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Human Reincarnation, Reformation, and Redemption in Wuthering Heights

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Human Reincarnation, Reformation, and Redemption in Wuthering Heights Educating the Passions: Human Reincarnation, Reformation, and Redemption in Wuthering Heights A Thesis Submitted to the Committee on Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Faculty of Arts and Science TRENT UNIVERSITY Peterborough, Ontario, Canada © Copyright by Shahira Adel Hathout 2018 English (Public Texts) M.A. Graduate Program May 2018 Abstract Educating the Passions: Human Reincarnation and Reformation in Wuthering Heights Shahira Adel Hathout My thesis proposes to uncover what I term an Emilian Philosophy in the reading of Emily Brontë’s only novel, and suggests that Wuthering Heights reflects Brontë’s vision of a society progressing toward social and spiritual reform. Through this journey, Brontë seeks to conciliate the two contrasting sides of humanity – natural and social – by offering a middle state that willingly incorporates social law without perverting human nature by forcing it to mold itself into an unnatural social system, which in turn leads to a “wholesome” (Gesunde) humanity. While Heathcliff embodies Bronte’s view of a primitive stage of humanity, Hareton reincarnates the wholesome state of humanity that balances human natural creativity and cravings with Victorian unrelenting reason. Brontë treats Heathcliff’s death as a point in life, in which mankind is emancipated from social constraints and is able to achieve ultimate happiness. This view of death is reassuring as it displaces the anxiety associated with death and separation. My study will highlight the influence of Friedrich Schiller’s, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Philosophical writings and literary works, as well as the influence of the Franciscan Order in Catholicism and its founder St Francis of Assisi, patron saint of animals and environment, in framing Bronte’s philosophy to propose a social and religious reform anchored in nature. Keywords: Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë, Reformation, Society, Nature, wholesome (Gesunde) humanity, Natural Education, Primitive Man, Middle state, Cultivated man, Friedrich Schiller, Jean-Jacque Rousseau, Reincarnation, St Francis of Assisi. ii Acknowledgements I would first like to thank my supervisor, Professor Suzanne Bailey, for her friendship, mentorship, encouragement and timely feedback. Professor Bailey consistently allowed me the freedom to think, research and create this work while guiding me when I stray; her comments were invaluable particularly as she helped me highlight the originality of my claims. I would particularly like to thank Professor Moira Howes for accepting to be my second reader despite her massive responsibilities and busy schedule, and to Professor Margaret Steffler for chairing my examining committee. Moreover, I would like to express my gratitude to my external examiner, and mentor throughout my years at Trent University as an undergraduate student, Professor Elizabeth Popham. I am also grateful to the program’s academic administrative assistant, Catherine O’Brien, for her constant and swift cooperation and support during my time at Trent as a graduate student. My deepest gratitude and appreciation for my mother and sister for their continuous support and unswerving faith in me. I must also express my profound gratitude and love to my husband, Ayman, and my children, Farrah and Ali, for their support, patience and love throughout the thesis writing process, without which I would never have completed this project. Finally, I would like to dedicate this work to the memory of my beloved father, the epitome of wisdom and hard work, whose spirit drove me to persevere, and who will surely be proud of my accomplishment – Ave Atque Vale. iii Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii Table of Contents iv Educating the Passions: Human Reincarnation, Reformation, and Redemption in Wuthering Heights Chapter One: Introduction 1 Chapter Two: Heathcliff’s Life: The Education of Humanity 43 Chapter Three: Hareton: The Reincarnation of a Reformed Wholesome Humanity 99 Chapter Four: Hareton and a Reformed Humanity / Society: An Emilian Philosophy 127 Works Cited 159 iv Chapter One: Introduction We cannot read many pages of Wuthering Heights without being driven to construct a theory. Without such a refuge, it would be impossible to proceed beyond the first chapter. But philosophers are never revolted or disgusted; what shocks plain incurious natures stimulates the analyser of causes and motives. (Christian Remembrancer [July 1857], 127) In writing Wuthering Heights (1847), Emily Brontë is tracing the development or progress of a universal humanity, starting with what she sees as a primitive savage state and arriving at a point of maturation and reformation. I contend that Heathcliff is the personification of Brontë’s vision of humanity. Therefore, by tracing Heathcliff’s development until his death, we trace the development and transformation of humanity as part of nature. By “humanity” in Wuthering Heights, I mean human beings as a force of nature and therefore part of the natural world. Thus, I would agree with David Cecil’s assertion that “to Emily Brontë an angry man and an angry sky are not just metaphorically alike, they are actually alike in kind; different manifestations of a single spiritual reality” (qtd. in Stoneman 36). I contend that Brontë is contemplating a “wholesome humanity” through her narrative, by which I mean one with the ability to incorporate social laws without suppressing or encroaching on human nature so as to distort or compromise it. Thus, I argue that the wholesomeness of humanity is embodied in the figure of Friedrich Schiller’s “cultivated man” who “makes of nature his friend, and honours its friendship, while only bridling its caprice” (Letters Upon the Aesthetic Education of Man 1793, Letter IV 6). In addition, I consider the idea of “reincarnation” in Wuthering Heights as part of this picture: namely, that Heathcliff’s reformed soul continues in the form of the character Hareton Earnshaw, whose connection with Heathcliff will be closely examined to justify why he is an appropriate extension for the reformed Heathcliff. My study is an effort to uncover what I 1 term an “Emilian Philosophy” that aims at social and spiritual reformation, a philosophy which is a reaction to the rigid Victorian social and religious laws and traditions that stifle humans’ natural desires, imagination, and creativity. I contend that in Emily Brontë’s narrative, the death of Heathcliff is a breaking point, after which a socially and spiritually reformed humanity is affirmed and reincarnated in the character of Hareton. Emily Brontë’s natural attachment to her home in Haworth and her beloved moors makes her critical of any man-made organized entity. In Emily Brontë, Winifred Gérin cites Charlotte Brontë’s Roe Head Journals (1836) where Charlotte explains Emily’s strong attachment to home and nature, and her revulsion at the conventional modes of life in her contemporary society: “[Emily] found in the bleak solitude many and dear delights; and not the least and best loved – was liberty” (qtd. in Gérin 55). Before attending Roe Head school, Emily Brontë used to spend her time in the seclusion of the village parsonage, amongst the hills bordering Yorkshire and Lancashire. Charlotte Brontë offers a detailed description of the area where Emily spent most of her life: The scenery of these hills is not grand – it is not romantic; it is scarcely striking. Long low moors dark with heath, shut in little valleys, where a stream waters, here and there, a fringe of stunted copse. Mills and scattered cottages chase romance from these valleys; it is only higher up, deep in amongst the ridges of the moors, that Imagination can find rest for the sole of her foot; and even if she finds it there, she must be a solitude-loving raven – no gentle dove…. My sister loved the moors. (qtd. in Gérin 54-5) Emily Brontë’s move from the natural unrestrictive mode of life in Haworth to Roe Head school with its disciplined restrictive routine proved to be too confining for her naturally free disposition: Her nature proved here (in Roe Head) too strong for her fortitude. Every morning when she woke, the vision of home and the moors rushed on her, and darkened and saddened the day that lay before her…the truth was that it was already too 2 late to make Emily conform to the normal contemporary standards of female education. (Gérin 55) My argument highlights Emily’s philosophical imagination that contemplates nature in relation to different aspects of life around her, like organized religion and institutions of civil society. Winifred Gérin rightly asserts that, “the little world of Roe Head had sown not only seeds of rebellion in her; it had prompted her to evolve her own scale of values, in which failure or success was not judged by results, but ideals engaged” (57). Indeed, in this sense, academic excellence or winning awards was not Emily’s primary concern. Her main concern was to acquire a “philosophic mind,” which, I suggest, can only be achieved through restoring humanity’s ties with nature. Wuthering Heights was written in 1845, towards the beginning of the Victorian period. (1837-1901). However, according to Charles Percy Sanger in his essay “The Structure of Wuthering Heights” (1926), the events and setting of the novel take place between 1771-1803, and Emily Brontë uses the distance of time in Wuthering Heights to criticize the artificial and restrictive conventions of the era that demanded that individuals conform and suppress their natural human desires. In doing this, Brontë uncovers the hypocrisy of the Victorian society in which she lives, with its prejudiced class and legal system, and misleading religious institutions. This motive can be seen in her depiction of Joseph, the servant in the Earnshaw household who represents hardline traditional religious beliefs: [He was] the wearisomest self-righteous Pharisee that ever ransacked a Bible to rake the promises to himself and fling the curses to his neighbours.
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