A Semiotic Interpretation Of Wuthering Heights From The Perspective Of The Greimassian Approach

Wuthering Heights,the only novel written by Emily Bront?,a great British writer,occupies an important position in the history of British literature and the history of world literature.The entire novel takes the author‘s realistic society and natural environment as its background,boldly exposing the living predicament of the characters in the capitalist society.It is generally believed that the tone of the novel is gloomy,in which the characters are tyrannical,and the love is morbid as well.The themes about revenge,human nature and morality have been studied by many scholars.However,the survival crisis,identity loss,and struggle for freedom hiding behind them are also worth concerning.By describing the plights of the characters,the writer tries to project her own dilemma onto them,which guides readers to think about the meaning of life‘s struggle: the characters make every effort to get rid of the anxiety along with the pursuit of life and hope to acquire places to survive,besides,they try to break free from the bondage of the environment and find their own identities and be able to obtain freedom in love.Most researches at home and abroad are conducted from the perspectives of psychology,Narratology,Gothicism,and Feminism etc.Analyses from the perspective of semiology are sparse.This thesis attempts to interpret the text with Greimas‘ semiotics from the surface structure of narrative actantial schema and the deep structure of "semiotic square".Many scholars believe that,when concerns with the essence of the world,the human world can essentially be defined as a world of meaning.Greimas is committed to exploring the issue of meaning to investigate the world of human being.He pops out that the significance of symbols is not only to focus on the superficial structure of the word‘s meaning,but also to search for another more profound layer.The narrative constructing the surface narrative grammar components and deep narrative grammar components would enable us to make an effective interpretation of text.Therefore,this thesis first constructs the Greimassian actantial narrative schema to analyze the surface structure at the level of discourse and the narrative,and explore the desire of characters.Then the semiotic square is established to study the binary opposition of the subjects and its expansion relations.It would help us to find out the deep meaning contained in the text and interpret the predicament and struggles of characters.This thesis covers five parts.The first part introduces the author and her work,Wuthering Heights,previous researches from home and abroad,as well as the Greimas semiotic theory.The main parts of the thesis are second,third and fourth parts.They mainly analyze the struggling for existence,identity and freedom of the characters from the surface to the deep level.The second part firstly points out that Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange are the physical living space for the characters,and then it analyzes the modality of quest that protagonists pursue their living conditions and determine their own situation with Greimas‘ actantial narrative schema.Then the model of "existence and absence" is expanded to the quaternary relationship to analyze that the characters are stuck into life predicament.It is not an absolute contradiction,but a reflection of the people‘s transcendence of their past and situation in order to obtain a better existence.The third part interprets the natural environment and social environment in which characters live,which expose their identity crisis,and then analyzes the characters‘ pursuit of identity in this environment.Finally,the expansion of binary opposition,"individual identity and status identity",explores the characters‘ struggle for identity.The fourth part first illustrates that the characters are defamed by their existence and identity,causing them to lose their freedom.This bondage is reflected in the pursuit of love.Finally,this process is manifested in the semiotic square of "freedom and limit".Characters try to change their position,free themselves from bondage,and seek freedom.The fifth part summarizes the full text.It restates that the characters have encountered a series of struggles and been trapped into the difficulties of survival,even if they encounter identity crisis,they tries to struggle for their existence and identity,finally to get self-rescue.Thus the writer portrays these characters in order to project her plight on them,hoping to find a way to obtain self-rescue.