#neslihan cangöz

[faintingheroine]

Yüksek Yüksek Tepelere (traditional Turkish song sung during the “henna night”, a ceremony for the bride the night before the wedding):

Lyrics:

“Don’t let them establish homes in high heights,

Don’t let them give girls to far away regions

Don’t let them demean the one and only of her mother

Let it be known to flying birds,

I missed my mother

Both my mother and my father

I missed my village

If only my father had a horse and came here

If only my mother could sail and come here

If only my siblings knew my whereabouts and came here

Let it be known to the flying birds,

I missed my mother,

Both my mother and my father

I missed my village”

Wuthering Heights:

Catherine:

“I thought as I lay there, with my head against that table leg, and my eyes dimly discerning the grey square of the window, that I was enclosed in the oak-panelled bed at home; and my heart ached with some great grief which, just waking, I could not recollect. I pondered, and worried myself to discover what it could be, and, most strangely, the whole last seven years of my life grew a blank! I did not recall that they had been at all. I was a child; my father was just buried, and my misery arose from the separation that Hindley had ordered between me and Heathcliff. I was laid alone, for the first time; and, rousing from a dismal doze after a night of weeping, I lifted my hand to push the panels aside: it struck the table-top! I swept it along the carpet, and then memory burst in: my late anguish was swallowed in a paroxysm of despair. I cannot say why I felt so wildly wretched: it must have been temporary derangement; for there is scarcely cause. But, supposing at twelve years old I had been wrenched from the Heights, and every early association, and my all in all, as Heathcliff was at that time, and been converted at a stroke into Mrs. Linton, the lady of Thrushcross Grange, and the wife of a stranger: an exile, and outcast, thenceforth, from what had been my world. You may fancy a glimpse of the abyss where I grovelled! Shake your head as you will, Nelly, you have helped to unsettle me! You should have spoken to Edgar, indeed you should, and compelled him to leave me quiet! Oh, I’m burning! I wish I were out of doors! I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free; and laughing at injuries, not maddening under them! Why am I so changed? why does my blood rush into a hell of tumult at a few words? I’m sure I should be myself were I once among the heather on those hills. Open the window again wide: fasten it open! Quick, why don’t you move?’

‘Because I won’t give you your death of cold,’ I answered.

‘You won’t give me a chance of life, you mean,’ she said, sullenly. ‘However, I’m not helpless yet; I’ll open it myself.’

And sliding from the bed before I could hinder her, she crossed the room, walking very uncertainly, threw it back, and bent out, careless of the frosty air that cut about her shoulders as keen as a knife. I entreated, and finally attempted to force her to retire. But I soon found her delirious strength much surpassed mine (she was delirious, I became convinced by her subsequent actions and ravings). There was no moon, and everything beneath lay in misty darkness: not a light gleamed from any house, far or near all had been extinguished long ago: and those at Wuthering Heights were never visible—still she asserted she caught their shining.

‘Look!’ she cried eagerly, ‘that’s my room with the candle in it, and the trees swaying before it; and the other candle is in Joseph’s garret. Joseph sits up late, doesn’t he? He’s waiting till I come home that he may lock the gate. Well, he’ll wait a while yet. It’s a rough journey, and a sad heart to travel it; and we must pass by Gimmerton Kirk to go that journey! We’ve braved its ghosts often together, and dared each other to stand among the graves and ask them to come. But, Heathcliff, if I dare you now, will you venture? If you do, I’ll keep you. I’ll not lie there by myself: they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me, but I won’t rest till you are with me. I never will!’”

(Chapter 12)

Isabella:

“You’ll not be surprised, Ellen, at my feeling particularly cheerless, seated in worse than solitude on that inhospitable hearth, and remembering that four miles distant lay my delightful home, containing the only people I loved on earth; and there might as well be the Atlantic to part us, instead of those four miles: I could not overpass them!”

(Chapter 13)

Really I am once again appreciating Neslihan Cangöz for titling her feminist essay on Wuthering Heights in Turkish “Yüksek Yüksek Tepelere”. Brilliant choice of title.

#wuthering heights #yüksek yüksek tepelere #Youtube #neslihan cangöz #hafif kahramanlar #turkish music

[faintingheroine]

“It is impossible to enumerate, there are many attractive, impactful criticisms that evaluate the novel from different perspectives and try to analyze its subtexts and symbols. But these criticisms can sometimes prevent seeing what is very obvious. For example no one is talking about money. In my opinion what many critics ignore or join in not giving importance while trying to understand Heathcliff’s actions is his financial violence towards the heroines. Now, returning to another thing not given importance, to the gothic genre, let’s think of Ann Radcliffe novels of the Female Gothic archetype, her heroines whose inheritances are forcefully taken. Isn’t the same plot in Brontë’s novel as well? Furthermore Brontë adds to this plot the way marriage laws of the period facilitate the inheritance to pass from man to man. For example one of the reasons why Edgar fears his sister Isabella Linton marrying Heathcliff is “the possible fact that his property, in default of heirs male, might pass into such a one’s power”. Again while we are enchanted by the passionate love between Catherine and Heathcliff we should realize that “(Catherine’s) fathur’s goold runs into his pocket, and her father’s son gallops down t’ broad road, while (Heathcliff) flees afore to oppen t’ pikes?’”. This talk that Heathcliff has with Catherine shows the reason why he marries Isabella:

“She’s her brother’s heir, is she not?” he asked, after a brief silence.

“I should be sorry to think so,” returned his companion. “Half-a-dozen nephews shall erase her title, please Heaven! Abstract your mind from the subject at present: you are too prone to covet your neighbour’s goods; remember this neighbour’s goods are mine.””

(…)

Heathcliff knows very well the laws that will protect him. Taking into account that Isabella’s older brother is a magistrate, he says, “But tell him, also, to set his fraternal and magisterial heart at ease: that I keep strictly within the limits of the law. I have avoided, up to this period, giving her the slightest right to claim a separation”. So Heathcliff gets behind him legal power too to use against women.

With emphasis on elements like this male heir issue that is mentioned in the novel, the heroines being rendered without property, the marriage laws being in men’s favor, the heroines not being able to reach “the law” (the notary being late, the lawyer making arrangements in Heathcliff’s favor), Brontë shows how women are made powerless and penniless and it is as if this issue doesn’t have anything to the with passionate love, vengefulness or taking revenge. Going further, it is not like I haven’t thought that Brontë wanted to make us sense this through Heathcliff’s mouth: “She abandoned them under a delusion,’ he answered; ‘picturing in me a hero of romance, and expecting unlimited indulgences from my chivalrous devotion. I can hardly regard her in the light of a rational creature, so obstinately has she persisted in forming a fabulous notion of my character and acting on the false impressions she cherished”.

In conclusion, Brontë, saluting the Classic Gothic, takes the traditional female characters like Cathy and Isabella who are stereotyped as the naive, beautiful, virginal, young girl and in the more complex and ambiguous world of Wuthering Heights ensures them to exist not via coincidences or by being saved but by their own actions and choices. She subtly shows women’s power and powerlessness, their confinement in homes, their roles in the family, the legal arrangements regarding marriage and property that they couldn’t have changed at that point in history. All three heroines are challenged by Heathcliff’s wrath, violence and love and they fight back by employing different reactions and strategies. At the same time, it is as if Catherine, Isabella and Cathy echo and mirror each other and collaborate with each other via invisible ties”.

From the essay “Yüksek Yüksek Tepelere” by Neslihan Cangöz, from the book Hafif Kahramanlar

Translated from Turkish by me

I think this is a good breakdown of Heathcliff’s financial abuse, an aspect of him that is often ignored.

This is from a book examining popular female characters from both Western and Turkish popular fiction (though they mention that Wuthering Heights can’t really be considered popular fiction both in the introduction and the essay on it, but it is still included in the book). This analysis is very valuable in conversation with the other essays in the book. Compared to the other female characters analyzed in the book, Brontë really lets her heroines to become their own people and to be defined by their own actions. I really enjoyed reading the essay, it was very good.

The essay’s name is “Yüksek Yüksek Tepelere”. Wuthering Heights’s standardized translation in Turkish is “Uğultulu Tepeler”. “Yüksek Yüksek Tepelere” literally means “To the High Heights” and it is the name of a very famous Turkish folk song that is sung during the henna night before a bride’s wedding. The song is about a bride lamenting moving to a far away rural place after the wedding and missing her parents, her siblings and her old home. I think it is a very fitting, almost genius name for a Turkish feminist essay on Wuthering Heights. Anyway I loved it.

#wuthering heights #uğultulu tepeler #neslihan cangöz #yüksek yüksek tepelere #hafif kahramanlar #henna night

[faintingheroine]

Do you have a list of your favourite essays/criticism on Wuthering Heights? I really enjoy your commentary. Thank you so much!!!

Thanks for your kind words ;)

I don’t exactly have a list but some good essays that I like:

“Emily Brontë In and Out of Her Time” - Nancy Armstrong

“A Modern Way With The Classic” - Frank Kermode

“Wuthering Heights” - Andrea Dworkin

“The Magnanimity of Wuthering Heights” - Joyce Carol Oates

Everything written by Graeme Tytler

“The Ellipses of Interpretation” - J. Hillis Miller

“Impossible Love and Commodity Culture in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights” - Daniela Garofalo

The things written by Inga Stina-Ewbank

“Irresistible Narrative: The Art of “Wuthering Heights”” by Professor Douglas Jefferson

“Heathcliff as Fetish in “Wuthering Heights”” - Dana Medoro

“The Return to Heath” - Henry Staten

“Analyzing Wuthering Heights” (Book) - Nicholas Marsh

“The Structure of Wuthering Heights” - C. P. Sanger

Alex Tankard’s chapter on Linton Heathcliff in their book “Tuberculosis and Disabled Identity in Nineteenth Century Literature”

All 19th century book reviews

I like Erendiz Atasü and Neslihan Cangöz’s essays but they are in Turkish - but you can find quotes from them on my blog

I do not agree with everything in these essays, which is not possible anyway since they often have different interpretations. And I do have criticisms on most of them. But they are all good works I enjoyed reading. And I am sure I am forgetting some.

If you are writing a paper on Wuthering Heights Anon, I must warn you that most of the above essays are quite old, they tend to be from the second half of 20th century. You should probably quote from more recent works in a paper you are writing today.

#wuthering heights #asks #anonymous #wh asks

[faintingheroine]

From the Introduction of a new Turkish edition of Wuthering Heights that I have just bought. The Introduction is by Jale Parla who is an important Turkish literary academic:

My Translation:

“Emily Brontë doesn’t show the care and mastery she shows in showing Catherine Earnshaw’s complicated mental state in the character of Heathcliff. Whether we call him a machine of vengeance or an angel of vengeance, Heathcliff who devotes his life to avenging himself on those who separated him from Catherine is a one-dimensional character. His obsessive vengeance is directed at all members of the two families without distinguishing between the innocent and the guilty. He doesn’t pity anyone including his own son. Even if there is a weak social realism in Heathcliff’s class ostracization, his cruelty, his excess, his love for violence and him being attractive to women despite all these makes one think that he is more inspired by a literary model, by the demonic romantic type of hero called the Byronic hero.

Wuthering Heights is composed of two volumes. The Second Volume is about the younger generation of Earnshaws and Lintons. Heathcliff hovers over these youths like a curse but this time he will be defeated. The Second Volume progresses more with the Gothic novel formula; there isn’t a place in The Second Volume for the the questions left to be unanswered, the tension borne by the clashes caused by the violent inner worlds and the contrasts of the characters in The First Volume. In this part Emily Brontë pursues the aim to restore the system that the violent passions and ambitions wrecked. This is a method she learned from Shakespeare. (…) It is difficult to say that The Second Volume where everything; the characters, the nature, the emotions are tamed continues the depth of The First Volume”.

Needless to say I don’t agree. But I have a weakness for Turkish analyses of Wuthering Heights. But I do prefer Erendiz Atasü’s and Neslihan Cangöz’s.

#wuthering heights #uğultulu tepeler