| Emily Bronte(1818—1848) is one of the most famous female English writers.In her short life,Emily writes only one novel—Wuthering Heights.It has a reputation of being a sphinx-like novel.For more than one hundred and fifty years,Wuthering Heights has been interpreted from various angles.Some theories of literary criticism have helped readers understand more about the novel and the writer.But,it is well known that great works of arts always bring more than one truth to light.This thesis attempts to use the mythical and archetypal theories to probe into the biblical archetypes in Wuthering Heights,which prevail in its themes,characters,structure and symbols.In Wuthering Heights Emily uses the biblical themes—"paradise lost","redemption" and "paradise regained".Wuthering Heights is a story of Catherine and Heathcliff's loss of "paradise":paradise of love and life.Closely associated with their loss of "paradise" are their "redemption" and "paradise regained".In accordance with the archetypal themes,Emily moulds the main characters in the novel—Catherine and Heathcliff—upon the biblical characters.On the one hand,Catherine is portrayed as Eve,and on the other hand,she is described as the Lost Lamb.Catherine loses her paradise because of the seduction of Linton,just like Eve,who is driven out from the Garden of Eden because of the seducement of the serpent.Since then,she tries her best to find her way back to the paradise like a Lost Lamb.The archetypes of Heathcliff are mainly the Adam and the Lost Lamb.By comparing him to Adam,Emily stresses that his suffering is due to Catherine's betrayal.Together with Catherine,Heathcliff loses his paradise and then his cruel revenge makes him become a Lost Lamb,too. After long suffering,death brings them back to their paradise finally. Emily adopts U-shaped narrative structure in her novel.The U-shaped structure is the apostasy being followed by a descent into disaster and bondage,which in turn is followed by repentance,then by a rise through deliverance to a point,more or less on the level from which the descent begins.Catherin and Heathcliff's life experiences fit in with the following biblical narrative structure:Eden—evildoing—suffering pain—repentance—regeneration.Besides the archetypal themes,characters,and structure,there also exist in the novel many archetypal images and symbols.Dominant archetypal symbols in the novel are dream and ghost. They give the novel a mysterious coloring,strengthen the tragic atmosphere and highlight the themes and reflect Emily's tragic vision of society.Besides the above analysis,we will find that Emily displaces the archetypal themes and characters.This thesis attempts to analyze Emily's only novel from archetypal perspective with a focus on biblical allusions in the novel in order to find the true motive of her creation.Through the using and displacement of archetypes,Emily reveals her scathing criticism,even condemnation,of traditional morality,Christianity and the male-dominated culture in the Victorian era.The method and purpose of composition explains the paradox of her un-Christlike Christian,which also marks her as an innovative and talented writer.
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