If you have any ideas to what may have caused the hallucination or nightmare please give your opinion!
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
4th Discussion
In Wuthering Heights Mr. Lockwood believes that he sees a demon or a ghost although in my opinion it is probably simply a nightmare that he had because of the strange sleeping conditions he was in and the fact that he read the name of the girl that appeared multiple times in trying to fall asleep.
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I think the source of the ghost / demon vision will be revealed later--it is one of those moments of suspense building. Keep in mind that a tag-phrase for this novel could be "love exists beyond the grave".
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ReplyDeleteI think it is best to assume that the source of Lockwood's supernatural encounter will surface later on in the novel. For discussion purposes, I am considering any event that has to do with forces beyond a character's comprehension as "supernatural". With this criterion in place, I have come across two examples within the book thus far. The first of these is the afore mentioned ghost/demon encounter that included "Catherine Linton... [who had finally] come home, [having] lost [her] way on the moor" (26). I believe we will come to find the statement of Catherine's misdirection prophetic. The last of the supernatural occurences that I have made note of also occurs within a short time frame. The housekeeper, Ms. Dean, upon Heathcliff's prolonged return to the novel, comes in contact with inexplicable forces when trying to pay Wuthering Heights a visit one day. Mrs. Dean ,thinking of young Hindley, through "bodily eye was cheated into a momentary belief that the child lifted its face and stared straight into [hers]" (119). This superstition "urged [her] to comply with [her irratonal] impulse" (119). In my opinion, this inner, uncontrollable, and non-quantifiable driving force that manifests itself either in the form of fear or perhaps love, is one of the finer details of a Gothic novel. Such raging emotions may in fact be the source of previous supernatural occurences within Wuthering Heights and for the inevitable ones to come. Does anybody else agree or disagree?
ReplyDeleteWithin Gothic novels, there does seem to be an even stronger driving force within the characters that causes them to do what they do. In the case of The Picture of Dorian Gray, the protagonist's fear, hatred, and blase (there should be an acute accent on the "e") are magnified greatly before he commits a murder.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you guys because if thers "forces" werent telling or urging the to do what they do then the story wouldn't happen they sort of need a supernatural push, you know?
ReplyDeleteIn my novel, The Mysteries of Udolpho, the main character Emily goes through many hallucinations and nightmares while she is living in her aunt's palace. It turned out that there was a man named Dupont was making noises behind her walls. Even though this was true, there were many supernatural powers in the castle at Udolpho.
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