The purpose of this research is to examine three separate schools of critical thought with regard to Emily Bronte's Wuthering_Heights. The plan of the research will be to set forth the principal characteristics that define each school of criticism, and then to discuss the views of at least two critics whose literary evaluations position them within a particular critical theory. No less significantly, this examination of various approaches to analyzing Wuthering_Heights will include a discussion of how adequately the various critical theories answer the problems of interpretation that the novel poses. As appropriate, reference will be made to the similarities, differences, and points of confluence of the theories. The three schools of critical thought the research will discuss are psychoanalysis, feminism, and deconstruction (a subset of post structuralism).
Two principal theorists of psychoanalytic criticism are Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, the former for the reason that he essentially founded psychoanalysis, the latter for the reason that, although his professional and theoretical antecedents are undoubtedly Freudian, his views of the human psyche depart in significant, fundamental ways from those of his master. To understand how a Freudian view of art may affect interpretation of Wuthering_Heights, it is necessary to know the basics of Freud's interpretation of fundamental human impulses and actions. There are two, both of which have relevance for a Freudian interpretation of the novel, and each of which may be found to overlap with the other. The first is the power of the unconscious (which can include dream states), and the second is the fundamental position of sexuality in the human condition. In his discussion of the high instance of generalized anxiety in civilization, Freud says that a pervasive sense of guilt is "the most important problem in the development of civilization and . . the price we pay for our advance in c...