Master of Arts in English, Cleveland State University, 2017, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

In recent years, there has been a trend in young adult adaptations of Wuthering Heights to amend the plot so that Catherine Earnshaw chooses to have a romantic relationship with Heathcliff, when in Bronte's novel she decides against it. In the following study, I trace the factors that contribute to Catherine's rejection of Heathcliff as a romantic partner in the original text. Many critics have argued that her motives are primarily Machiavellian since she chooses a suitor with more wealth and familial connections than Heathcliff. These are indeed factors; however, by engaging with contemporary research on adolescent development, I show that the primary reason she rejects Heathcliff is because he has exhibited a propensity for violence and other abusive behaviors. I also analyze the consequences of reversing her decision in the updated young adult versions, which include the made-for-television film MTV's Wuthering Heights (2003), the Lifetime original film Wuthering High School (2012), and the novel Catherine (2013). The most significant consequence of this change is that in order to make Heathcliff a “chooseable,” twenty-first century hero, the writers of these works have to romanticize his violent tendencies through the perspectives of their female protagonists. When the young women begin to question how secure they are around their partners, they ultimately decide that fidelity to their “soulmate” relationship is more important than safety or autonomy, with the writers using Catherine Earnshaw's famous “I am Heathcliff” speech to support their protagonists' conclusions. I argue, though, that while Catherine does allude to the type of otherworldly love these young women are venerating, Bronte uses her speech to confront the limitations of that love, not to hold it up as an ideal.

Committee: Rachel Carnell (Committee Chair); Gary Dyer (Committee Member); Frederick Karem (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; Behavioral Psychology; British and Irish Literature; Gender; Literature; Modern Literature; Motion Pictures; Personal Relationships

Master of Arts in English, Cleveland State University, 2010, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

Emily Bronte's sole novel, Wuthering Heights, is unusual among nineteenth-century works due to the non-specificity of its locations. While many of her contemporaries were very specific in the use of their settings, using real place names and locations that paralleled real-life locations of the time very closely, Bronte uses details of place that make it impossible to draw one-to-one correspondence between her settings and real-life locales, and includes details that serve to remind the reader that the places in which her story takes place, and thus the story itself, are unreal. She does this in order to exert total narrative control over her universe. This enables Bronte as an author to force her readers to confront the issue of power, since the reader must engage Bronte's narrative universe on the author's terms.

Committee: Gary Dyer PhD (Committee Chair); Rachel Carnell PhD (Committee Member); Jennifer Jeffers PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: