Representation of male characters in Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen and Wuthering Heights
by Emily Brontë
RQ: How are male characters presented in the novels, Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen and Wuthering
Heights by Emily Brontë?
Subject: Literature
Word count: 3.991
,Table of Contents
Introduction 3
Part 1: The unconventional male 4
Part 2: The submissive male 7
Part 3: The father-figure 9
Part 4: Men as anti-heroes 11
Conclusion 13
Bibliography 17
2
, Introduction
Out of Africa is a memoir written by Isak Dinesen, the pen-name of Karen Blixen.
Dinesen, born in 1885, as an art student at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen (The
Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica), developed her love for the landscape that would later
appear in her novels. Dinesens autobiography, published in 1937, was about the seventeen years
she spent on her coffee plantation in Kenya, and it consists of a series of observations of the
African people and landscape, as well as, Dinesen's growth into an independent woman who
endured challenges that came with managing a plantation.
Wuthering Heights, written by Emily Brontë, published almost a century before Out of
Africa in 1847, is set in the Yorkshire Moors. Emily Brontë grew up in an isolated part of
England. It took Brontë almost a year to publish Wuthering Heights, and then only under the
name of Ellis Bell because, “We did not like to declare ourselves women, because we had a
vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice” said Charlotte
Brontë in 1850 (Orel, 135). Although Wuthering Heights was set to become a classic of English
literature, the initial reaction was not anticipated. The Victorian novel was called morbid and
melancholic, which in March of 1848 an American journal called 'Paterson’s Magazine'
commented, "We rise from the perusal of Wuthering Heights as if we had come fresh from a
pest-house. Read Jane Eyre is our advice, but burn Wuthering Heights ...." (The Reader's). In
contrast, that same year 'Douglas Jerrold’s Weekly Newspaper' remarked "Wuthering Heights is a
strange sort of book, —baffling all regular criticism; yet, it is impossible to begin and not finish
it; and quite as impossible to lay it aside afterward and say nothing about it." (The Reader's).
Additionally, when the novel was published it was considered controversial since the traditional
3
by Emily Brontë
RQ: How are male characters presented in the novels, Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen and Wuthering
Heights by Emily Brontë?
Subject: Literature
Word count: 3.991
,Table of Contents
Introduction 3
Part 1: The unconventional male 4
Part 2: The submissive male 7
Part 3: The father-figure 9
Part 4: Men as anti-heroes 11
Conclusion 13
Bibliography 17
2
, Introduction
Out of Africa is a memoir written by Isak Dinesen, the pen-name of Karen Blixen.
Dinesen, born in 1885, as an art student at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen (The
Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica), developed her love for the landscape that would later
appear in her novels. Dinesens autobiography, published in 1937, was about the seventeen years
she spent on her coffee plantation in Kenya, and it consists of a series of observations of the
African people and landscape, as well as, Dinesen's growth into an independent woman who
endured challenges that came with managing a plantation.
Wuthering Heights, written by Emily Brontë, published almost a century before Out of
Africa in 1847, is set in the Yorkshire Moors. Emily Brontë grew up in an isolated part of
England. It took Brontë almost a year to publish Wuthering Heights, and then only under the
name of Ellis Bell because, “We did not like to declare ourselves women, because we had a
vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice” said Charlotte
Brontë in 1850 (Orel, 135). Although Wuthering Heights was set to become a classic of English
literature, the initial reaction was not anticipated. The Victorian novel was called morbid and
melancholic, which in March of 1848 an American journal called 'Paterson’s Magazine'
commented, "We rise from the perusal of Wuthering Heights as if we had come fresh from a
pest-house. Read Jane Eyre is our advice, but burn Wuthering Heights ...." (The Reader's). In
contrast, that same year 'Douglas Jerrold’s Weekly Newspaper' remarked "Wuthering Heights is a
strange sort of book, —baffling all regular criticism; yet, it is impossible to begin and not finish
it; and quite as impossible to lay it aside afterward and say nothing about it." (The Reader's).
Additionally, when the novel was published it was considered controversial since the traditional
3
