Timothy Dalton as Heathcliff in the 1970 film of Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff’s personality reflects societal pressures (Image: AIP / Ronald Grant Archive)
WHY does storytelling endure across time and cultures? Perhaps the answer lies in our evolutionary roots. A study of the way that people respond to Victorian literature hints that novels act as a social glue, reinforcing the types of behaviour that benefit society.
Literature “could continually condition society so that we fight against base impulses and work in a cooperative way”, says Jonathan Gottschall of Washington and Jefferson College, Pennsylvania.
Gottschall and co-author Joseph Carroll at the…
