Dissertations and Theses
Date of Award
2023
Document Type
Thesis
Department
English
First Advisor
Elazar Elhanan
Second Advisor
Václav Paris
Third Advisor
András Kiséry
Keywords
Spectres, Gothic, Bronte, Women, Psychoanalysis, Poststructuralism
Abstract
Central to Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847) is its famous haunting scene. As this paper suggests, it is in the haunting scene that the novel’s themes are at their most potent and where Brontë is at her most daring, challenging the socially prescribed, gendered binaries of her time. The primary interest of this paper is in describing the particular power of Brontë’s feminine ghost, an archetypal figure of the female Gothic, using theoretical frameworks from poststructuralism and psychoanalysis. I propose a feminist interpretation of the novel which emphasizes the catalyzing effect of the haunting scene and its reversals– and which keeps Brontë, herself an uncanny figure, close at hand. The paper proceeds through a close-reading of the haunting scene and considers it in relation to the novel’s disquiet end. In the final section, I consider the inherent ghostliness of women in Brontë’s time, arguing that the novel’s narration style forces the reader into this peripheral perspective.
Recommended Citation
Shearer, Corinne H., "Spectres of Women in Wuthering Heights" (2023). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_etds_theses/1230
