Sunday, April 3, 2011

What does munificent mean in Wuthering Heights?

This word appears in Chapter Ten of Wuthering
Heights
when Nelly Dean explains to Lockwood how she reluctantly left
Wuthering Heights to go to Thrushcross Grange with Catherine when she married Edgar
Linton. She did not want to leave Hareton, especially because of the way in which
Hindley was becoming increasingly dissolute, but her mistress insisted, and Catherine
went to both her husband and brother to aid her in persuading Nelly to leave Wuthering
Heights:



When
I refused to go, and when she found her entreaties did not move me, she went lamenting
to her husband and brother. The former offered me munificent wages; the latter ordered
me to pack up: he wanted no women in the house, he said, now that there was no
mistress...



Edgar Linton
therefore offered Nelly "munificent wages," meaning wages that are generous or
bountiful, as part of his attempt to entice Nelly to join his new wife in Thrushcross
Grange.

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