1. Objectives
To consider the qualities of a good quality critical writing
To understand a critical interpretation of female characters within the Gothic
To be able to apply this critical interpretation to Wuthering Heights

2. Ella’s paragraph

3. Homework
Chapters 7-10
Make notes on the Gothic theme of violence

4. Critical Interpretation Task
If you were a literary critic, how would you describe Catherine (senior) as a female character?
Write down your critical opinion

5. Cp 9 from “I was rocking Hareton on my knee”

6. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Gothic was a genre particularly identified  with  women  writers,  and  many  recent  feminist  critics  have  argued that  Female  Gothic may  be  seen  as  a  complex  genre  which  simultaneously  represents  women’s  fears  and  offers fantasies  of  escape  from  them.  Female  Gothic  enacts  fantasies  of  female  power  in  the  heroine’s courage and enterprise, while simultaneously, or by turns, representing the female condition as both confinement  and  refuge.  Many  of  the  Gothic  elements  of  Wuthering  Heights may  be  seen  as examples  of Female Gothic’s  representation and investigation  of women’s  fears about the  private domestic  space  which  is  at  once  refuge  and  prison.  Indeed,  Catherine  Earnshaw’s  story  might almost be read as an archetypal example of the genre. After a childhood which alternates between domestic confinement and freely roaming the unconfined spaces of the moors, Catherine’s puberty is  marked  by  her confinement to the couch  of Thrushcross Grange. Womanhood and  marriage to Edgar further confine her within the genteel household, and the denouement of her particular Gothic plot involves  her  imprisonment in  increasingly  confined  spaces: the  house,  her  room,  and  finally ‘this  shattered  prison’  (WH,  196),  her  body,  from  which  she  longs  to  escape  as  she  does  from womanhood itself.

7. Objectives
To consider the qualities of a good quality critical writing Now show these qualities within your own writing
To consider a critical interpretation of female characters within the Gothic Now consider alternative viewpoints
To be able to apply this critical interpretation to Wuthering Heights Now apply different interpretations
To know key quotations to use when writing about Catherine

8. Catherine - Quotations
Catherine’s love for Heathcliff
Catherine’s feelings towards Edgar
Catherine as a Romantic
Catherine’s attitude towards religion
Catherine’s attitude towards social status

9. “Confined, entrapped and imprisoned”
Writing task
“Confined, entrapped and imprisoned”
To what extent do you agree with this view of female characters in Wuthering Heights?
Write one paragraph in response to this task considering the character of Catherine (senior)

10. Chapter 9
Continue reading, considering alternative viewpoints of Catherine.