A Comparative Study Of Wuthering Heights And The Rouse Of The North From The Perspective Of Female Gothic

Wuthering Heights is characterized for its weirdness and horrors, and regardedas a “Sphinx” in British Literature since it is published in1847. Over100years later,it happens that there is a similar case in China: The talent Chinese writer, EilingChang published her master work, The Rouge of the North,in1967in England. Thetwo novels are both famous for their horrors, and even the works’ public acceptanceshave surprising coincidence. Both of them have experienced the public negativereaction before getting high praises.In1976, Female Gothic was defined firstly by Ellen Moors. It is no doubt thatWuthering Heights has typical characteristics of Gothic novel and it has also beenstudied by many scholars from Gothic perspective, but when it comes to FemaleGothic, the researches of it are not too many, and the researches of The Rouge of theNorth are far Less. Although Female Gothic comes from its matrix, Gothic, thedistinctions between the two are obvious. This paper focused on the comparativestudy of Wuthering Heights and The Rouge of the North from the perspective ofFemale Gothic, and the author hopes that it can do some help for the readers’cognition of Female Gothic.This paper has three parts, the Introduction, Text and Bibliography. The Introduction part gives the research status at home and abroad, the origin of Gothicnovels and the introduction to Female Gothic.The text is made up of threechapters.The first chapter analyses the Female Gothic features in the two novelsfrom characters, plot and context. In Female Gothic, the heroine is no longer weakangels, they gradually find their women consciousness and begin to revolt againstthe patriarchal society. The heroes in Female Gothic are not the symbol of rudenessand tyranny as those in the Gothic novels, they are more gentle and amiable and theirsuppression of women are more hidden and more cruel. In plot, the horrors ofwomen in Female Gothic novels do not come from the mysterious supernaturepower but the inner horrors of women’s consciousness and imagination. The placethe story happens in is no longer faraway mysterious castles but the home countriesof the writers.The second chapter mostly analyses the differences between WutheringHeights and The Rouge of the North. These differences contain the arrangements ofthe fate of the characters and the life views of the writers revealed in the twonovels.The third chapter tries to ana-lyse the reasons for the different views of life inthe two novels. The different life experiences and growing backgrounds deeplyaffect the life views of the authors and form the quite different life views in theirnovels.Although in quite different times and countries, Emily and Eiling Chang arespokeswomen for Female Gothic novels. Their novels have some surprisingsimilarities, and also some obvious differences. In consideration of the former twopoints, the writer of this paper thinks they can absolutely be compared and theanalysis of the comparison has some positive meanings to Female Gothic novels andthe communication of the oriental and occidental cultures.