.
Thanks, Jerri.
Vivian, I've seen the Heather in bloom in the moors, too. Amazing.
Thank you for sharing.
Helen W Long time I have not seen you!