Characterizing the Genre: A Sample So Far

As I begin my first read of Wuthering Heights, I wanted to track back to previous texts I have explored, in order to do a check in on how I am painting my picture of the Victorian literature genre so far. The simplest solution: jotting down a list of traits so I can begin to pick up patterns between texts. The poem “England in 1819” by Percy Bysshe Shelley and the novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë both possess grim characteristics. Shelley paints his poem with mud and blood –quite literally– in order to emphasize the hopelessness and despair of the kingdom. Likewise, Brontë begins the novel in a bleak and nasty storm followed up by a spirit haunting Mr. Lockwood, leading into him falling ill. These two samples of Victorian literature are illustrating dreary and dark elements, which reflects darker undertones of the genre as a whole. To tie in earlier examples, Carlyle’s “The Everylasting No” depicts elements of depression and frustration. Martineau discusses her frustration and displeasure at the political status of women. The four texts tackle very different issues: a poem about a massacre of civilians, a ramble about the negatives before a conversation, a political discussion on women’s rights, and a gothic novel. However, all of these texts dealt with hopelessness, frustration, and despair, and what three of them resulted in was hope. Carlyle’s “The Everylasting Yea” brought the positives after negativity and apathy, in Shelley’s poem it was hope itself illuminating the dark, and for Martineau, she ended her “Political Non-existence of Women” with a strong, hopeful reinforcement in the ‘consent of the governed’ as in all of the governed, men and women. Despite the hopeless beginning, perhaps what will be revealed in Brontë’s novel, is a hopeful ending. This would continue a pattern of starting and working within the grim and desolate, but ending up optimistic, which could be a formula for calculating the tone of future Victorian texts.

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