While reading Reuben Sachs, I was impressed by the way that the text was easy to read yet said a lot. This simple, straight-forward way of writing can also be seen in Dickens’ text. Although Dickens’ texts often implemented anti-semitic language and concepts, and Amy Levy’s text is a progressive and representative text that portrays Jews as everyday people and not the cartoonish stereotypes commonly seen in Victorian literature, I did notice that there was a general similarity between the diction of both of their works. For example, when describing Reuben’s arrival, Levy writes, “”Lionel! Sydney!” protested their mother faintly after the boys seemed to take all sorts of liberties with the new arrivals.” By being straightforward and direct with what is going on in the text, Levy is able to make it more dramatic because her implications are not ambiguous. It is obvious that Mrs. Leuineger is angry from her descriptions. In a similar way, Great Expectations benefited from Dickens’ directness, specifically in chapter 6, when Pip thinks, “In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong.” Dickens does not implement any fancy words when describing Pip’s fear of losing Joe’s confidence. He writes the emotions that Pip is feeling confidently and precisely.

Oscar Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaols an epic poem that shared many similarities in themes to Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. The first similarity is the descriptions of death between lovers in both texts. This can be seen in the quote, “He did not wear his scarlet coat/For blood and wine are red/And blood and wine were on his hands/When they found him with the dead/The poor dead woman whom he loved/ And murdered in her bed.” This description seemed almost identical to the circumstances of the death of Catherine Earnshaw, who also died in her bed. In addition, Heathcliff asked to be buried next to her, hence the line of being found with the dead.

Further similarities can be found when Wilde discusses how relationships can bring about death in partners during their youth or during old age. He says, “Some kill their love when they are young, / And some when they are old; / Some strangle with the hands of Lust, / Some with the hands of Gold: / The kindest use a knife, because / The dead so soon grow cold.” Catherine was ‘killed’ by Heathcliff when she was young, while Heathcliff died of sadness when he was much older. In addition, when Catherine died, it was snowing, windy, and cold.

A comparison that I noticed was the striking similarities between Heathcliff’s relationship with Catherine and Pip’s relationship with Estella. Both relationships revolve around two individuals with strong class rivalries. Pip, for example, comes from poor or working class roots like Heathcliff, and is able to obtain finances in an attempt to be ‘good enough’ for his significant other just like him. Nevertheless, however much money they gain, neither men are able to acquire the love of their crushes in the longterm.

The main difference between the two is the emotions of their significant others. Estella, for example, is depicted as heartless, and does not feel anything for him, even though he is now a wealthy man. She says, ““Oh! I have a heart to be stabbed in or shot in, I have no doubt,” said Estella, “and of course if it ceased to beat I should cease to be. But you know what I mean. I have no softness there, no—sympathy—sentiment—nonsense” (Chapter 29 Paragraph 70). Even though he has gained money, he is not “old money” and is therefore still below her. The same can be seen in Wuthering Heights, where Catherine, who feels passionate emotions for Heathcliff, also feels like Edgar Linton is the safer, more socially acceptable match. Catherine’s strong emotions are even seen at the height of her illness, and main similarity between her passionate love for Heathcliff and Estella and Pip’s story is that they end up apart. Even though both relationships started in childhood, it seems like Pip’s relationship is a lot more one-sided than Heathcliff’s feelings for Catherine.

While reading Great Expectations, I noticed that Pip shared many similarities with Hareton. Hareton, for example, was an orphan living in the house of the cruel Heathcliff. Hareton’s mother, Frances, was sickly and died of her illness. In a similar way, Pip’s mother also died of an illness. For example, Dickens writes, “From the character and turn of the inscription, “Also Georgiana Wife of the Above,” I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly.” This can especially be reflective of the time period when both books took place. Hygiene was poor and people often died young of illness or during childbirth.

Another similarity is that both Hareton and Pip are abused by the person who raises them. Heathcliff for example, deprives him of any economic power and reduces Hareton to a servant in his own home. Pip is beat regularly by his sister who raises him. Dickens says that, “she had brought me up “by hand.” Having at that time to find out for myself what the expression meant, and knowing her to have a hard and heavy hand, and to be much in the habit of laying it upon her husband as well as upon me, I supposed that Joe Gargery and I were both brought up by hand.” This is yet another connection to Wuthering Heights because in Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff is repeating the abuse that he had been subjected to on Hindley’s behalf. The abuse seen in both Wuthering Heights and Great Expectations is cyclic, and within families.

When I was reading yesterday’s reading, many instances described in the book led me back to Percy Shelley’s poem England in 1819. The poem describes an old, dying, and mad king who is oppressing the British people. In a similar way, Heathcliff is sucking the life out of those who are living in his house, and all of those who come into contact with him. Shelley writes, “Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know, / But leech-like to their fainting country cling, / Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow” (Shelley 4-6). This to me could describe his relationship to Isabella, who he abused until she died young, leaving behind a child. This could also describe his relationship to his son Linton, who is also dying, and is being subjected to his abuse in his house. This can be seen when Nelly Dean thinks, “I could not picture a father treating a dying child as tyrannically and wickedly as I afterwards learnt Heathcliff had treated him, to compel this apparent eagerness; his efforts redoubling the more imminently his avaricious and unfeeling plans were threatened with defeat by death” (Bronte 259). Here, Nelly Dean is saying exactly what Percy Shelley was describing in his poem: the closer to death the ‘king’ gets, the more he takes it out and tries to rejuvenate with the blood of the young, poor, and innocent. Shelley’s poem, which was written for a massacre, goes on to say, “A Senate — Time’s worst statute unrepeal’d, / Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may / Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day” (Shelley 14-16). With this line, Shelley is saying that all of the laws and civic rights meant to protect them are nonexistent. This relates to Heathcliff’s relationship with the children living in his care: there are no civic rights in his house: all tenants are subject to slave labor and abuse.

When reading Wuthering Heights, I couldn’t help but draw a comparison between the relationships between men and women George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) discusses in her critical essay on Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft’s works of nonfiction and the way that Emily Bronte depicts the relationships between Cathy Earnshaw and her love interests: Heathcliff and Edgar Linton.  In her essay, Eliot writes that both Fuller and Wollstonecraft assert that “while men have a horror of such faculty or culture in the other sex as tends to place it on a level with their own, they are really in a state of subjection to ignorant and feeble-minded women”. In Wuthering Heights, the influence that Catherine Earnshaw has on Linton and Heathcliff is astounding. Bronte writes, “At fifteen she was the queen of the countryside: she had no peer: and she did turn out a haughty, headstrong, creature… She had a wonderful constancy to old attachments: even Heathcliff kept his hold on her affections, unalterably, and young Linton…” (Bronte 66). Wollstonecraft and Fuller’s books argued for an education of women that exceeded outside of household duties and was well versed in the arts, humanities, and sciences.

While Catherine Earnshaw displayed qualities of a strong, independent woman based on her own outspokenness and free will, she is also deprived of a real education: although as a lady her education is superior to Heathcliff’s, at the same time her education is limited to manners and the ritualistic Christianity she and her brother are taught by Joseph. Nelly Dean, to a certain extent, is not a reliable narrator. She asserts judgement on Catherine based on her actions, her emotions, and the control she has over her relationships. For example, when Catherine discloses her intention to marry Linton and then use his money to assist Heathcliff, Nelly says, “It only goes to convince me that you are ignorant of the duties you undertake in marrying; or else, that you are a wicked, unprincipled girl” (Bronte 83). Bronte seems to be using Nelly to insert the argument seen in Fuller and Wollstonecraft’s works, and further discussed by Eliot: that in order to succeed in marital relationships, a woman must be educated: not for their own benefit, but for the benefit of their spouse.