Directions: Please finish reading Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. (Below, you will find the complete text and an audiobook.) Next, compose a COMPREHENSIVE blog response using the questions below as a guide. Use at least 3-4 direct quotations in your response, and make sure to cover a little something from the beginning, middle, and end of the section. As always, read and engage with each other. I look forward to your responses.
1. To what extent do you think the setting of the novel contributes to, or informs, what takes place? Do you think the moors are a character in their own right? How do you interpret Bronte's view of nature and the landscape?
2. Discuss Emily Bronte's careful attention to a rigid timeline and the role of the novel as a sober historical document. How is this significant, particularly in light of the turbulent action within? What other contrasts within the novel strike you, and why? How are these contrasts important, and how do they play out in the novel?
3. Do you think the novel is a tale of redemption, despair, or both? Discuss the novel's meaning to you. Do you think the novel's moral content dictates one choice over the other?
4. Do you think Bronte succeeds in creating three-dimensional figures in
Heathcliff and Cathy, particularly given their larger-than-life metaphysical passion? Why or why not?
5. Discuss Bronte's use of twos: Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange; two families, each with two children; two couples (Catherine and Edgar, and Heathcliff and Isabella); two narrators; the doubling-up of names. What is Bronte's intention here? Discuss.
6. How do Mr. Lockwood and Nelly Dean influence the story as narrators? Do you think they are completely reliable observers? What does Bronte want us to believe?
7. Discuss the role of women in Wuthering Heights. Is their depiction typical of Bronte's time, or not? Do you think Bronte's characterizations of women mark her as a pioneer ahead of her time or not?
8. Who or what does Heathcliff represent in the novel? Is he a force of evil or a victim of it? How important is the role of class in the novel, particularly as it relates to Heathcliff and his life?
Directions: Please finish reading Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. (Below, you will find the complete text and an audiobook.) Next, compose a COMPREHENSIVE blog response using the questions below as a guide. Use at least 3-4 direct quotations in your response, and make sure to cover a little something from the beginning, middle, and end of the section. As always, read and engage with each other. I look forward to your responses.
1. What is the balance of power between Jane and Rochester when they marry? Does this balance change from the beginning of the marriage to the time ten years later that Jane describes at the end of the novel?
2. In a romantic relationship, does one partner inevitably dominate the other?
3. Should an individual who holds a position of authority be granted the respect of others, regardless of his or her character?
4. In Jane Eyre, nothing can better show a man's moral worth than the way in which he treats the women in his life. How is Rochester's character reflected in the way he treats Jane, Adele, Bertha Mason, and Miss Ingram, and in his reported treatment of Celine Varens? How is St. John's character reflected in the way he treats Jane, Miss Oliver, and Diana and Mary? Why does this serve as such a good gauge of a man's morality and worth? What other relationships serve similar functions in the novel?
5. Throughout the novel, questions of identity are raised. From her identity as an orphan and stranger in the hostile environment of Gateshead Hall to that of a ward of the church at Lowood; from her being a possible wife of Rochester, then of St. John, to being the cousin of Diana and Mary, Jane is constantly in transition. Trace these changes in identity and how they affect Jane's view of herself and the world around her. Describe the final discovery of her identity that becomes apparent in the last chapter of the novel and the events that made that discovery possible.
6. Throughout the novel, Charlotte Brontë uses biblical quotes and religious references. From the church-supported school she attended that was run by Mr. Brocklehurst to the offer of marriage she receives from St. John, she is surrounded by aspects of Christianity. How does this influence her throughout her development? How do her views of God and Christianity change from her days as a young girl to the end of the novel? How is religion depicted in the novel, positively or negatively?
7. Many readers of Jane Eyre feel that the story is composed of two distinct parts, different in tone and purpose. The first part (chapters 1-11) concerns her childhood at Gateshead and her life at Lowood; the second part is the remainder of the story. Is creating such a division justified? Is there a genuine difference of tone and purpose between the two sections as they have been described? Some critics and readers have suggested that the first part of Jane Eyre is more arresting because it is more directly autobiographical. Do you find this to be true?
8. Upon publication, great speculation arose concerning the identity of the author of Jane Eyre, known only by the pen name Currer Bell. Questions as to the sex of the author were raised, and many critics said that they believed it to be the work of a man. One critic of her time said, "A book more unfeminine, both in its excellence and defects, it would be hard to find in the annals of female authorship. Throughout there is masculine power, breadth and shrewdness, combined with masculine hardness, coarseness, and freedom of expression." Another critic of the day, Elizabeth Rigby, said that if it was the product of a female pen, then it was the writing of a woman "unsexed." Why was there such importance placed on the sex of the author and why was it questioned so readily? What does it mean that people believed it to be the product of a man rather than of a woman?
9. Scenes of madness and insanity are among the most important plot devices in Jane Eyre. From the vision Jane sees when locked in the bedroom at Gateshead to her hearing the "goblin laughter" she attributes to Grace Poole, to the insanity and wretchedness of Bertha Mason, madness is of central importance to the plot and direction of the story. Give examples of madness in the text, and show how they affect the reader's understanding of the character experiencing the madness and how these examples affect the reader's understanding of the characters witnessing it.
10. There is probably no single line in the whole of Jane Eyre that has, in itself, attracted as much critical attention as the first line of the last chapter: "Reader, I married him." Why is the phrasing of this line so important? How would the sense be different-for the sentence and for the novel as a whole-if the line read, "Reader, we were married"?
Directions: Please finish reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte. (Below, you will find the complete text and an audiobook.) Next, compose a COMPREHENSIVE blog response using the questions below as a guide. Use at least 3-4 direct quotations in your response, and make sure to cover a little something from the beginning, middle, and end of the section. As always, read and engage with each other. I look forward to your responses.
1. In Chapter 16, Helen's aunt uses the language and imagery of military engagement to describe courtship. How consistent is Bronte with the use of this metaphor, and why do you think she uses it?
2. Helen says that she is an excellent physiognomist: someone who can determine a person's character by their looks. Do you think Bronte supports the science of physiognomy, or is she critiquing it in her novel?
3. What do we make of Helen's thought processes in the long opening paragraph that begins Chapter 18?
4. In Chapter 18, what is the significance of the fact that Helen is unable to adequately draw Huntingdon's portrait?
5. What is the significance of hunting in this part of the novel?
6. In Chapter 20, what is the significance of the part played by Helen's uncle?
7. The early stages of Chapter 22 find Huntingdon revealing that Lowborough is a recovering gambling addict. What is the significance of his description of the evening when Lowborough finally gives up gambling?
Chapters 23-43
1. What is the significance of Helen's father being an alcoholic?
2. Why is Helen deceived by the profligate Huntingdon, and yet always seems to be on her guard against the far less offensive Hargrave?
3. What analogy can be made between Helen's difficulties in checking Hargrave's advances in the chess game and her inability to draw Huntingdon's portrait (and thereby, "contain" him)?
4. The language of chess can make for all manner of innuendo and double meaning. Support this idea with reference to the chess game between Helen and Walter.
5. What are the similarities and differences between the "Two Evenings" in Chapter 33?
6. In Chapter 37, Helen is attempting to do her best to avoid Walter Hargrave's attentions. What are some of the differences between Hargrave's pursuit of Helen, and Gilbert's pursuit of her earlier in the novel?
7. Do you ever have the sense that Helen's characterization as a moral woman goes overboard--if so, is this a weakness in Bronte's writing or is there something else at work here?
8. Why does Bronte allow Hattersley to be reformed and yet makes Huntingdon pay for his profligacy with his life?
Chapters 44-53
1. Chapter 45, in which Gilbert is reconciled both to Helen and her brother, reminds us that there are a great number of parallel episodes in the novel. What are the effects of some of these parallel scenes?
2. In Chapter 46, Gilbert takes a great deal of delight in nursing Mr. Lawrence back to health. What are the reasons he gives and what is to be made of the language with which he describes this experience?
3. In Chapter 50, Gilbert tells Halford--and therefore, us--what has happened to some of the other characters in the story. What is Bronte's point in having Gilbert do this?
4. What is to be made of the fact that the novel ends with Gilbert's voice and not Helen's? Is this merely what needs to happen from a purely structural point of view, or is there something more disturbing at work?
5. The field of literary onomastics examines the significance of names and naming in literature. What is the significance of Bronte's use of names in the novel?
