Printable View
Wuthering Heights was written around 1846 but set in the second half of the eighteenth century. What difference does this make? The nineteenth century was a time of great change, but had things changed very much up on the Yorkshire Moors? Would the story have been equally possible if it had been set in 1846? Was there some other reason for Emily Bronte setting the story 70 years in the past?
It's a trope of gothic fiction to set things in the past, to give the story a bit of historic mystery to it. From our position there doesn't seem much different between the 18th and 19th century, but for those living at the time there would still be a pleasant exoticness to the past.
Also, setting a story sufficiently in the past allows you to cover a wider timespan, as WH covers about 30 years or so.
I agree with Pip. As WH is practically a family saga, it covers a big timespan, so in order to arrive at the current point in time '(when Mr Lockwood walks unwittingly into the story), you need some time before that to explain how things came to be like that (as ghastly as they are).
Apart from which it is spooky in a Halloweenie kind of way to start something in the deep and dark past. If you remember that the story plays pretty much in Patrick Brontė's timeframe (probably even earlier). There would only be a handful of people left she knew who had lived in those days. So your story has already got some spooky past to it, like the old mansions with theirghosts in other Gothic fiction or the distant tales of Scott.
Most of Dickens and George Eliot's novels are set a generation or two earlier. The railways hardly figure at all in Dickens: nearly everyone travels by stage coach as in his youth. Adam Bede is as far from WH as you can get, but set in 1799.
I read in a student guide (which you can often buy for 1p + postage off the web) that another reason for dating the story back in time was that British life was slightly rougher back then and class consciousness had not taken as much hold. I am not sure how true that is. Class consciousness seemed to be pretty strong by the early 1800s if Pride and Prejudice and Great Expectations is to be believed.
You've answered your own question, kev. Look at Pride and Prejudice. (Great Expectations is presumably set later.)
It's just the WH has a cast list with a limited social range.
The interesting comparison here is Adam Bede, set specifically in 1799. The are social gradations between Farmer Poyser and his farmworkers and servants (he, or at any rate Mrs Poyser, are boss) but there is a yawning gap between them and the gentry, represented by the parson and the squire. The basis of the plot is that it is impossible for the farmer's niece to marry the squire's son, but she thinks it is, with disastrous results.
There are no gentry on that level in WH, as I remember.
Not 1p and postage well spent.
I've never heard of Adam Bede. Would you recommend it?
Adam Bede was George Eliot's first great success. It is probably true to say that it is the one that was far more popular for the Victorians than now. I re-read it this spring. If you've just read Tess, then it could be very interesting to compare: a woman's tragedy (sex with a higher class man) in a rural setting.
I have to say I did break off half way through before finishing it. But I'd be interested to see another kev67-blow-by-blow on the subject.
Are you having trouble sleeping like me?
The past is creepy and has a sort of mysticism about it. Also, we understand the significance of the past but can only guess at the significance of the present.