摘 要

19世纪的英国女性作家艾米莉·勃朗特，完成了一部世界文学史上的伟大著作——《呼啸山庄》。《呼啸山庄》是她唯一的小说，在世界文学史上具有很高的价值。自出版以来，各路 专家学者对其有各式评论，但研究相对单一。大部分研究主要集中在希斯克利夫和凯瑟琳的爱情故事、人物和哥特式特征上。在很长一段时间里，许多评论家都认为希斯克利夫是小说的中心所在，而书中的女性常常则常常被忽视。本文旨在探讨文中的女性角色伊莎贝尔·林敦的成长蜕变过程，进而了解女性在维多利亚时期的生存状况。通过伊莎贝拉内心野性与理性的交锋，来探究其女性意识的觉醒及其冲破封建枷锁的桎梏，进而奔向更为广阔的文明世界的历程。《呼啸山庄》一经出版，就收获了太多的赞美与批评，这也促使其成为世界文学史上一部不朽之作。

关键词：伊莎贝拉；蜕变；理性

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Miss. Isabella Linton’s Fantasy toward the Ideal World 5

2.1 Ignorance toward the Complex Life 5

2.2 Pursuit for True Love 6

3 The Growing Rebellion of Mrs. Isabella Heathcliff toward the Wildness 8

3.1 Growing Strength under the Maltreat 8

3.2 Feministic Awakening from the Suffering 9

4 A Unity of Rationality and Passion 12

4.1 Return to Peace of Minds 12

4.2 Return to the Civilized World 13

5 Isabella: A Representative of Middle Class English Woman in 19^th Century 15

5.1 Influence of Industrialization upon 19^th English Society 15

5.2 Emily’s Recognition of Isabella’s Growth 16

6 Conclusion 18

References 19

The Growth of Isabella Lindon in Wuthering Heights

1 Introduction

As a great book in the history of European literature, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights encountered enormous derogatory comments from the critics at the beginning of its appearance. With the passage of time, the originality and greatness of the novel has gradually gained recognition from readers, and the richness of the theme's connotation has also been continuously tapped. Especially after the 20th century, the plural interpretation of the Wuthering Heights can even be seen as a mirror of reflecting the wave-like evolution of western literary criticism. The psychoanalyst critics were deeply attracted by Catherine and Heathcliff's unique personality structure and mutual relations. Narrative scholars preferred the seemingly clumsy but complex and specific narrative structure of the work. Ecologists analyzed Emily Bronte's critique of civilization from the wildness of the novel. From the research, the author finds that experts and scholars prefer to analyze the characters of Catherine and Heathcliff, while neglecting the supporting role of Isabella, but this character image is valuable for the overall understanding of the article.

Wuthering Heights has been widely studied worldwide since its first edition was published. Experts and scholars have different attitude towards Wuthering Heights because of their different methods and statements used on this novel. Some critics hold the idea that the novel advocates the cruelty and the morality collapse. Some experts regard it as the most powerful book which compared with Shakespeare’s King Lear. In foreign counties, researches started their study on Wuthering Heights in the late 19^th century. The research mainly analysis Wuthering Heights from the aspect of the novel’s structure, narrative methods, feminism or class struggle. For example, C.P. Sanger declares his idea that the structure of this novel is orchestrated by the author in “The Structure of Wuthering Heights”. The author argued that each event happens in a certain tome, the extreme attention to person’s age, in his point of view is a more unusual characteristics of the novel.”(1921) Woolf studied Wuthering Heights in the aspect of awakening female consciousness in “Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights”. She believes that Wuthering Heights is more powerful than Jane Eyre since charlotte just concentrates on “I love” or “I hate”, but Emily focus on “we, the human race” and “the eternal powers”. (1925) Arnold Kettle declares that the love in Catherine and Heathcliff is based on the feelings of the oppressed class. She married Lindon for a higher social class, which was a betrayal of Heathcliff. As a revenge, Heathcliff plundered Wuthering Heights and Trushcross Grange by means of an oppressor. Q.D. Leavis admired Wuthering Heights as a great “humanist work”. (Leavis, 1983:138) Margaret Lane defined it as “a story of the author’s childhood dream continuing”. (Yang, 1983:6).

At the beginning of 20^th century, Chinese literature started researches on Wuthering Heights. Their researches mainly lies in the themes, images, characterizations and rhetoric technique. From the aspect of characters, the considerable research articles are mainly focus on the analysis of Catherine. In terms of its artistic achievements, Zhang Huihui in “A Model of Perfect Combination between Modernism and Romanticism on Artistic Charm of Wuthering Heights” concludes that Wuthering Heights is a combination of modernism and romanticism. It was the author’s spiritual world. In terms of feminism, Wang Liuyuan claims that “Emily Bronte expressed her own female consciousness and rebellion against the patriarchal society by describing the life of Catherine”. (2007)

From the researches at home and abroad, it could be conclude that little has been touched on the disclosure of the supporting actress, Isabella’s growth towards the themes. Moreover, her flaccidity and toughness has never been mentioned from the aspect of feminism. This paper attempts to focus on the discussion of this topic.