Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-hqlzj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-09-06T02:24:36.470Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Folklore, Fear, and the Feminine: Ghosts and Old Wives' Tales in Wuthering Heights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Paula M. Krebs
Paula M. Krebs
Affiliation:
Wheaton College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Wuthering heights is haunted, of course. But not only by the ghost of Catherine, who harries Heathcliff and terrifies Lockwood. Not only by the shades of Heathcliff and Catherine (or Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon) who set off toward Penistone Crag. The ghosts in Wuthering Heights are not Gothic ghosts nor the ghosts from Victorian magazine ghost stories. They represent a different kind of haunting altogether — the haunting of the Victorian middle classes by fear of the people they designated as “the folk.”

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , Spring 1998 , pp. 41 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

WORKS CITED

Allott, Miriam, ed. Critical Perspectives on Wuthering Heights. London: Longmans, 1990.Google Scholar
Allott, Miriam, ed. The Brontes: The Critical Heritage. Boston: Routledge, 1974.Google Scholar
Altick, Richard D. “English Publishing and the Mass Audience in 1852.” Writers, Readers, and Occasions: Selected Essays on Victorian Literature and Life. Columbus: Ohio State UP. 1989. 141–58.Google Scholar
Altick, Richard D. The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800–1900. Chicago: U of Chicago P. 1957.Google Scholar
Ankenbrandt, Katherine. “Songs in Wuthering Heights.” Southern Folklore Quarterly 24.2 (1969): 92–115.Google Scholar
Armstrong, Nancy. “Emily's Ghost: The Cultural Politics of Victorian Fiction, Folklore, and Photography.” Novel 25 (1992): 245–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnold, Matthew. On the Study of Celtic Literature and Other Essays. London: J. M. Dent, 1910.Google Scholar
Auerbach, Nina, and Knoepflmacher, U. C.. eds. Forbidden Journeys: Fairy Tales and Fantasies by Victorian Women Writers. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Briggs, Katharine. A Dictionary of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures. London: Allen Lane, 1976.Google Scholar
Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights. Ed. Sale, William M. Jr. 2nd ed. New York: Norton, 1972.Google Scholar
Cairns, David, and Richards, Shaun. Writing Ireland: Colonialism, Nationalism and Culture. Manchester, England: Manchester UP, 1988.Google Scholar
Cox, Michael, and Gilbert, R. A., eds. The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories. Oxford: Oxford UP. 1986.Google Scholar
Cox, Michael, eds. Victorian Ghost Stories: An Oxford Anthology. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992.Google Scholar
Croker, T. Crofton. Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, Pt. 2. London: John Murray, 1828.Google Scholar
D., M. A. D., M. A. [Denham, Michael Aislabie]. To All and Singular Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Phantasms…. n.p., 1851.Google Scholar
Dorson, Richard. The British Folklorists: A History. London: Routledge, 1968.Google Scholar
Eagleton, Terry. Myths of Power: A Marxist Reading of the Brontes. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1975.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. “The Uncanny.” An Infantile Neurosis and Other Works. Trans, under gen. ed. Strachey, James. London: Hogarth, 1955. Vol. 17 of The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. 23 vols. 1955. 217–52.Google Scholar
Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn. The Life of Charlotte Bronte. London: J. M. Dent, 1908.Google Scholar
Goodrich, J. F. “A New Heaven and a New Earth.” The Art of Emily Bronte. Ed. Smith, Anne. London: Vision, 1976. 160–81.Google Scholar
Hogden, Margaret T. The Doctrine of Survivals: A Chapter in the History of Scientific Method in the Study of Man. London: Allenson, 1936. London: Folcroft, 1977.Google Scholar
Jeaffreson, J. Cordy. Novels and Novelists, from Elizabeth to Victoria, Vol. 2. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1858.Google Scholar
Jones, Greta. Social Darwinism and English Thought: The Interaction between Biological and Social Theory. Brighton: Harvester, 1980.Google Scholar
Leavis, Q. D. “A Fresh Approach to Wuthering Heights.” Lectures in America. By , F. R. and Leavis, Q. D.. New York: Pantheon, 1969. 85–138.Google Scholar
Lorimer, Douglas A. Colour, Class, and the Victorians: English Attitudes to the Negro in the Mid-Nineteenth Century. Leicester: Leicester UP, 1978.Google Scholar
Meyer, Susan. Imperialism at Home: Race and Victorian Women's Fiction. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1996.Google Scholar
Michie, Elsie B. Outside the Pale: Cultural Exclusion, Gender Difference, and the Victorian Woman Writer. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Peck, G. W. Rev. of Wuthering Heights, by Brontë, Emily. American Review 1 (1848): 572–85.Google Scholar
Scott, Walter. The Lady of the Lake, a Poem. 10th ed. Edinburgh: James Ballantyne, 1814.Google Scholar
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. The Coherence of Gothic Conventions. Rev. ed. Gothic Studies and Dissertations. New York: Arno, 1980.Google Scholar
Simpson, Jacqueline. “The Function of Folklore in Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.” Folklore 85 (Spring 1974): 47–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sutherland, John. Victorian Novelists and Publishers. London: Athlone-U of London, 1976.Google Scholar
Uglow, Jennifer. Introduction. The Virago Book of Victorian Ghost Stories. Ed. Dalby, Richard. London: Virago, 1988. ix–xvii.Google Scholar
Van Ghent, Dorothy. The English Novel: Form and Function. New York: Harper, 1967.Google Scholar