72-t*552 LOXTERMAN, Alan Searing, 1937- THE GIANT'S FOOT: A READING OF WUTHERING HEIGHTS. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1971 Language and Literature, modern I, University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan ® Copyright by Alan Searing Loxterman 1971 THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED THE GIANT' S FOOTs A READING OK WUTHERING HEIGHTS DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University! ! By Alan Searing Loxterman, A.B., H,A, i * * * * w i The Ohio State University 1971 Approved by AdJviser * Department of English PLEASE NOTE: Some Pages have indistinct p rin t. Filmed as received. UNIVERSITY MICROFILMS ” • . there [Wutherlncj Heights! stands colossal, dark, and frowning, half statue, half rocks in the former sense, terrible and goblin-like; in the latter, almost beautiful, for its colouring is of mellow grey, and moorland moss clothes it; and heath, with its blooming bells and balmy fragrance, grows faithfully close to the giant's foot," CHARLOTTE BRONTE Editor's Preface To the New Edition (1850) of Wutherinq Heights ii In fond dedication to ray wife and ray parents for their support and encouragement iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My greatest debt is to my adviser. Professor Arnold Shapiro. His critical instincts were so unerring that, from him, praise was doubly welcome. I would also like to thank Professors Daniel R. Barnes, Ford T. Swetnam, Jr., and Charles W. Hoffmann for their valuable comments and useful suggestions for improvement. iv VITA May 21, 1937 • • ■ Born-Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1959 «••••• • A, B. cum laude. Kenyon College, Gambler, Ohio 1960 . ...... M. A., University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 1960*61 • ■ • ■ • Graduate student, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey 1961-69 ........ Teaching Associate, Department of English, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1970-71 ........ Instructor, Department of English, Richmond College, University of Richmond, Richmond, Virginia FIELDS OF STUDY Major Fields English Literature Studies in the Medieval Period. Professor Francis Lee Utley Studies in Beowulf. Professor Robert M. Estrich Studies in Donne and Other Metaphysical Poets. Professor John Harold Wilson Studies in Eighteenth-Century Literature. Professor Howard S. Babb Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature. Professors Richard D» Altick and Arnold Shapiro Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature. Professor Claude M. Simpson v TABLE OF CONTENTS Pago ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...................................... iv VITA .............................. ................. v LIST OF FIGURES ............... vil Chapter I. INTRODUCTION........ ............... 1 II* THE NARRATOR AS EGOIST: LOCKWOOD....... 34 III. THE NARRATOR AS HYPOCRITE: NELLY DEAN AND YOUNG HEATHCLIFF......... 67 IV. THE NARRATOR AS PRAGMATIST: NELLY DEAN AND CATHERINE EARNSHAW........ 88 V. THE MORAL STRUCTURE............................119 VI. THE SYMBOLIC P L O T ............................152 VII. WUTHERING HEIGHTS: ROMANTIC POEM AND VICTORIAN NOVEL. ..............191 VIII. CONCLUSION................................... 215 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CITED..................... 226 vl LIST OF FIGURES Number Page 1 Correlation of Novel Time with Narrators 47 2 The Plot of Wuthering Heights 130 vii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Most commentators on Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights have stressed the spirituality of the romance between Heathcliff and Catherine Eamshaw and the ghostly manner in which their love is kept alive beyond the grave. During the past twenty years, however, a few critics have also begun to investigate the elements of social satire in Heathcliff's revenge and the morally affirmative nature of Catherine Linton's romance with Hareton— a love which . seems to resolve many of the problems created by Heathcliff* s and Catherine Earnshaw's destructive passions. My reading of Wuthering Heights is an attempt to integrate these two approachesr to appreciate the novel's moral theme as well as its amoral passion, and to understand its social realism as well as its metaphysical symbolism. To accon^lish this I shall pay more attention than is customary to the unusual manner in which this story is told, its two pairs of lovers and two narrators, and the way its plot begins near the end. The following chapters will demonstrate that these puzzling technical aspects of Wuthering Heights are evidence of a calculated ambiguity in its design, for Emily Bronte has written a novel with two different plots which are 1 2 complementary in structure yet contradictory in their philosophical implications. Thus far, commentators have tended to analyze these similarities and differences separately; they concentrate on thematic parallels between the pairs of lovers and the different generations of Lintons and Earnshaws, or they emphasize the power of Heathcliff's and Catherine Earnahaw's passion, contrasting it with the more conventional romance between Hareton and Catherine Linton. This reading of Wuthering Heights, however, regards these Bimi lari ties and differences as being an integral part of the same ambiguous work, a novel with two different plots developed so indirectly by the author that they are scarcely noticed, even by those who tell the story. To put this reading of Wuthering Heights in perspective, we need to recall some of its most influential predecessors. Most Victorian reviewers freely acknowledged the raw power of Wuthering Heights, but they were uneasy about the immorality of its two major characters, Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw. Some wondered whether this strange story was not more of a romance than a novel, and nearly all the reviewers tempered their praise because they feared that Wuthering Heights was an abortive product of its author's ungoverned fancy. * * Seme of the more Interesting contemporary reviews of Wuthering Heights have been reprinted in Ruth H. Blackburn, The Bronte Sisters (Boston: D. C. Heath and Company, 1964), pp. 114-17, 119-22, and in Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights: An Authoritative Text with Toward the end of the nineteenth century, however, Swinburne hailed Wuthering Heights as issuing sometimes from the tumult of charging waters, Cso that the reader] finds with something of wonder how absolutely pure and sweet was the element of living storm with which his own nature has been for a while made one; not a grain in it of - soiling sand, not a waif of clogging weed* As was the authorrs life, so is her book in all things: troubled and taintless, with little of rest in it, and nothing of reproach. ^ The first major appraisal of Wuthering Heights in the twentieth century (with the exception of C. P. Sanger's invaluable Essays in Criticism, ed. William M, Sale, Jr., Norton Critical Editions (New York: W. W. Norton S Co., Inc., 1963}, pp. 279-85. All references to the novel will be from this edition and will be placed within parentheses in my text. The five contemporary reviews of Wuthering Heights which had been cut from newspapers and were found in Emily Bronte's writing desk are discussed in Charles Simpson, Emily Bronte (London: Country Life Ltd, 1929),pp. 172-79. Simpson reprints the only completely favorable review, but it is too general and unperceptive to be much of a compliment, and the newspaper from which it comes has not been traced. More notable exceptions to the generally unfavorable run of reviews through the 1850's are discussed in Allan R, Brick, "Lewes' Review of Wuthering Heights." Nineteenth Century Fiction. XIV (1959-60), 355-59— hereafter referred to as NCF-- and in Richard Stang, The.Theory of the Novel in England. 1850-70 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), pp. 187-89, 220. A list of nineteentti-century reviews may be found In John Hewish, Emily Bronte: A Critical and Biographical Study (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1969), pp. 188-89. For an analytical survey of early criticism through David Cecil, see Melvin R. Watson, "Wuthering Heights and the Critics," Trollopian. Ill (1943-49), 243-63. Algernon C..Swinburne, "Emily. Bronte," Athenaeum. No. 2903 (June 16, i883), 762-63. 4 3 chronology} continued this metaphor of storm and was pitched at the same rhapsodic level of rhetoric. Yet David Cecil wrote more than a review or an appreciation. His essay on Wuthering Heights continues to be influential as a pioneer effort to give this novel a comprehensive critical interpretation* Assuming that for Emily Bronte man and nature are "different manifestations of a single spiritual reality," Cecil proposes that the Earnshaws of Wuthering Heights are "children of the storm" while the more gentle Lintons of Thrushcross Grange are "children of calm," The two households combine to form a "cosmic harmony" which is upset by Heathcliff, who is himself a storm figure, yet "an extraneous element" belonging to neither household. When Catherine Eamshaw violates her own stormy nature, ignoring her natural attraction to Heathcliff in order to form an unnatural union with Edgar Linton, a child of calm, Heathcliff becomes "not , , , as usually supposed, a wicked man voluntarily yielding to his wicked impulses," but "like a mountain torrent diverted from its channel, which flows out on the surrounding country, laying waste whatever may happen to lie in its way , , • until the obstacles which kept It from its natural channel ®C[harles3 P[ercy3 S[anger3# "The Structure of Wuthering Heights" [19263# a paper read to the Heretics, Cambridge, England, Rpt, in Sale,and in most anthologies of criticism on Wuthering Heights, and in a separate volume with Irene Cooper Willis# The Authorship of Wuthering Heights (London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1967), All further references will be to this Dawson rpt. 4 are removed," By viewing the novel as this sort of cosmic allegory, Cecil is able to present an alternative to most Victorian critics of Wuthering Heights who shared Charlotte Bronte's moral disapproval of Heathcliff as "never once swerving in hi3 arrow-straight course to perdition."® Moreover, Cecil's placement of the second generation in this cosmological scheme meets the Victorian critics' second major objection, that Wuthering Heights was crudely haphazard in construction.