ipl-logo

Psychoanalysis In Charlotte Bronte's Wuthering Heights

1288 Words6 Pages

Body “We are dominated by a desire for gratification and an aversion to anything which might frustrate it.”
“Literature is fundamentally intertwined with the psyche.” “Psychoanalytic literary criticism emerges specifically from a therapeutic technique which the Viennese neurologist Sigmund Freud developed for the treatment of hysteria and neurosis at the end of the nineteenth century.” The treatment “consists of an interchange of words between a patient and an analyst, the latter draws the patient’s attention to signs of forgotten or repressed memories which perturb his or her speech.” Psychoanalysis uncovers the mysteries of the lost memories of childhood. Repression is described as a psychological effort to circumvent one’s desires …show more content…

HeathCliff was disturbed to a great extent and had a feeling of retaliation. Therefore, his continuous suffering resulted in the confirmation of the divided self.
“Melvin R. Watson, considers Wuthering Heights a psychological study of Heathcliff, who is claimed to be divided between love and revenge.” “Critics, like Charlotte Brontë, consider him a devil, a Ghoul, and an Afreet [an Arabic word which means demon]”.
Likewise in Frankenstein disunion in the abomination is seen. Mary Shelley shows the theme of the divided self by presenting the creator and the creation as a single unit. “The monster, with his primal innocence, vulnerability to corruption and intense, even malicious physical violence, embodies the dangerous and dark domain of the unconscious.” The Monster represents the darkest and deepest secrets of humans. Mary Shelley deliberately left the creature without a name. A name is what gives each individual an identity and a sense of uniqueness. Therefore, in order to emphasize that he is an outcast in the social word she left him nameless. Besides that, by using many Gothic elements in the novel, Mary Shelley creates a sense of horror. This sense of terror can be felt by reading the scene in which Victor Frankenstein is creating the monster. The baffling circumstances in which Victor collects body sections for his experiments is one of the numerous gothic elements in the novel. Victor 's laboratory, which is also a gloomy and horrific atmosphere also establishes a sense of terror in the

Show More
Related

  • Moral Ambiguity In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

    550 Words  | 3 Pages

    The actions of an individual defines the boundary between sympathy and wickedness. Their behaviors and thoughts change the plot of the story and character identity. Mary Shelley uses moral ambiguity to overlook the unrealistic nature of her story. In Frankenstein, this concept incorporates itself into Mary Shelley’s characters. Ambiguity invokes an attachment between the figures and readers.

    Read More

  • Why Does Mary Shelley Use Of Personification In Frankenstein

    656 Words  | 3 Pages

    Frankenstein by Mary Shelley is a gothic novel that tells the story of scientist, Victor Frankenstein, and his obsession with creating human life. This leads him to creating a gruesome monster made of body-parts stolen from grave yards, whom upon discovering his hideousness, the monster seeks revenge against his creator, causing Victor to regret the creation of his monster for the rest of his life. Shelley uses the literary elements of personification, imagery, and similes to give a vivid sense and visualization of Victor Frankenstein’s thoughts and feelings as well as to allow us to delve deeper into the monster’s actions and emotions. Throughout the novel, Shelley uses personification of various forces and objects to reflect the effect in Victor’s actions.

    Read More

  • Examples Of Cruelty In Frankenstein

    687 Words  | 3 Pages

    The novel Frankenstein brings to light many problems and situations that shed light on the faults of mankind. Cruelty was a huge factor in the novel; throughout Frankenstein is cruel to his body and to his creation. When he first makes the creature he runs from it, leaving the creature to fend for himself; even when reuniting with the creature he continues displays cruelty. The creature, in turn exhibits Victor cruelty right back. Within Frankenstein cruelty can be attributed, often affecting both Victor and the creature; serving as a crucial motivator and revealing their anger, pain, frustration till eventually both die.

    Read More

  • Sacrificing In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

    734 Words  | 3 Pages

    The creature toughly discovers the world on his own and declares war on humanity. Frankenstein’s act as God conducts his life and his creation’s into a series of terrific events. As the novel progresses, Victor and his monster vie for the role or protagonist. At simple site, readers think the monster and Victor are two completely different people, but in fact they share the same desires. The creature ironically becomes Victor’s doppelganger by both wanting affection, their miseries and hate for each other.

    Read More

  • Social Belonging In Frankenstein

    987 Words  | 4 Pages

    An unsatisfied need for a sense of belonging transforms Frankenstein’s creature into the monster it ultimately becomes. Therefore, I argue that the predominant theme in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is the need for social belonging

    Read More

  • The Importance Of Family In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

    395 Words  | 2 Pages

    Interestingly enough, the novel resembles Shelley’s own life and can be interpreted as a reflection of her perception of families. Shelley shares many of the same characteristics with most of her characters. As the main character in the novel, Frankenstein’s creature is depicted as “a motherless orphan” who had an “unnatural birth” (Griffith). This correlates with Shelley’s own childhood as she was raised without a mother and her birth was in some ways “unnatural” as mothers are not naturally made to die during childbirth.

    Read More

  • Duality Of Human Nature In Frankenstein

    819 Words  | 4 Pages

    Duality is shown in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, a gothic tale of a scientist whom looks to advance the life-giving qualities of mother nature. Through this novel, Shelley proves that good and evil in human nature is not always simple to define, and that everyone has both of these qualities within them. The duality of human nature is shown through the characters of Victor Frankenstein and his monster, who are both heroes in the novel while simultaneously displaying anti-hero qualities. Shelley forces the reader to sympathize with them both but also creates gruesome ideas of the two. Frankenstein’s creature places himself in a submissive position when he begs his creator to have mercy on him and asking the creator to “create a female for [him] with whom [he] can live in the interchange of those sympathies necessary for [his] being.”

    Read More

  • Revenge In Frankenstein Analysis

    766 Words  | 4 Pages

    Mary Shelley shows the endless amount of revenge and that it is driven by pure hatred and rage. The monster was not created to be vengeful, he was kind hearted but when he was poorly treated by Victor and then by the Delacey family, he turned cold. In her novel Frankenstein, Mary Shelley displays the immorality and destructive effects that revenge can have through Frankenstein and his pursuit of the creature. Immediately after the monster had awoken, hatred thickened and would drive the plot to be all about revenge. The creature illustrates this hatred as he says to Victor, “Everything is related in them which bears reference to my accursed origin; the whole detail of that series of disgusting circumstances which produced it is set in view;

    Read More

  • Loneliness And Irony In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

    683 Words  | 3 Pages

    In Frankenstein, Mary Shelley tells a fictitious tale of the scientist Victor Frankenstein executing his dream of forming life. As soon as his creation awakens, Frankenstein sprints away full of disappointment and dread. Consequently, this sparks the beginning of the creature’s infamous attitude of anger. Despite him carrying around the stereotype of emitting evil, the creature counters it throughout the novel. Part of the novel examines his immense kindness and his unavoidable loneliness.

    Read More

  • Solitude In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

    1109 Words  | 5 Pages

    “Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god” (Aristotle). Romantic period writer and author, Mary Shelley, depicts two characters in her soft science fiction novel, Frankenstein, that is exquisitely similar to those who “would find delight in solitude” as quoted by Aristotle in his Politics. In Shelley’s Frankenstein, the parallel of Aristotle’s two presented personas consists as Victor Frankenstein as a god and his horrific creation, the Monster, as a wild beast. Unambiguously, Victor is indeed the god of the Monster because he created him, consequently bringing the Monster into existence. The Monster too is merely a wild beast from the perception that he appears to be a frightening and violent creature.

    Read More

  • Similarities Between Victor And The Monster In Frankenstein

    1009 Words  | 5 Pages

    Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, shows how a character who is portrayed as a tragic hero, in the beginning, can become the monster in the end. Victor and the Monster in Mary Shelley’s captivating novel showed how rival enemies share striking similarities. The similarities between the two tragic characters are driven by their dreary isolation from the secluded world. A large difference is that they were both raised in two completely different environments but understood the meaning of isolation. Physical differences are more noticeable rather than their personalities.

    Read More

  • Frankenstein Dehumanization Analysis

    1068 Words  | 5 Pages

    Sticks and strangling will break bones, but words will leave irreparable emotional scars. In Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s epistolary novel, Frankenstein, the estranged Victor Frankenstein deprives his re-animated ‘creature’ of a name. The cruel manner Victor treats his “Adam” (Shelley 119) by withholding a name pushes the Creature further away from the belonging he so desperately seeks (148). As atrocities occur at the ashen hands of the Creature, names like “monster”(118) and “wretched devil”(118) bombard him from those he would seek refuge with . Nameless, the Creature is dehumanized and consequences of a negative perception, internally and from society, persist.

    Read More

  • Emotional And Character Development In Bronte's Jane Eyre

    1588 Words  | 7 Pages

    Bronte 's Jane Eyre transcends the genres of literature to depict the emotional and character development of its protagonist. Although no overall genre dominates the novel exclusively, the vivid use of setting contributes towards the portrayal of Bronte’s bildungsroman (Realisms, 92) and defines the protagonist’s struggles as she grapples with her inner-self, and the social expectations of her gender. The novel incorporates Jane’s frequent conflicts, oppression, isolation and self-examination as she defends her identity and independence. Set amongst five separate locations, Bronte’s skilful use of literal and metaphorical landscapes, nature, and imagery, skilfully intertwines with the plot and denotes each phrase of her maturity.

    Read More

  • Conflict In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

    966 Words  | 4 Pages

    Frankenstein In Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a conflict as old as life itself emerges as the story progresses; parent versus posterity in a struggle for reconciliation. Victor Frankenstein and his creation become tied up in a constant battle as the creation seeks his origins, finding a horrifying truth; the creator had abandoned the creation. This central conflict derives from the creation of the creature, inability of Frankenstein to appreciate his creation, and the creation’s need for a parental figure. The conflict addresses themes of the book such as human desires for prestige, acceptance, and the intimacy of a relationship with one’s creator.

    Read More

  • Character Development In Frankenstein

    1921 Words  | 8 Pages

    Such passion is seen in Victor’s ‘noble intent’ to design a being that could contribute to society, but he had overextended himself, falling under the spell of playing ‘God,’ further digging his grave as he is blinded by glory. His creation – aptly called monstrous being due to its stature, appearance, and strength – proved to be more of a pure and intellectually disposed ‘child’ that moves throughout the novel as a mere oddity, given the short end of the stick in relation to a lack of familial figures within his life, especially that of parents. Clearly, Victor Frankenstein had sealed his fate: by playing God he was losing his humanity, ultimately becoming the manifestation of Mary Shelley’s hidden desires, deteriorating into The Lucifer Principle by which the author Howard Bloom notes social groups, not individuals, as the primary “unit of selection” in human psychological

    Read More

More about Psychoanalysis In Charlotte Bronte's Wuthering Heights

Open Document