Thanks to Dr. Jane Lee, my mentor who has helped me enhance my skills as a writer, a driven student, and role-model as a future professor. I had an assignment last semester where I had to synthesizing two texts to have intertextual dialogue about a macro-level problem. The assignment laid out clear objectives in a list under the prompt to help focus my essay, such as engage with concepts and expand them based on my interpretation. This assignment was suppose to connect my ideas to Wuthering Heights by Emile Bronte. How I did this was completely up to me. One of the major questions I have when writing, who is the intended audience for this piece? I try to write were any college student can pick up my essay and grasps the concepts without any previous knowledge or background of the class, with the reception history and impact on society.
One of the assignment’s objectives was the implication of Wuthering Heights as a societal piece. The essay was an assignment asking me to engage with the text of Wuthering Heights and an outside resource to show how both texts make a sound argument. As a student, I engage with course concepts like closing reading of a text to expand on a societal issue like racism, ageism, gender, or socioeconomic class. This larger scope will be focused using a singular piece from any time period with my own interpretation. That is the easiest part, my comments help me critically think and analysis a text on a level beyond what the text originally stated. The close reading shows my skills as a writer and educated student with deeper understanding. By doing this, I interpret the material with a conversation of what the author's intent was to battle other views like the meanings within a line or two. This deeper connection shows the sophistication that goes into arguing a point without it explicitly being stated.
The values and assumptions of being an English student helps shape what is expected in the assignment. One of these assumptions is that synthesizing a paper on the past and present. Taking a past text and analyzing it into present day social issues. This can be done by unpacking major arguments that previous authors have debated about such as authors like Bronte, Carlyle, Dickens, Whitman, and Emerson. By taking a stance with one of these powerful and memorable authors, writers can make a claim that needs little outside research. These authors have rich works of literature like poetry or prose that can be used to draw connections. I can use specific facts from historical or cultural contexts around the time they were writing, or just focus on my point of view.
One of the assignment’s objectives was the implication of Wuthering Heights as a societal piece and how it was received by the reception history. The reception history influences the perception the audience would have had when reading this text. Bronte was very conservative, but hated the way women were treated and wanted equally for women. I critiqued education for women as a societal issue. This perhaps was why I found Dr. Lee to have a great impact on me, as a feminist who wants equality for all genders, and shows that proper education can unify people. This ties nicely with how race and gender are easily overlapped with inequalities between groups of people. White entitled men like Carlyle do not understand this issue because they are privileged and reap all the benefits that society gives men over everybody. The bias men have for women is why Bronte wrote in this way to change the perception that society had about the placement of women and how they had no agency.
For this essay, I was not allowed to use any outside resources beyond the book. The text had enough evidence to help support my claim. I did no outside research for that essay, but with a change in perspective I had a new outlook. Using Gilbert and Gubar argument about gender issues I expanded my point. Something Gilbert and Gubar stated, “The story of Wuthering Heights is built around a central fall, so that the novel is in part a ‘Bildungsroman,’ which is about a girl’s passage from innocent to experience,” (Gilbert and Gubar, 49). This quote highlights one of the major themes of the book. These writers demonstrate Bronte uses a feminist tone to emphasize education for women’s success. Bronte does try to address the societal impact that a lack of education will lead to women’s downfall, like with Catherine one. This research helps expand my focus that gender and women in general are not treated as equals. This circles back to gender issues of women as the inferior sex, which is based on having no education. This brilliant concept is hidden in Bronte’s work. The layered feminist movement that Bronte wrote was hidden with a conservative approach to the domestic and placement for women. Bronte wanted women to have access to education like she had, since men in her time did not appreciate her opinionated text and found her to be problematic. She is problematic because she did not fit into the angel in house ideology.
Throughout the assignment, I was able to reconstruct the values of the Victorian era with the reception history. This assignment helped me analyze my English class as engaging sources like Wuthering Heights by Bronte. In this essay, I took the perspective of critiquing the way women were valued. My major issue with the assignment are the biases and discrimination women still received based on a patriarchal society. Women have gained more access to most fields, but still are not treated equally. By arguing for women’s equality, I am trying to accomplish the goal of displaying the mistreatment of women throughout history. Gilbert and Gubar helped me describe how women are devalued in society based on their lack of education.
Works Cited
Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. No Man's Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century ; Volume 2, Sexchanges. New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1989. Print.
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