Wuthering Heights Context

Question 1

Significance of Liverpool

Answer 1

When Mr Earnshaw visits Liverpool in 1771 it was already a major port for slaves, sugar and tobacco.
When Branwell Brontë visited Liverpool in August 1845 he would have seen the first refugees from the Irish famine.
Liverpool had many poor, homeless and migrant people by the mid-eighteenth century.
The American Herman Melville was appalled by the squalor and poverty he observed in the city in the 1830s, providing a documentary account in his novel Redburn (1849).

Question 2

Women

Answer 2

Expected to have the correct manners and be ladylike, doting mothers and loving wives.

Question 3

Under what name did Bronte publish WH?

Answer 3

Ellis Bell

Question 4

Why was WH the subject of such controversy?

Answer 4

Its depictions of mental and physical cruelty, including domestic abuse, as well as the dubious morals explored in the novel.