Sexuality in pride & prejudice and wuthering heights

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Originally Posted by monkeycmonkeydo

i didnt come on here to be patronised, its a little thing called help...

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:rolleyes5:


When I was doing my bachelor's, in English, I earned money typing papers for other students, so much a page. I typed papers for students in many other disciplines as it seemed most English majors could type their own. Most of the time, people would bring me their hand written papers (this is in the days before computers) one or two nights before they were due. They would invariably ask me to use a largish font and wide margins so that they met the required page number for the assignment. I mean, really: how stupid do kids think their teachers are?

What that has to do with this thread I have no idea. Afterall, the OP is not asking us to type her/his paper and is definitely not asking to be patronized.

Write down ten pertinent sentances/statements.
Expand them into paragraphs.
Add intro, quotes ect..
Edit to fit seamlessly.

Recieve B- and resolve to start earlier next time.

I wonder what Miss Austin and Miss Bronte would think of the essay title.

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Originally Posted by prendrelemick

Recieve B-

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You think? :rolleyes5:

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Originally Posted by myrna22

You think? :rolleyes5:

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It used to work 30 years ago! I got alot of B minuses

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Originally Posted by monkeycmonkeydo

heathclff has been full of sexual tension, even after he died?

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He must have been on super viagra.

To the original poster, I'm not trying to patronize and already patronized procrastinator (we've all been there I'm sure), but be careful using movie versions of the book to lean on in lieu of your required reading. Movies are good supplements, but only just. As in the case with the movie Wuthering Heights, I'm not sure which version you have watched, nor how much you have read, but if it's the one with Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier - it only focuses on one aspect of the plot and leaves out the latter half of the book.

Relying on that too heavily instead of your reading will only be too obvious to your professor that you've left your work undone.

You know, I've found that professors are really usually ready to work with students who admit they need more time. I've asked for extensions multiple times with different professors through my university career.

Good luck and hope you do better next time. Both those books are worth the read.

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Originally Posted by prendrelemick

It used to work 30 years ago! I got alot of B minuses

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Well, I grade essays all the time and this doesn't give me the impression of anything more than a C-, at best. C means satisfactory, and an essay put together with bits and pieces of information gathered here and there and without the writer having even read the novels, and it will be clear she/he hasn't-- this is not satisfactory.

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Originally Posted by monkeycmonkeydo

i didnt come on here to be patronised, its a little thing called help,but anyway...
i have plenty of quotes and managed to get a decent bit on elizabeth & darcy/ sexuality, the problem is heathcliff as hes never appealed to me.

i know hes inlove with catherine earnshaw, but sexually speaking....
in comparison, is he as highly sexual towards catherine as darcy is to elizabeth??
it was unrequited love afterall, so does that not mean that for the entire 20 years after her death, heathclff has been full of sexual tension, even after he died?

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My only advice is to find a keyboard that contains a shift key and an apostrophe. Oh, and maybe be clear on the difference between sensuality and sexuality.

You have to be careful with the Darcy/Elizabeth "sexual tension" aspect - there is very little in the novel, but quite a bit in the movie (depending on which one you watched).

Darcy and Elizabeth never even kiss in the novel (and you can forget about the lake scene with Colin Firth - it never happened) - in the end the focus is more on love and tenderness than sexuality...

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Originally Posted by Jazz_

You have to be careful with the Darcy/Elizabeth "sexual tension" aspect - there is very little in the novel, but quite a bit in the movie (depending on which one you watched).

Darcy and Elizabeth never even kiss in the novel (and you can forget about the lake scene with Colin Firth - it never happened) - in the end the focus is more on love and tenderness than sexuality...

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Actually, I would say the focus of their relationship is, in the end, on the admirable character traits they find in each other. Love and tenderness? Though the 'love story' is an aspect of P & P, the focus of the novel is social commentary and satire. The famous first line tell it all.

Jane Austin's Pride And Prejudice is the classic example of puritan emotional affection. There is not even a trace of sexuality or even amorous sensuality to be found in the novel. Even then from the original request posed to the forum, it is evident that some teacher who set the subject wanted his or her students to explore for sexuality in this particular novel, which all who have read the novel know would be a futile attempt. Burdened with a misguided suggestion, a student who never read the book sought instant assistance in the forum, which proper or not, prompted her to never visit or use this site again. That was the real outcome of this talk. Why can't learned persons simply part with knowledge? And Pride And Prejudice is not at all considered to be containing social commentaries or criticism. In fact it and the author remained sterile to whatever were happening around. It is the only novel of it's times and the author the only person of that era that remained moot as if such a thing as the French Revolution has had happened in the world.

There is plenty to write about in Pride and Prejudice with regards to sexuality, which does not imply eroticism or sensuality.

Take something like Foucault's historical observations that there was a paradigm shift in the 19th century from a focus on marriage as an economic transaction to marriage as a sexual transaction. Now, in general, I think Foucault is full of baloney, but his observation does make for an interesting dichotomy to build an argument around.

Looking at the language one could think about how the girls' quest for marriage is operating around competing concerns of marriage as a pragmatic economic arrangement, and marriage as a match of sexual/emotional satisfaction. I would say that Austen merges the too extreme paradigms, and presents an argument for an ideal of marriage that finds emotional/sexual satisfaction within marital pragmatism. Austen's novel is a comedy of manners, and as such we should think about how comedy operates as a genre. It is a genre that mimics and critiques the social sphere, and usually there is an implicit correction or harmonious vision of how social relations work that can be found in the work. I haven't read P&P in ages, but I'm sure a close reading could find something to build off of to write quite a lot about how sexuality is depicted.

Not that any of this is relevant to the OP of the necrotised thread.

I would not focus Heathcliff as an example of sexuality. In the novel, his character is not portrayed as highly sexual, but rather as highly obsessive. Your point about his pining after Cathy for 20 years is more evidence of his obsession than his extreme sexuality.
Your teacher is being clever in choosing this assignment. They are both novels in which sexuality is expressed very indirectly. They have themes of romantic love which is not the same as sexuality. Plus, as was previously stated, the movies are going to contain more sexual tension than the novels. You are probably going to have to actually look through the text for examples. Even if you just pick pages at random. Your teacher is probably going to be looking for you to be doing what you are thinking of doing.