Il realismo in Emily Bronte e Charles Dickens

Materie:	Appunti
Categoria:	Lingue
Voto:	2.5 (2)
Download:	215
Data:	19.12.2000
Numero di pagine:	2
Formato di file:	.doc (Microsoft Word)

Features of realism and of a social novel In Emily Bronte and Charles Dickens

Emily Bronte’s realism can be spotted:
1. In the description of the natural environment which is typical of Yorkshire, with its moorlands/heaths, stormy winds, unhospital craggy lands which anyway takes on psychological elements, reflecting the real nature and personality of its characters, mainly Heatcliff, whose name mirrors and represents the spirit of that place, with the uncontaminated wilderness of the natural landscape and the eternity of rocks.
2. The conflict between two social classes along with two different mentalities and cultures:the aristocracy and the poor. The novel is built around the conflict between two houses where the actions takes place: Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange whereas Heatcliff is unspoilt by society and fusing with Nature but brutal and harsh, gloomy, firmly rooted in local traditions and superstitions, primitive and uncontrollable passions while Thrushcross Grange is the home of the bourgeois Lintons and reflect their conception of life based on economic safety, old-dated class privileges, stability, genteel refinement, kindness and respectability. The two mansions stand for two opposite forces: the principle of storm and energy which is dynamic and unrestrained, and the principle of calm and statis but also of settled self-assurance.
Both Dickens and Bronte can be considered as social novelists because both of them analyse the aristocracy/middle-class and the poor. Besides they both focus on the Victorian society of their time, Dickens with its social evils and abuses, E. Bronte with their different interests and attitudes towards life. Yet while Dickens analyses his characters only from an external point of view , that is from their behaviour, E. Bronte, besides the sphere of dream and vision, effects a rational investigation of the human problems and heart, she inquires into the character’s psychological conflicts and the innermost recesses of human soul where cruelty can go side by side with generosity, hatred with love and revenge with the most passionate devotion to a person.