Warm up activity (10 minutes)
The teacher uses a spidergramme on the blackboard. The topic is love.
The students meditate on these questions:
What do you associate love with? What are the feelings does love evoke? Passion? Rationality? What else?
Before the beginning of the first listening comprehension the teacher tells the class that Wuthering Heights is a Victorian novel where feeling prevails over reason. In fact, Catherine cannot abandon herself to her love and her social impulse makes her marry the respectable Edgar Linton. (1-2 minutes)
First listening comprehension (10 minutes)
The teacher tells the class that they are going to focus on the last meeting between Catherine and Heathcliff. The teacher explains that he is not his husband and that Catherine still loves him.
During this first listening comprehension the students have to concentrate their attention on these aspects:
How is the situation? Happy? Tragic? What adjectives would you use to characterize Catherine and Heatcliff?
Second listening comprehension and text analysis ( 40 minutes)
The students analyse the text in pairs.
They complete the following summary on the passage they have just listened to.
Catherine said that both Edgar and Heathcliff had…….. and that she would not…….. because both of them…….. . Catherine also said that she did not care……..as she believed that he would…….. .
She did not wish Heathcliff a…….. but she wished…….. .
Then she asked Heathcliff to…….. and to……..her harsh…….. .
As the summary above is not complete, the students have to work in pairs and conclude it.
The students answer the following questions in pairs.
- What does Catherine accuse Heathcliff of in the first paragraph?
- What does Catherine believe that Heathcliff will do after her death? Find reference in the text to support your answer.
- What does Catherine ask Heathcliff to do?
- Catherine and Heathcliff accuse each other. What does Heathcliff accuse Catherine of?
- Heathcliff comments on Catherine’s love for Linton. How does he define this feeling? Find the expression used in the text.
- Does Heathcliff consider Catherine responsible for their separation?
Exercises check (20 -25 minutes)
The exercises are checked orally.
Contextualization and discussion (30 minutes)
The teacher explains very carefully the plot of Wuthering Heights and focuses on the fact that Emily Brontë gives the readers a vivid portrait of a woman oppressed and divided by social conventions. Her real self is indistinguishable from Heathcliff – at one point she confesses: “I am Heathcliff”. However, the passage analysed by the students shows that Catherine has given up her real love and has married Edgar.
As one of the prerequisites for this teaching unit is the Victorian historical and social background, students are asked to reflect on this question and discuss it altogether:
What was the aim of the education of girls of good Victorian families?
Production (homework)
Composition: Describe the emotions shown by Catherine in the last meeting with Heathcliff and reflect on the relationship between the sexes during the Victorian Age. (150 words)
