Brontë possessed an exceptional education of classical culture for a woman of the time. She was familiar with Greek tragedies and was a good Latinist.[49][50] In addition she was especially influenced by the poets John Milton and William Shakespeare.[51] There are echoes of Shakespeare's King Lear and Romeo and Juliet in Wuthering Heights.[52]
Another major source of information for the Brontës was the periodicals that their father read, the Leeds Intelligencer and Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.[53] Blackwood's Magazine provided knowledge of world affairs and was a source of material for the Brontës' early writing.[54] Emily Brontë was probably aware of the debate on evolution. This debate had been launched in 1844 by Robert Chambers. It raised questions of divine providence and the violence which underlies the universe and relationships between living things.[55]
Romanticism was also a major influence, which included the Gothic novel, the novels of Walter Scott[56] and the poetry of Byron. The Brontës' fiction is seen by some feminist critics as prime examples of Female Gothic. It explores the domestic entrapment and subjection of women to patriarchal authority, and the attempts to subvert and escape such restriction. Emily Brontë's Cathy Earnshaw and Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre are both examples of female protagonists in such a role.[57]
According to Juliet Barker, Walter Scott's novel Rob Roy (1817) had a significant influence on Wuthering Heights, which, though "regarded as the archetypal Yorkshire novel ... owed as much, if not more, to Walter Scott's Border country". Rob Roy is set "in the wilds of Northumberland, among the uncouth and quarrelsome squirearchical Osbaldistones", while Cathy Earnshaw "has strong similarities with Diana Vernon, who is equally out of place among her boorish relations".[58]
From 1833 Charlotte and Branwell's Angrian tales began to feature Byronic heroes. Such heroes had a strong sexual magnetism and passionate spirit, and demonstrated arrogance and black-heartedness. The Brontës had discovered Byron in an article in Blackwood's Magazine from August 1825. Byron had died the previous year. Byron became synonymous with the prohibited and audacious.[59]
Romance tradition
Emily Brontë wrote in the romance tradition of the novel.[60] Walter Scott defined this as "a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvellous and uncommon incidents".[61][62] Scott distinguished the romance from the novel, where (as he saw it) "events are accommodated to the ordinary train of human events and the modern state of society".[63] Scott describes romance as a "kindred term" to novel. However, romances such as Wuthering Heights and Scott's own historical romances and Herman Melville's Moby Dick are often referred to as novels.[64][65][66] Other European languages do not distinguish between romance and novel: "a novel is le roman, der Roman, il romanzo, en roman".[67] This sort of romance is different from the genre fiction love romance or romance novel, with its "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending".[68] Emily Brontë's approach to the novel form was influenced by the gothic novel.
Gothic novel
Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764) is usually considered the first gothic novel. Walpole's declared aim was to combine elements of the medieval romance, which he deemed too fanciful, and the modern novel, which he considered to be too confined to strict realism.[69]
More recently Ellen Moers, in Literary Women, developed a feminist theory that connects female writers such as Emily Brontë with gothic fiction.[64] Catherine Earnshaw has been identified by some critics as a type of gothic demon because she "shape-shifts" in order to marry Edgar Linton, assuming a domesticity that is contrary to her true nature.[70] It has also been suggested that Catherine's relationship with Heathcliff conforms to the "dynamics of the Gothic romance, in that the woman falls prey to the more or less demonic instincts of her lover, suffers from the violence of his feelings, and at the end is entangled by his thwarted passion".[71] See also the discussion of the daemonic below, under "Religion".
At one point in the novel Heathcliff is thought a vampire. It has been suggested that both he and Catherine are in fact meant to be seen as vampire-like personalities.[72][73]
