Families Unknown

Sydney Thompson and Melissa Hernando

Saugus High School AP Lit. Author Comparison Project

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Authors: Mary Shelley and Emily Bronte

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Titles: Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights

Table Of Contents

Author Biographies

Frankenstein Summary

Wuthering Heights Summary

Author Style Elements

Criticism Essays

Critical Reads

Quiz

Works Cited

Extra Links

Emily Bronte Biography

One of six children, English novelist Emily Brontë lived a relatively successful life as the author of only one novel, Wuthering Heights. Born on July 30, 1818 to Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell, Emily was the second youngest child in her family. She was born in Thorton, England, and is most well known for being one of the Brontë sisters. Charlotte and Anne Brontë also became successful writers with novels such as: Jane Eyre, and Agnes Grey. Emily's mother died when she was only three years old. Her oldest brother Patrick had to take care of his five younger sisters. Her family was very religious and the girls attended the Clergy Daughter's School in England. Emily's other sisters Maria and Elizabeth died of tuberculosis, so Emily was only close with Charlotte, Anne, and Patrick. Her father was a very quiet man who liked to be alone, so the girls had to entertain themselves by reading. They all became writers, but Emily was most known for her single novel Wuthering Heights.

Wuthering Heights is a novel that is still read today, but many of the lines in the book are not popular in movies. It is her only successful novel, but she also was known for writing poetry and prose, and submitting it to her local newspaper. Emily received many harsh criticisms for this novel, but is now considered one of the more complex and risky novels. It only really earned its fame after Emily passed away, and is now regarded as a brilliant novel. She only truly expressed her genius talent for a short time.

When she began writing, Emily wrote under the pseudonym of Ellis Bell. Her childhood years were unhappy and lonely, so her brother, sisters, and she would entertain themselves by imagining fantasy lands, and imaginary places. This is where the majority of their creativity came from. She attended school at Roe Head, and later was home schooled. She was not popular, and did not have very many friends. Ironically, Emily began working at Miss Patchett's Ladies Academy at Law Hill School, but soon returned home due to her homesickness. Emily's aunt died soon after she returned, and Emily decided to live with her father and take care of him.

Her brother Patrick became and alcoholic and addicted to drugs, and died very young. While at his funeral, Emily caught a cold, which turned into tuberculosis and sadly she died at the age of thirty on December 19, 1848.

Mary Shelley

By the time she was just nineteen years old, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote one of the most famous novels ever published. Embodying one of the central myths of Western culture, Frankenstein, first published in 1818, which tells the story of a man who brings to life a monster, a tale which still stands as a powerful and enduring example of the creative imagination. In addition to Frankenstein, Mary Shelley wrote six other novels: a novella, mythological dramas, stories and articles, various travel books, and biographical studies. By 1851, the year of her death, Shelley had established a reputation as a prominant female author.

As the daughter of the two great intellectuals, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley was born on August 30, 1797 in London. Just eleven days after her birth her mother, the celebrated author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, died of puerperal fever, leaving Godwin, to care for Mary and her three-year-old half sister, Fanny Imlay. Mary Shelley's attachment to her father became intense and long lasting.

In 1816, Shelley married Percy Bysshe Shelley and the eight years they spent together were indeed characterized by romance. During this period Mary and Percy lived on love, however without money constantly moved from one placed to another. Mary gave birth to four children, only one of whom survived to adulthood. The first, a girl, was born prematurely and died eleven days later in 1815, William born in 1816, died of malaria in 1819, Clara Everina, born in 1817, perished from dysentery the next year, Percy Florence, born in 1819, died in 1889 and sadly in 1822, Mary miscarried during her fifth pregnancy and nearly lost her life.

She wrote Frankenstein during one of the most famous house parties in literary history when staying at Lake Geneva in Switzerland with Byron and Shelley. She wrote the novel while being overwhelmed by a series of calamities in her life, the worst being the suicides of her half-sister, Fanny Imlay, and Percy’s ex-wife, Harriet. When Mary was only twenty-four, Percy drowned, leaving her penniless with a two-year-old son. For her remaining twenty-nine years she engaged in a struggle with the disapproval of her relationship with Percy. Poverty forced her to live in England where she was shunned by society and worked as a professional writer to support her father and her son. It was in her profound novel, Frankenstein, that her story has still inspired film, video and television nearly 200 years later.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley died at home in London at the age of fifty-four on February 1, 1851. She lies buried in St. Peter’s churchyard in Bournemouth, England.

Summaries:

Frankenstein

The story unfolds with a man named Victor Frankenstein writing letters to his sister while he travels in a ship to the artic looking for something that will make him almost famous. During this time he discovers a lonely man on shore who is almost near death. It is from then on that the readers realize the man on shore is Victor Frankenstein and from then on the story is told from Victors’ eyes. Victor begins his life story in Switzerland surrounded by a loving family and his cousin Elizabeth. He soon becomes fascinated with ancient philosophers and the human body and life. It is at that moment that Frankenstein or “the monster” is born and Victor is so mortified with his own creation that he falls into a delirious illness, which last many months. Meanwhile, the creature flees into the woods and disappears however, two years later, Victor returns home upon learning that his brother has been mysteriously murdered.

Having been hated, rejected and feared by every human he encountered, the creature considers all of humanity to be his enemy and demands that Victor create a female companion for him so that he will not be lonely, and promises that he will flee to a remote corner of South America and never come back. However, when  Victor cannot forgive the creature for the death of his brother, he refuses to build the female companion. In rage, the monster murders Victor's friends and family one by one, including his beloved cousin Elizabeth. When the creator and his creature are at last equally alone and family-less, it is then that the monster realizes he has no where else to go and leaves to never return.

Wuthering Heights

This story begins with a man named Lockwood narrating the story. He is staying at his landlord Heathcliff’s house when he sees a ghost, and starts screaming. Then the story picks up at Lockwood’s house where he is talking to his nurse Nelly Dean. Nelly Dean takes over narrating the story by explaining that she used to be a servant for Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw. They have two children Catherine and Hindley, and one “adopted” son Heathcliff which Mr. Earnshaw brought home with him when he was traveling. Heathcliff and Catherine end up loving each other, but she marries a man namedEdgar Linton instead because he is wealthy. Hindley and Edgar decide that they do not like Heathcliff, and one of the ways they emotionally harm him is when Edgar marries Catherine. Catherine dies while giving birth to her daughter Catherine, and comes back to haunt Heathcliff in his sleep. In the mean time Heathcliff becomes very wealthy, but very lonely. He ends up passing on and joining his love Catherine. At the end of the story readers realize that the ghost in the beginning is Catherine and now she and Heathcliff

are truly happy together.

Elements:

* Irony: Hindley hates Heathcliff, yet later in the novel, Hindley ends up taking care of Heathcliffs son (Wuthering Heights)

* Foreshadowing: When Catherins ghost appears at Heathcliffs house, you know she is going to die later on (Wuthering Heights)

* Repitition: The names are reused in future generations of the children. (Wuthering Heights)

* Motifs: Abortion is thought to be a motif because both Victor and the monster express their sense of the monster’s hideousness and Victor is thought to “abort” the monster. (Frankenstein)

* Characterization: The reader gets insight to the life of Frankenstein as he grows up and matures even though he is just a “creation” (Frankenstein)

Criticism Essays

* Psychological Criticism

Families are affected by the values and structure of the society in which they are embedded. This statement expresses a multiplicity in respect to the structure of a family and why they differ from one culture to the next. In society, more often then not, the lineage of ones family in addition to ones status, greatly effects their perception that people can have towards them in society. As a populace, people must address the need to substantially increase their love of the world while subsequently decreasing their fear. The aforementioned belief encompassed Mary Shelley and Emily Bronte's best-known romantic gothic novels, Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights. In both works, Shelley and Bronte explore the way in which the evolution of contrasting families effect a close-minded society and the repercussions survived by anyone who dares to be different.

Noted as one of the most remarkable novels of Gothicism, Frankenstein tells the story of a man who created a monster that quickly becomes abandoned and mistreated. After making something that atrocious, Victor Frankenstein begins to question the role of mortality and realizes that the monster he created should soon be destroyed and forgotten. The relationship Franken-stein and his monster has can be compared to that of a father and a son. “Victor purposefully isolates himself from his family, escaping the suffocating silken cord or umbilical cord, of domesticity to carry out his scientific experiments” (Schwartz 1). Shelley symbolically presents this laboratory as a womb like “workshop for filthy creation” (Martin 3). The actions following the moment of creation are equal to a study of Victor's crimes against normal family values in which the monster appears childlike, reaching out towards his creator and attempting to mimic and utter sounds he makes. Victor becomes appalled at the grotesque nature of this being and reacts by abandoning it. In effect, Victor's dispense of his creation is a direct rejection from the potential family, the monster could have once been apart of. In Shelley's preface to Frankenstein, the central function of the family is described as, “the exhibition of the amiableness of domestic affection” (Shelley xviii). Mary Shelley presents the reader with a character who is entirely rejected by those around him, someone or even something that tragically longs for nothing, but acceptance. The family matters that surround Wuthering Heights become uncommonly similar to Frankenstein's matters as well.

The family element in Emily Bronte's, Wuthering Heights is a complex matter which involves many intricate “twists and turns”, which involves cousins marrying each other and children whom have their parent's names. The story begins with Mr. and Mrs. Earnshaw who have two children, Catherine and Hindley. Catherine marries Edgar Linton and in turn they have a child named Catherine as well. Edgar's sister, Isabella, marries Heathcliff who is Catherine and Hindley's “adopted brother”. Hindley marries Francis and they have a child named Hareton whom marries a woman named Catherine Linton who is his cousin. The purpose for these names is Bronte's way to give insight into the unhinged life that families experience and encounter in their lifetime. A plot twist occurs when Catherine falls in love with Healthcliff, but marries Edgar for his monetary status. Edgar and Hindley grow to loathe Heathcliff and despise the fact that he became in love with Catherine, thus as a result; Heathcliff gets revenge on them both by torturing Hindleys son, Hareton. It is with these events involving revenge that the two authors created story lines to be similar which is portrayed throughout the characters actions.

The family's involved in both Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein become unyielding

for a society to understand. Many times people think that a flawless family entitles one that follows a “cookie cutter” image. In both Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein the families become out of the ordinary and society does not known how to handle it. Bronte and Shelley are gothic romantic novelists and they each have created a novel, which has disturbed and dismantled society and their actions. Society as a whole needs to understand that not all families are the same and that it is understandable for some to be unique and “follow the beat of their own drum”.

* Sociological Criticism

Henry Louis Mencken articulates, “The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety” (Quotations 1). Monsters and ghosts may appear to the average three year old to be extremely scary, but authors Mary Shelley and Emily Bronte embrace the mysterious effect that creatures such as these, have on society. These gothic romantic novelists haunt characters in their novels with “fictional” creatures and they experience the effects that they have on the remaining characters. Shelley creates a timeless monster known as Frankenstein who is created by a man named Victor and is released into the modern world to interact with others. Bronte has a ghost Catherine haunt her lifelong love Heathcliff after she has passed on from giving birth to her daughter Catherine. The “monsters” in Shelley's Frankenstein and Bronte's Wuthering Heights affect society in a personal and emotional way in which the other characters sympathize with them and end up loving them.

Frankenstein is a fictional monster created by a man named Victor Frankenstein and is released into the world to roam on his own. When people see this monster, they are immediately scared, and run away. People do not even give him a chance to show them how nice and kind he really is. When Victor leaves him, he feels gloomy and depressed because society assumes that because he looks so horrible on the outside, he must be the same on the inside. This reaction is Shelley's way of demonstrating that people cannot judge others based on their outward appearances, but rather they should get to know them for what is on the inside. Victor narrates, “I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures, such as no language can describe” (Frankenstein 1). He wishes that he had never left the monster and feels bad for abandoning him so fast. This remorseful reaction to the fear of the unusual creature is similar to the ghost in Bronte's Wuthering Heights.

Catherine is a character who secretly loves her “adopted” brother Heathcliff and when she passes on after giving birth to her daughter Catherine, she comes back to haunt him. Lockwood is the first to see Catherine's ghost while staying with Heathcliff at his house. His reaction is melodramatic and over reactive. In modern cultures today, ghosts or spirits are seen to be scary creatures to some people. This is exactly the reaction of Lockwood; he runs screaming out of the room. At the end of the story Heathcliff is haunted by Catherine's ghost, however he realizes it is out of love. This ending shows that Heathcliff has come to peace with Bronte's ghost character, and that she is not there to harm him. The reactions that the characters in these books have are frightful at the beginning, but accepting in the end.

The connection between fictional and actual is hard for members of society to understand. They are “thrown out of their comfort zone” and put into situations where they must overcome and adapt, and accept the “unknown world”. The creatures have the ability to persuade society and convince people that they are not there to harm them, but rather they just want to be loved. Their effects on the rest of the characters is very “eye opening” to readers, and their messages are not only pivotal, but convincing to readers that people who may scare them at first, may not be so frightening after all. Because monsters and ghosts such as these affect people even today, readers can understand that even though these creatures may look terrifying on the outside they really mean no harm.

Critical Reads

Reader Response

· Victor Frankenstein experiences life as a father to the monster Frankenstein.

· Victor purposefully isolates himself from his family, escaping the suffocating silken cord or umbilical cord, of domesticity to carry out his scientific experiment’s (Schwartz 1).

· Frankenstein is frightening on the outside, however his emotions and intelligence is that of a human and kind heart.

· In Wuthering Heights, there are inter family relationships which is similar to the Mormon culture.

· People are still afraid of ghosts, and this is demonstrated in Lockwood’s reaction to Catherine’s ghost.

· The mystery of Heathcliff’s parentage is never solved.

Historical

· It was okay for families to marry other members, in the book Wuthering Heights.

· He is described by Hindley as an 'imp of Satan' in chapter four, and by the end of the novel Nelly Dean is entertaining notions that Heathcliff may be some hideous ghoul or vampire. (Wikipedia 3).

· This book uses servants, which is similar to the culture of ancient time, which used slaves as well.

· In Frankenstein, the allusion to a monster is still used nearly 200 years later.

· Part of Frankenstein's rejection of his creation is the fact that he doesn't give it a name, which gives it a lack of identity.

· Literally in German, Frankenstein is translated into “stone-of-the franks”.

Biographical

· Mary Shelley maintained that she derived the name "Frankenstein" from a dream-vision.

· Frankenstein is associated with places such as Castle Frankenstein, which Mary Shelley had seen while on a boat before writing the novel.

· Mary Shelley experienced many deaths with her own children like Victor experienced many deaths that the monster did to Victor’s family.

· In Wuthering Heights, Bronte wanted to have a large family and it is said that she lived this dream through the Earnshaws.

· She had to deal with many deaths in her own life, like Heathcliff had to deal with Catherine’s death.

· Bronte lived in many different places as well as the characters lived in Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights.

Quiz

1. What is the pseudonym for Emily Bronte? _______________

2. Who is the ghost that comes back to haunt Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights? _____________

3. Mary Shelley’s mother wrote the novel ____________.

4. Fanny Imlay is Mary Shelley’s ___________ sister and is _______ years old.

5. Mary Shelley and Emily Bronte are considered to be ___________ and ___________

novelists.

6. The names are reused in future generations of the children is an example of the literary element ____________ from Wuthering Heights.

7. Emily’s closest and most successful sisters are ____________ and ______________.

8. What does the monster want Victor to make him and therefore will promise to disappear?

____________________.

9. The relationship between Victor and the monster is said to be that of a _______________ and a ____________.

10. __________________ is the name of Victor’s cousin and also his wife.

11. Mary Shelley maintained that she derived the name ____________ from a dream vision.

12. Emily Bronte died of the illness _______________ at the young age of _____________.

13. In what language does the word Frankenstein translate to “stone-of-the-franks” ? ______________

14. Lockwood reacts to Catherine’s ghost by ___________ .

15. Who is the author that we read in class and is also married to Mary Shelley? _____________

16. How many children of Mary Shelley’s died? __________

17. Catherine’s “adopted” brothers name is?

a. Hindley

b. Lockwood

c. Heathcliff

d. Edgar

18. What is the year in which Mary Shelley died?

a. 1851

b. 1853

c. 1855

d. None of the above

19. Emily Bronte’s other novel was?

a. Vindication of a Female Writer

b. Frankenstein

c. Alone At Last

d. None (Wuthering Heights was her only novel)

20. Emily Bronte worked at what Ladies Academy?

a. Miss Patchett's

b. Miss Suzie’s

c. Ms. Thatcher’s

d. Mrs. Wrong

21. What element does this statement entitle, the reader gets insight to the life of Frankenstein as he grows up and matures even though he is just a “creation”?

a. Repetition

b. Imagery

c. Characterization

d. Irony

22. The essay based on Sociological Criticism deals with the effects society has on?

a. Ghosts

b. Vampires

c. Teachers

d. None of the above

23. The characters lived in Toughcross Grange and Wuthering Heights.

a. True

b. False

24. The mystery of Heathcliff’s parentage is never solved.

a. True

b. False

Works Cited

Anne Bronte. Wikipedia. 13 April 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Bront%C3%AB (8 April 2008). P.1.

Bentley, Phyllis. The Brontes and their World. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1969, Pp. 5-39.

“Emily Brontë (1818 - 1848) - pseudonym Ellis Bell”. Books and Writers. 2003. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ebronte.htm (4 April 2008). P.1

“Emily Bronte”. The Literature Network. 2000. http://www.online-literature.com/bronte/ (5 April 2008). P.1

“Emily Bronte”. Wikipedia. 13 April 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Bront%C3%AB (8 April 2008). P.1

Martin, Tracy. Outline on Frankenstein. Slash Docs. 15 June 2003. http://www.slashdoc.com/ documents/48713. 11 April 2008. P. 3.

“Quotations about Fear”. The Quotation Garden. 18 November 2007. http://www.quotegarden.com/fear.html (4 April 2008). P.1

Schwartz, Aaron. Short Stories for Teachers. ESL Teachers Board. 2006-2007. http://www. eslteachersboard.com/cgi-bin/stories/index.pl?read=176. 11 April 2008. P. 1.

Extra Links

http://www.enotes.com/wuthering/introduction

http://www.kimwoodbridge.com/maryshel/essays.shtml http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/frankenstein/frank_birth.html

http://www.literaryhistory.com/19thC/BRONTEE.htm

http://www.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka/Bronte-Emily-Chro.html