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Folklore, Fear, and the Feminine: Ghosts and Old Wives' Tales in Wuthering Heights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Paula M. Krebs
Paula M. Krebs
Affiliation:
Wheaton College
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Extract

Wuthering heights is haunted, of course. But not only by the ghost of Catherine, who harries Heathcliff and terrifies Lockwood. Not only by the shades of Heathcliff and Catherine (or Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon) who set off toward Penistone Crag. The ghosts in Wuthering Heights are not Gothic ghosts nor the ghosts from Victorian magazine ghost stories. They represent a different kind of haunting altogether — the haunting of the Victorian middle classes by fear of the people they designated as “the folk.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , Spring 1998 , pp. 41 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1998

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