Similarities Between Wuthering Heights And The Great Gatsby

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It would seem that both Wuthering Heights and The Great Gatsby, despite being written at different times for different audiences, portray women as the downfall of men. However, when looking closer at the two novels it is debatable whether the female characters are the sole reason for the male’s downfall. Brontë is writing in Victorian England, setting her novel on wild and bleak moors, which is extremely different to Fitzgerald’s American novel written in 1925 and set in the summer of 1922 on the prosperous Long Island. Still, both seem to explore similar themes throughout their harrowing tales. During this essay, I will be exploring how both Brontë and Fitzgerald set up unusual narrative perspectives, how they present the women in their novels …show more content…
Wuthering Heights is written using a double layered filter. The two speakers outline the plot in the framework of a story within a story. The first narrator we are introduced to is Lockwood who presents a ‘mysterious’ family that he meets on the moors. This encounter leads him to seek answers and finds them in the inner story told by a maid for the Earnshaw family – Nelly Dean. Nelly ‘waits not further invitation to her story’ and begins to tell Lockwood whilst trying to be an objective eyewitness to the tale. However, it becomes clear to the reader that because of the combination of narrators, we are distanced from both Catherine and Heathcliff and therefore the retrospective account of Nelly’s cannot be entirely accurate. At first glance the narration seems to be limiting, with the readers not having an insight into the personal feelings of the novel’s protagonists. However, as the novel continues it seems that Brontë’s choice of narrator is very effective and leads the reader to feel as though they are a ‘fly-on-the-wall’ because they are right in the action of the novel, witnessing both characters’ actions. This allows the reader to use their imagination and decide for themselves whether Cathy is the reason for Heathcliff’s downfall. Nelly’s account is arguably extremely …show more content…
However, he does not use the combination of two speakers and the form of a story within a story like Brontë; he creates a less complex, intradiegetic narrative perspective, while still somewhat distancing the readers from the main characters. Because of Nick’s fondness for Gatsby, he tends to veer towards making Daisy seem responsible for his downfall. The reader becomes aware of his inconsistencies when we see that he describes Gatsby as, ‘representing everything for which [Nick] has unaffected scorn’. The harsh words used by Carraway would make the reader believe that he would not want to associate himself with Gatsby, although we learn this is not the case and that he actually becomes rather entranced by Gatsby (like most others who meet him). This would imply that Carraway, as a narrator, is not very reliable and some may consider him to be immoral as he has gone against his views and beliefs in liking Gatsby. Instead of staying away from someone who stands for everything that he dislikes, he becomes completely in awe of Gatsby and tends to ignore any evidence that disproves that Gatsby is a ‘great’ man. This is a very problematic narration because the reader’s opinion of Gatsby and the others in the novel is down to Nick’s perception; we are directly influenced by how he describes them as to how we feel about them. During the start of the novel, Fitzgerald hints to the reader that there

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