Re-generating the Narrative-within-the-Narrative

More recent Brontë-related papers and theses:

Narrative-within-the-Narrative: A Complex Pattern of ‘Breaking the Fourth Wall’ in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights

Akash Das

The Criterion: An International Journal in English Vol. 12, Issue-IV, August 2021 

Having emerged right from the theatrical trend, the concept of ‘Fourth Wall’ implies the existence of an imaginary barrier that prevents the actors to communicate directly with the audience. Bertolt Brecht, among other modern playwrights, has practiced a reformed narrative technique that functions chiefly to ‘break the fourth wall’ and to initiate in the spectator’s psyche a process of ‘Defamiliarisation’. Its proliferation has also been witnessed across other creative genres like novel, short story, and film in the form of ‘Metafiction’. Moreover, a novel like Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, which is typically a Victorian in its essence, also offers acquaintance with a unique kind of ‘narrative-within-the-narrative’ structure implying to break the bracket of reader-character familiarity. However, its uniqueness, as well as complexity, rests in the fact that the novelist has not directed any of her narrators towards the readers. Instead, through an intermingled pattern, it develops the fourth wall confining the readers into the projected world of fiction, and simultaneously nullifies the action to alienate the readers outside the narrative framework. The paper aims to show this inherent duality that makes the narrative a significant one. 

Re-generation: Structural Repetition in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights

Mirjam Karlsson

Basic Thesis, Stockholm University, 2021

The dual plot of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847), with its two generations and repetitive pattern, creates a déjà vu effect which has intrigued readers for decades. The views regarding its importance have varied, though, with some critics giving little or no importance to the repetitive structure, even going as far as to call the plot of the second generation ‘boring’. On the other hand, there are the critics who pay much attention to the novel’s structure, some even arguing that the plot is not only repetitive, or dual, but that it also has a circular effect. In my study of the pattern of repetition and dual plots of Emily Brontë’s novel, using the formalist terms parallelism and juxtaposition, I examine the repetition that permeates the novel, more precisely naming, characterisation, and the juxtaposed sub-plots, with special attention to the revenge plot and the father figure. By shedding further light on the cyclical effect noted by critics, that is created by repetition and parallelism, I establish a link between the novel’s structure and the family motif. I argue that the structure of Wuthering Heights has a pattern of repetition and parallelism, which invokes a sense that history repeats itself in each new generation of the family.