"Wuthering Heights"

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Walt Whitman

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English teacher

Hi everybody.

I’m not new to this forum, so you probably know that I’m a teacher who has an intense passion for literature (in other words, I’m a bookworm). I’ve been working for a long time towards an ambitious goal, that is to bring that spark into my classrooms full of middle schoolers. I have been teaching middle school kids for quite some time and I can assure you that they love literature. I’ve already done Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men”, Dickens’s “Oliver Twist”, “Beowulf”, Wilde’s short stories, Langston Hughes’s poems, war poems and so on.
In the coming months, I want to do Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights”: (1) the plot in detail (very easy language and structures); (2) viewing of the film; (3) activities on plot, characters, etc. I’d also like to give them (they are 13 years old) a simplified version ofone of the most dramatic moments in the novel when Catherine confesses her love for Heathcliff (from Chapter 9). Could you please have a look at it?

The Background. The following passage is from Chapter 9. Cathy goes into the kitchen at Wuthering Heights because she wants to talk to Nelly, the housekeeper and narrator of the story. The two women do not know that Heathcliff is sitting on a bench in a dark corner of the room and can hear their words.


One day, Cathy came into the kitchen to talk to me.

Nelly, are you alone?” she whispered.
Yes, Miss, I’m alone, the master’s in his room with a bottle and Heathcliff’s out.”
She sat beside me, and I saw tears in her eyes.
“I’m so unhappy, Nelly. I need your advice. Edgar Linton asked me to marry him today and I said yes!
Oh, Nelly, do you think I did the right thing?”

“Do you love him?” I asked.

“Of course I do,” she replied.

“Why do you love him?”

“Well, because he’s very good-looking and pleasant. Because he is young and cheerful. And he loves me.
And he is rich, and I want to be rich and a great lady!”

“Then why are you unhappy? What’s the problem?”

“Here
and here!” replied Cathy, putting one hand on her forehead and the other on her breast.
“In my soul and in my heart, I’m sure I’m wrong.”

“I don’t understand you,” I said.

Her face became sad and her hands trembled. Then she said,

“I have a secret, Nelly. Edgar isn’t the person I love but I can’t marry Heathcliff now!
He is a poor, dull servant, so he’ll never know how much I love him.

I suddenly heard a slight movement and saw Heathcliff. He got up and went out silently when Cathy said she could not marry him. He did not hear her last sentence.

Cathy didn’t see him and went on,

He’ll never know that I can’t live without him, that he and I have the same souls, that my love for him is like the eternal rocks, while my love for Edgar is like the leaves on the trees which fall with the coming of winter. He is always, always in my mind and in my heart. He is life to me. Nelly, I am Heathcliff!”
Cathy paused for a while, then she continued,

If Heathcliff and I married, we would be very poor, but if I marry Edgar, I can help him with my husband’s money.”
Just then Joseph entered the kitchen. I whispered to Catherine that I was sure Heathcliff was in the kitchen too. She jumped up, frightened, and rushed outside.
She ran to the top of the hill and called out his name.
We did not see Heathcliff again that night or for many nights in the future.

Thanks a lot.
WW
 
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Tdol

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for many nights in the future.

For many nights afterwards/after that would work better for me.
 
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