In a resent post, a student in an English class, assigned to read Wuthering Heights, asked for help - struggling to give a good analysis. I'll assume that it was high school English and the usual sophomoric advice was given. I was flabbergasted! Not at the advice, but that an English teacher would ask a teen to read and understand Wuthering Heights.
Apropos reading and understanding:
Beyond Decoding Words, by Maryanne Wolf, (1)
“In brief, this brain learns to access and integrate within 300 milliseconds a vast array of visual, semantic, sound (or phonological), and conceptual processes, which allows us to decode and begin to comprehend a word. At that point, for most of us our circuit is automatic enough to allocate an additional precious 100 to 200 milliseconds to an even more sophisticated set of comprehension processes that allow us to connect the decoded words to inference, analogical reasoning, critical analysis, contextual knowledge, and finally, the apex of reading: our own thoughts that go beyond the text.
This is what Proust called the heart of reading — when we go beyond the author’s wisdom and enter the beginning of our own.”
And here is the catch phrase: wisdom. How can you ask a young person lacking life's experience go “beyond the author’s wisdom and enter the beginning of our own.” Or even to comprehend the “the author’s wisdom” when scholars can give but a partial answer.
In the following essay I would like to explore some of the views of Wuthering Heights - first from an aesthetic view point and then from an ethical, whether the question, 'is Heathcliff evil', has any meaning beyond the reflection of the reader's own personality.
References
1. Does the Brain Like E-Books?(New York Times, October 15, 2009)
related interest:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...1015141500.htm
New Light On Nature Of Broca's Area: Rare Procedure Documents How Human Brain Computes Language