Introduction
The following piece of writing will explore factors of a gothic novel. It will exclusively do so in regards of the two novels Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein. These very famous novels will be looked at in a very in depth piece of writing. Each novels main themes and their background will be presented. The morality and the gothic novel with specific reference to Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights will be assessed. The second aspect will be the social and cultural of the genre, the genre being the gothic novel. Thirdly, the monster as punishment and the punishment of the monster in both novels. The final aspect that will be analysed is the constructed nature of boundaries in both texts.
The Novels
Wuthering Heights
This novel
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Zinia Mitra (2011) states that this novel is both seen as a gothic and science fiction novel. This novel plays out in a place called Geneva. A task was given to Mary Shelley and her peers to write a science fiction novel and she seemed to be the only one that completed writing her novel. She states that it was prompted by a terrifying dream she had. This dream lead her to finishing this interesting piece of literature. The main themes of this novel are ‘Nature vs. Nurture’, ‘Creator and Created’, ‘Humans playing God’ and ‘Ethics and Science’ (Potter, 2013).
The Morality and the Gothic Novel with Specific Reference to Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights
Morality plays a big part in society and these novels seemed to have been filled with different examples of how morality was gone against. The strange events that happen in both novels are against the morals of the then society. According to the Marriam-Webster Learners Dictionary (1828) morality is distinguishing between what is right and what is wrong behaviour and these are centred around peoples beliefs. When it comes to explaining a gothic novel, Jerold E. Houle (2002) states that it is a novel with dark and mysterious that take place in faraway lands and they are seen as unnatural.
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This young man expresses his wrongful behaviour after having returned from his many years away from the Earnshaw household. This household had been the one that gave him a home at a younger age. He is revenge driven, this leads him to his immoral acts that he then shows. His first act of immorality is when he decided to marry the sister of Edgar, Isabella. Edgar had taken Heathcliff’s love, Catherine, so this was to get to Edgar and be able to hurt him emotionally from a closer distance. This was all out of spite and never out of love. So when Cathy’s daughter and Heathcliff’s son are only left with Heathcliff, Heathcliff makes it a point to get them married to each other. This is immoral because people of the same family were not supposed to marry one another. This act showed that Heathcliff was not concerned about what was moral and what was