Just because it is rather focused on alpha males and trembling heroines--and also because it was considered to be not very serious literature at the time of writing. Certainly Mrs Radcliffe was considered to be very 'girly' in its target audience, as Austen points out. Her hero Henry Tilney is seen as being very much a 'new man' in admitting to liking Gothic novels... interesting side question, is Henry Tilney deliberately opposed to the type of the Gothic hero, ot is he a version of one?
When I was at school, back in the dawn of time, we would never have studied Wuthering Heights as a Gothic text, because the Gothic was seen by my teachers to be a little trashy in some ways, though to be fair they had fairly high standards when it came to the canon (certainly we wouldn't have done Frankenstein for GCSE, for instance, that would have been very lowbrow) and to think of a text as a 'gothic novel' would be to diminish its importance as a serious novel. I suppose this is a hangover from the 'follow-ups' to the Gothic, the Victorian 'sensation' novel. Texts such as East Lynne (which inspired Mrs Doubtfire) or Lady Audley's Secret were certainly not the kind of literature you could study for an exam. How things have changed!
You can see this view reflected in Austen's take-off of it in Northanger Abbey, which shows you how long ago I was at school (about 1789), but it lasted for quite a long time. Now, of course, we look at the Brontes and there are plenty of gothic features, and it seems strange to think that such a novel wasn't always in that genre... What do you think?
Me and my friend both had similar experiences. We both go to different schools but are studying Wuthering heights as a literature text. However, they are analysing the text in terms of love and revenge. I think as time progresses people become more interested in the not so obvious. I may be wrong but I think its more fitting to analyse the romantic side of Wuthering Heights for GCSEs because its obvious. Its more interesting to learn about the not so obvious. Humans have become more interested in the supernatural. It used to be technology since it wasn't a common thing then. Interest will always lie with what we have little knowledge of hence the supernatural.
ReplyDelete