Ghent University Faculty of Arts and Philosophy The Byronic Hero and the Femme Fatale Compared and Converted. A Deconstruction of Gendered Archetypes, Illustrated in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. Supervisor: Prof. M. Van Remoortel Paper submitted in partial Department of Literary Studies fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of “Master in de taal- en letterkunde: Engels-Nederlands” by Nele Janssens 2014-2015 i Acknowledgments First and foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to my promoter Professor Marianne Van Remoortel. She gave me the freedom to explore relevant literature as well as my own analytical talents. Whenever I was convinced that the latter would fall short, she never failed to encourage me with constructive directions and boundless enthusiasm. Secondly, I would like to thank my mother. Whether I chose to stay in Ghent, working at my own pace, at rather peculiar hours, or I preferred to enjoy her pampering at home in Mere, she would always support my decisions and make just that little extra effort to facilitate my writing process. A special word of thanks goes out to my friends, who heroically endured my fatal moments of despair and constant references to Fatal Women and Byronic Heroes. I am especially grateful to my sister Hanne, whose remarks helped me to improve the sections I was not so sure about, Marlies, who gave her honest opinion regarding the structure of my thesis, and Thijs, who invariably gave the right advice and always knew when I needed one of our little coffee breaks (two of my friend’s habits, whether we are writing a thesis or not). Finally, I want to thank Tessa for her infinite patience, her genuine advice, her helpful remarks, her unconditional support, her unequalled cooking (sorry mom) and unmeasurable love. ii List of Illustrations Figure 1: Materialisation Scheme ............................................................................................ 88 Figure 2: Acting Out of the Byronic Hero ............................................................................... 39 Figure 3: Acting Out of the Femme Fatale .............................................................................. 43 iii Table of Contents Acknowledgments ....................................................................................................................... i List of Illustrations ..................................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents ...................................................................................................................... iii I. Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 II. The Construction of Identity: Oppressed Agency in Ideological Stability ..................... 5 1. Butler’s Deconstructionist Gender Theory: Oppressed Agency ..................................... 5 1.1. Performativity as an Instrument for Materialisation and Identification ....................... 5 1.2. Psychoanalysis as motivation for identification........................................................... 9 2. The Construction of Literary Types: Manipulating Discourse ..................................... 11 2.1. The Byronic Hero: Titanic Individualism .................................................................. 11 2.2. The Femme Fatale: Scapegoat for Decay .................................................................. 15 3. The Construction of Wuthering Heights: Manipulative Matrix .................................... 21 3.1. Ellis Bell ..................................................................................................................... 21 3.2. Characterisation ......................................................................................................... 24 III. The Struggle for Authenticity: the Theatrical Abject .................................................... 31 1. Butler’s Theatricality: an Expression of Gender Melancholia ...................................... 31 1.1. Theatricality as a Special Type of Performativity ..................................................... 31 1.2. Gender Melancholia ................................................................................................... 33 2. The Theatricality of Literary Types: Revolution .......................................................... 35 2.1. Melancholia, Negotiation and Subversion ................................................................. 36 2.2. Attraction, Fusion and Rebellion ............................................................................... 44 2.3. Plot Structure ............................................................................................................. 48 3. Theatricality in Wuthering Heights: Denaturalisation .................................................. 51 3.1. Emily Brontë .............................................................................................................. 51 3.2. Acting out ................................................................................................................... 53 3.3. Narration .................................................................................................................... 65 IV. Conclusion ..................................................................................................................... 73 V. Works Cited ...................................................................................................................... i (28 981 words) 1 The Byronic Hero and the Femme Fatale Compared and Converted. A Deconstruction of Gendered Archetypes, Illustrated in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. I. Introduction In 1847 an excessively violent novel shocked the Victorian literary scene with its realistic portrayal of extraordinary, even supernatural characters. The most severe consternation, however, followed three years later, when the public discovered that the author of the amoral novel was not Ellis Bell, but a self-sufficient woman who hid behind the penname: Emily Brontë. It is not strange that Wuthering Heights raised such controversy since both its characters and its creator “do not conform to any recognizable set of social values or follow any conventional code” (Almeida 49). Indeed, if public discourse is supposed to convey social rules, Wuthering Heights falls short in its plight. As an essential part of general discourse, literature is one of the instruments that forces society’s subjects in certain positions. Western rhetoric, that has always been phallocentric, thus presents independent men and compliant women as respectable ideals, while passive fellows and destructive temptresses are the antipodes of the age’s quintessential protagonists. Brontë’s female heroines, however, are respected, self-sufficient women, while Heathcliff is an uncultivated brute. Moreover, if the directors of public discourse have the authority to proclaim conventional morality, those administrators should not be female in the indisputable patriarchy that is the Victorian society. Controversial as Brontë’s transgressions might be, her challenge of repressive norms has always fascinated readers and critics alike. That fascination can easily be traced to her insight in the mechanisms of public discourse and her subtle manipulations to use them to her advantage. Brontë turns to the most famous literary types, staging a Byronic Hero and a Femme Fatale, and interchanges their genders so shrewdly that their onlookers are both appalled and enthralled by the strangely familiar personae. Considering that literary archetypes bolster the coercive force of social rules, the normative Byronic Hero and Femme Fatale are contrasting figures in a moral design, the first an awe-invoking ideal, the latter a threat to avoid at all costs. The social relevance of the fictitious models has been the focus of several analyses that assess their origin and effects (Thorslev 1965; Praz 1970; Stott 1992; Hales 1996). Certainly, the Byronic Hero and Femme Fatale have been contrasted, but this comparison has only received secondary attention and has never been systematically persisted. Thus far, it has only been evaluated from a 2 conventional patriarchal viewpoint that lays responsibility for general decline with the destructive Femme Fatale to ascertain the Hero’s innocence. In their scapegoating, these studies focus on the chronological relation between the influential types: it is widely accepted that the Femme Fatale supplants the Byronic Hero as the dominant literary type from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, when the British Empire crumbles and its Romantic discourse is gradually replaced by a discourse of protection. Seeing that previous studies exclusively focus on the conventional, opposite roles of these figures, this thesis fills an important want in the study of literary types by deconstructing the relationship between discourse and its archetypes. Comparing fictional figures I try to account for the awe-invoking image of the Byronic Hero and the forceful rejection of his seductive female counterpart, the Femme Fatale. With that aim, I match up the cardinal theories on both the Byronic Hero (Praz; Thorslev) and the Femme Fatale (Praz; Stott) to Judith Butler’s deconstructivism as presented in Bodies That Matter (1993). In order to explain the subversive potential of excluded individuals, so called abjects, Butler dismantles the structure of the ruling