La Belle Dame sans Merci

Question 1

Keats

Answer 1

His work was considered bad-mannered by generally conservative critics
A Romantic contemporary of Lord Byron

Question 2

Form and structure of La Belle

Answer 2

A ballad
Warns of unfiltered passion
The form emphasises enrapture and seduction
Death is pervasive in both the poem and the novel

Question 3

La Belle & relationship dynamics between Cathy, Edgar and Heathcliff

Answer 3

Khanis - The ‘conflict of Cathy’s marriage can only be solved in her death’
Illustrates Bronte’s subversion of gender norms
Cathy as a femme fatale who disregards the marriage market
Both Edgar and Heathcliff place Cathy on a pedestal only to become engrossed in her defiant nature - which largely results in disappointment. Edgar’s devout idealisation of Cathy and Heathcliff’s mania are a result of her death. Though, their idealisations are not a result of societies gender expectations, rather a result of their love
Transgresses Victorian society and social roles though Cathy does inevitably fall victim to female hysteria

Question 4

Quotes about H, E and C

Answer 4

Cathy places H in ‘intolerable torture’
Significance of Chapter 9 - ‘My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods’ ‘My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath’ (C toying with their love she is in control. Edgar’s devotion excuses her behaviour)
‘It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now’ the verb ‘degrade’ emphasises Cathy’s societal pressures as a single woman
‘And he will be rich, and I shall like to be the greatest woman of the neighbourhood’
Edgar in ‘exhausted anguish’ when Cathy dies

Question 5

Setting - Lockwood as wider society and vulnerability

Answer 5

A Marxist perspective - both femme fatales disrupt social hierarchy
‘a servant girl on her knees’ ‘This spectacle drove me back immediately’
Lockwood describes himself as a ‘misanthropist’ attempting to draw on similarities between himself and Heathcliff. Although, like the Knight he is isolated from this foreign landscape
Vernacular language of Yorkshire - in the poem ‘And sure in language strange she said’
Both use pathetic fallacy to emphasise vulnerability - ‘misty and cold’
Lockwood’s character provides a perspective devoted to criticising the Heights through the eyes of wider society. As he epitomises the relationship between love and gender in wider society he amplifies the love between Heathcliff and Cathy.
Lockwood attempts to align himself with the environment though this only further alienates him as he corresponds with the Victorian upper class
Appellations