Analysis of Heathcliff’s Views On Love In Wuthering Heights 英语专业论文

Analysis of Heathcliff’s Views On Love InWuthering HeightsI.IntroductionA.Overview of Emily Bronte's LifeEmily Bronte, the fifth child of Patrick Bronte, was born in 1818. His father was a Cambridge educated clergyman born in Ireland. When Emily was two years old, her father was appointed to a church in Haworth, a remote village in Yorkshire, and they spent most of their rest life there. When Emily was three years old, her mother died of cancer. After that, the children were left much to themselves and spent most of their time in reading and composition. They lived in a parsonage in Haworth with the bleak moors of Yorkshire on one side and the parish graveyard on the other.Life at home was much better for Emily and her siblings. In 1824 Mr. Bronte sent his four eldest daughters一Elizabeth, Maria, Charlotte, and Emily一to boarding school. While at school, they were frequently cold and undernourished, and Maria and Elizabeth contracted tuberculosis. Soon after being sent home to recuperate, they died. Alarmed, Mr.Bronte brought Charlotte and Emily home to be educated. Haworth was a relatively isolated community, and so the Bronte children turned to one another for amusement and companionship.In 1826 Mr. Bronte brought home some wooden soldiers, andthese were to be the foundation of the creation of a complicated fantasy world, which the Brontes actively worked on. They began to write about an imaginary world they had created. To escape their unhappy childhood, Anne, Emily, Charlotte and their brother Branwell, in their isolated childhood on the moors, developed an extremely close relationship partly based on their mutual participation in a game of make-believe. Emily and Anne created their own Gondal saga which set in the Pacific Ocean. The first of their diary notes, written in November 1834, gives the first mention of Gondal. They continued writing prose and poems about Gondal until the end of their lives. Branwell and Charlotte recorded their stories about the kingdom of Anglia (Latin word for England) in small notebooks. The children began writing stories about them. They made tiny books containing stories, plays, histories, and poetry written by their imagined heroes and heroines.None of the prose has survived, and the poetry, the earliest of which dates to 1836, is difficult to interpret. Various efforts have been made to fit the poems into a coherent saga, but these efforts are probably misguided. Some poems appear not to be about Gondal at all, but rather to reflect Emily's own feelings. This becomes clear Heights, in which her familiar Yorkshire surroundings become whose passion and beauty attract us today. in her novel Wuthering the setting for a tragedy.Emily made assistant teacher, several attempts to leave home. Forexample, she went to Law Hill as an Law Hill was a school run by Miss Patchett her lessons having been near Halifax. Emily's lack of formal eduoation (aotually all taken at home), temperament, and her homesickness would seem to have made Emily far from shy ideal teacher, but Miss Patchett didn't discuss her eccentric but distinguished assistant with subsequent biographers. The date and duration of Emily's stay at Law Hill are still in doubt. Law Hill is regarded as important for Wuthering Heights because a house nearby, High Sunderland Hall, is assumed to be the model for the house known as Wuthering Heights, and it has even been suggested that the story of Heathcliff was to be found in recollections of a local Halifax character, Jack Sharp.Returning to Haworth in 1839 at the age of twenty, Emily continued to write poetry. Her sisters made brief and unsuccessful efforts to become governesses, but Emily remained at home, either because she was the most domesticated of the sisters or because she was the least suited to become a teacher. Her birthday in 1841 is, however, full of enthusiasm for a project that the Brontes should run their own school at Haworth. In order to achieve this, the sisters would need knowledge of foreign languages, and so in February 1842, Emily and Charlotte set out to Brussels.The position of the Bronte sisters in Brussels was halfway between those of pupilsand teachers. As a teacher, it is not surprising thather forbidding reserve did not attract her pupils to her. On the other hand, M. Heger, her French teacher, spoke highly of her intellectual gifts as a student, and her surviving exercises show high imaginative power as well as a good command of French.In November 1842, the Brontes were forced to return home by the death of their aunt. They had previously been shocked by the death of their father's curate, William Weightman, in September, and by the death of their friend Martha Taylor in Brussels. After that,Charlotte returned to Belgium, where she endured much loneliness and pains, but Emily remained at home. Their aunt had left the three girls some money, and there are reports of Emily considering the best way of investing it. For most of 1843 Emily was alone with her father. In February 1844 Emily copied her poetry down into two notebooks, one of which she entitled "Gondal Poems." The other notebook would seem to have contained poetry of a subjective nature.The chronology of the poems and the novel is confusing. Emily continued to write poetry in 1844 and 1845 in both Gondal and non-Gondal notebooks. The plan to start a school had collapsed in 1844 for lack of interest. And both Charlotte and Ann were in very low spirits. It was in these unpromising circumstances that Emily wrote some of her greatest poetry and also Wuthering Heights.In the autumn of 1845, Charlotte discovered a notebook of Emily'scontaining poetry which she thought was very impressive, and they published the poetry in May 1846, together with a selection of Charlotte's and Anne's. But they sold only two copies. After this Emily wrote only one more poem and began to revise in May 1848. Her abandoning of poetry has been variously explained. It has been argued that the fact of publication killed the poetry in her; others suggested that she was busy with Wuthering Heights.Meanwhile the Brontes' health was not very well. Branwell had been ill badly since 1845, and he died on September 24th 1848. Emily was reported as having a cough and a cold during the funeral. She struggled through her normal household tasks until almost the day of her death, refusing all medical help and died of tuberculosis on December 19, 1848.B.Emily Bronte's fictional worldThe story mainly centers around two harmonious families, namely, the prosperous and bluff Earnshaw family, the richer and more civilized Linton family, and an "intruder" named Heathcliff. Mr.Earnshaw, his wife, their son Hindley and daughter Catherine are living in the handsome farmhouse Wuthering Heights up in the folds of moors, while Mr. Linton, his wife, their son Edgar and daughter Isabella live down below in the valley at Thrushcross Grange. One day, Mr. Earnshaw comes back home with a rugged foundling from a business trip to Liverpool, whom he named Heathcliff. The daughter comes to make friends with Heathcliff,while the son takes him as an enemy, "a usurper of his parents' affections and his privileges" (Bronte, 1994: 36). Hindley makes every effort to torment and humiliate Heathcliff after his parents' deaths. In addition, Catherine, who has developed a passionate love for Heathcliff and vice versa after so many years together, realizes the degradation and poverty she will face if married to him. She decides to marry the richer and more decent Edgar to help Heathcliff out of her brother's insult and torment. Hurt and frustrated, Heathcliff runs away and returns three years later with good manners and fortune, only to find that his beloved Catherine has married Edgar. He begins to avenge his maltreatment and inequality. He cheats Hindley out of his property and traps Edgar's sister Isabella into becoming crazy about him. Catherine dies when giving birth to Edgar's child, little Catherine, and Heathcliff vents his anger and grief on his rivals. He deprives Hindley's son Hareton of the rightful inheritance and turns him to be a harsh and barbarous man, who takes pride in his vulgarity and rudeness. At the same time, he torments Isabella to death and forces their dying son Linton to marry little Catherine. After the successive deaths of little Linton and Edgar, Heathcliff succeeds in possessing all the properties of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. Just as he is about to destroy the widowed little Catherine and the savage-like Hareton, he suddenly changes his mind, as he recognizes some resemblance between the two youngsters and Catherine and himselfin the old happy days. For 18 years after Catherine's death, he has been tortured and haunted by the memory of her. On seeing the ghost of his beloved one day, he finally forgets his revenge and comes to starve himself to death. At the same time, little Catherine extends the olive branch to Hareton and manages to change him into an educated man. The two fall in love with each other and end in happiness at Thrushcross Grange forever, leaving the ghosts of Heathcliff and Catherine wandering over the moors.I.Heathcliff’s views on loveA. Heathcliff's Demonization1. Roots of Heathcliff's DemonizationAccording to Freud, human mind is like an iceberg, of which the visible part above water can be defined as the conscious while the larger part, the invisible one under water is called the unconscious. The conscious stands for the rationality and reason and functions as the guard against the irrational instincts of the unconscious. In psychology, "A psychical act mainly goes through two phases as regards its state, between which is interposed a kind of testing (censorship). In the first phase the psychical act is unconscious and belongs to the system unconsciousness; if, on testing, it is rejected by the censorship, it is not allowed to pass into the second phase; it is then said to be `repressed' andmust remain unconscious."(Freud, 1998a: 7-8) When the instinctive drive of the unconscious is repressed, human beings will easily go mad or become abnormal, and most psychological problems are caused by the inhibitions of natural impulses. It is known to all that Heathcliff suffers a lot of repressions from various aspects, like society, culture, family and himself. These repressions are the roots of his demonization. Heathcliff's first encounter with frustration comes from his bitter childhood experience as a deserted gipsy. The first day he is brought to Wuthering Heights, he has been classified as belonging to the social stratum different from that of the Earnshaw family. He has been labeled with some social marks. Mr. Earnshaw calls him "it" when introducing Heathcliff to his wife. "You must e'en take it as a gift of God, though it's as dark almost as if it came from the devil"(Bronte, 1994: 34); Mrs. Earnshaw calls him a "gipsy brat" and is "already to fling it out of doors"(Bronte, 1994: 35); and Hindley calls him a "dog" "beggarly interloper" and "an imp of Satan"(Bronte, 1994: 37-38); while Catherine grins and spits at the "stupid little thing"(Bronte, 1994: 37). Both children protest against having "it" in bed with them, and Heathcliff has to sleep on the landing of the stairs. That is his first day at Wuthering Heights. Except Mr. Earnshaw, all the others in the Heights seem to take him as no more than a pauper, an intruder of the family. An introduction ofHeathcliff to another family, the Lintons in Thrushcross Grange, is worth mentioning. When Heathcliff and Catherine intrude the park by accident, Heathcliff is described as "frightful thing" by Isabella, "a gipsy" "a wicked boy" by Mrs. Linton, and "a little Lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway" by Mr. Linton (Bronte, 1994: 48). In summary, ever since his childhood, Heathcliff has already noticed that he is quite different from the children of both the Earnshaws and the Lintons in that all of them are bathing in the great love and care from their parents while he himself is only an outcast of his family as well as an intruder of both families. The society has determined that he doesn't belong to anywhere except the streets of Liverpool. Even if adopted by a decent family, he is still despised and laughed at.As Alfred Adler mentions in his book Overcoming Inferiority Complex, the feeling of inferiority comes in many cases straight from physical disabilities or defects by birth; besides, there are some external causes that may serve to provoke this feeling, such as repression and alienation caused by social disadvantages(阿德勒，1997: 10). In the article "Managing Inferiority", two types of symptoms of inferiority are introduced: "the use of withdrawal tactics" and "aggressiveness", which manifest themselves in various ways. In the former, self-consciousness and sensitiveness to the inferior status, lead to withdrawal from social contacts, while in the latter, the desire to seek attention and approval fromothers may lead to aggression. When feelings of inferiority develop into an abnormal state, they can lead to madness, aggressiveness and even hatred. Alfred Adler holds in his book Understanding Human Nature that hatred originates from the feeling of being neglected or discriminated(阿德勒1990: 163), and that a quick temper,violent anger and the unscrupulous pursuit of power are all based on the feeling of inferiority(阿德勒1990: 203). This idea may serve as a perfect elaboration of Heathcliff's case in the story. As a boy with no origin or identity, despised and excluded by most people in the adopted family, he feels frustrated and inferior in the society, hence the forming of the personality of aggression and hatred during childhood.2. Manifestation of HeathclifF's DemonizationNo one is a villain by birth, Heathcliff is not an exception. As to Heathcliff, not a day passes but Heathcliff feels repressed from his childhood to his death, so.he wants to take revenge on whoever has hurt him and on whatever has prevented him from making his dream come true. After his passion for revenge is fulfilled, his personality is changed and he is sorry for his sins against both the living一and the dead. His revenge makes him a demon, with components villain: However, his rebellion against the society to realize his dream of happiness and freedom makes him a hero. The reader may easily sympathize with him when he is powerless, as a child tyrannized by Hindley Earnshaw, but hebecomes a villain when he acquires power and returns to Wuthering玲fights with money and the trappings of a gentleman.Nelly Dean describes him as "athletic" when he returns. No hints are given about where Heathcliff was and how he made his fortune during his three-year absence. But he has become a rich and educated gentleman already. The impulse to revenge himself on all those he regards as having wronged him becomes his overpowering passion. He is ruthlessly determined to destroy those'who degraded him and prevented him from being with Catherine. After providing money for Hindley, who has fallen into crapulence and gambling after the death of his wife Frances, Heathcliff swindles Hindley out of his ownership of Wuthering Heights. Then, he becomes the master. He also takes advantage of Edgar Linton's sister Isabella and marries her, before treating her in a cruel and contemptuous fashion heartlessly. Although he tells Catherine that he despises Isabella. His and Isabella's marriage promises to result in his inheriting.Thrushcross Grange on Lipton's death by. forcing his son Lipton into marriage with Catherine's daughter Cathy.After Catherine's death, Heathcliffs vindictive cruelty intensifies. He aims at avenging not only his enemies but J also their heirsI一Hareton, son of Hindley, and Cathy, daughter-of Edgar Lipton and Catherine. He turns his attention to Hareton, "We'll see if one tree won't grow ascrooked as another with the same wind to twist it". (Emily Bronte, 1.994:164). Heathcliff first mistreats Hareton, as he has been done by Hindley. Hareton lives in Wuthering Heights as a servant, deprived of education and wage. Heathcliff corrupts Harefon's spirit by telling him something ridiculous, rude and worthless. Then Hareton becomes a brutal and ignorant guy. He also trained Hareton to utter vulgar and impolite word; leaving him in the state of darkness and fatuity. In-addition, Heathcliff forces his sickly son, Lipton, who entirely resembles his mother Isabella, to marry the daughter of Catherine and Edgar, Catherine Lipton regardless of his son's illness and death, in a bid to gain ownership of Thrushcross Grange, which speeds up the death of Edgar. Shortly after the two are married in their nearly loveless match, Heathcliff treats Catherine with relative mercy, turning her into a cold, distant.creature, far removed from the bright, lively girl she used to be. By taking possession of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, Heathcliff succeeds .in taking his revenge to his enemies and becomes the richest person. Eventually, Hareton and Cathy fall in love, however, and their relationship in some ways mirrors that between Heathcliff and Catherine. Their union breaks the cycle of hatred at Wuthering Heights. Hareton, resembling his aunt Catherine Earnshaw much in looks, creates a sense of uneasiness for Heathcliff The novel ends with the death of Heathcliff, who has become a broken, tormented man, haunted by the ghost of theelder Catherine: He Heathcliff grows restless towards the very end of the novel and stops eating. He wanted to be with Catherine in eternal life. He doesn't feel happy or satisfied after carrying out those merciless plans of revenge.Actually, the demonic nature of Heathcliff lies not only in his savage actions towards the victims of his- revenge, but also in the wide range of his victims. Heathcliff's revenge starts with a sense of righteous indignation, but it acts on him like a drug and he needs more and more to give him the same gratification. As he says: "I have no pity! I have no pity! The more the worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails! It is a moral teething; and I grind with greater energy, in proportion to the increase of pain!"(Emily Bronte, 1994:137) At the end of the novel, ghosts of Heathcliff and Catherine has been seen walking the moors together, both Nelly and Lockwood insist that they must be treated as if their souls were at peace. The novel closes with Lockwood's wonder: "how any one could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth."(Emily Bronte, 1994:279). In this sense, the love between Heat成l.iff and Catherine is beyond time and space to overcome death; and reborn. For Heathcliff, death is his happiest destination.Heathcliffs wretched plight compels him to change his status, but in that hierarchical society, he can only resort to the extreme ways. "Herepeatedly- goes to extraordinary lengths in order to change reality so that it will conform to his wishes", and he "manages to change the facts of life and death, and make them conform to his desires" (Marsh, 1999: 50).In all, Heathcliff is a many faced character, in his early years, he is characterized by his sullenness, his proud nature, his fiery temper, his fierce attachment to Catherine and his spitefulness. But returning to Wuthering Heights after a three year absence; Heathcliff becomes a super-human villain driven by revenge, distorted by the wrongs done to him and made emotionally unstable by Catherine's marriage. This later Heathcliff is characterized by his incapacity to love and eventually by an all consuming passion for revenge against those who have wronged him and for unification with his beloved Catherine.As Charlotte Bronte wrote, "Heathcliff, in deed, stands unredeemed"(Emily Bronte, 1994:16), which adds to the uncertainty over whether he not only repented for his sins but was actually a real human being after all. The uncertain fate of Heathcliff s soul and the mystery that Heathciiff s character leaves behind, end the novel in a mesmerizing way, justifying Heathcliffs enduring status as an iconic anti-hero of literature.3. Rebellious spirit- inspiration of demonizationFreud argues that human beings' madness is usually caused by the conflict between the natural drive and the resisting force against the realization of this motivation(西格蒙德·弗洛伊德，1987: 61). From hischildhood to his adolescence or even to his death, not a day passes but Heathcliff feels repressed. He first suffers suppression and torment from the tyrannical Hindley when he was young; then he is faced with Catherine's choice of rich and well-educated Edgar as husband instead of him; finally he experiences the most unbearable repression in his life- the separation from his soul Catherine forever after her death. What Heathcliff tries to pursue is no more than a life of happiness and freedom with Catherine, but he is far from achieving anything like this. Catherine's death means loss of everything and the last ray of his hope is dashed, so he wants to avenge himself on whoever has wronged him as well as on whatever has prevented him from realizing his dreams. As an old Chinese saying goes, when there is suppression, there will surely be rebellion. In the story this rebellious spirit of Heathcliff inspires his demonization. He ruthlessly revenges his maltreatment like a demon, but at the same time, like an angel, he rebels thoroughly against the authority to fulfill his dream of freedom and happiness.Three years later after his running away, Heathcliff returns as a rich and well-behaved gentleman. Catherine's marriage to Edgar as well as her subsequent death urges him to take his revenge. He first makes a good impression on Edgar's sister Isabella, driving the latter to get a crush on him. After their elopement and marriage he makes every effort to abuse and torment her, and hinders her from any connection withher own family. He is described in her secret letter to Nelly as a "fiend, a monster, and not a human being" (Bronte, 1994: 118). Filled with hatred and torture, he has become a ruthless savage.At the same time he begins to provide cash for Hindley to indulge in gambling and in turn, Hindley mortgages every yard of land he owns to him. In the end, Heathcliff becomes the master of Wuthering Heights after Hindley's death. Then he maltreats Hareton, Hindley's son, in the way he has been done by Hindley. Hareton lives in his own house as a servant deprived of the advantage of wages and education. He has no friends and is incapable of righting himself because of his ignorance that he has been wronged. Heathcliff corrupts Hareton's spirit by telling him that things except brutality are ridiculous and worthless, and should be looked down upon. He trains Hareton to be a rude and impolite guy uttering vulgar words, leaving the latter in the state of fatuity and darkness.What is shocking to readers lies in the truth that he also takes revenge on his own son Linton and Catherine's daughter, Cathy. After Isabella's death, he should have taken over the task of attending to their sick son Linton. However, he shows no affection for his own son and the sole purpose for him to win the son back from Thrushcross Grange is to retaliate against his rivals and make them pay for what they have done to him. Regardless of his son's illness and death, Heathcliff allures andforces Cathy to marry Linton in order to inherit the property of the Grange, which speeds up the death of Edgar. Heathcliff at last succeeds in avenging himself and becoming the wealthiest among the neighborhood by inheriting both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. However, he never really feels happy or satisfied, as by carrying out those merciless plans of revenge, his human nature becomes more and more degenerate.In "The Imp of Satan", it is said that after Catherine's death, "Heathcliff acts as if he were a vampire, devouring both Earnshaws and Lintons for his own vivification. He is made into a creature resembling one by the way others treat him- by their making him a scapegoat" (Snider, 2006). In other words, Heathcliff is not a born demon, and what he makes other suffer is exactly what he has once suffered or is still suffering.According to Nicholas Marsh, "Heathcliff used his revenge as an activity that diverted him from suicide: an activity that helped him repress Catherine's challenge to follow her through death" (Marsh, 1999: 70). But to me, he uses revenge as a way to release his repressed feelings and instinctive motives and it is the conflict between over-repression and the desire to rebel against it that enables him to become a demon as well as a rebellious angel.A. Deep Roots of Revenge1. Love and HatredWe all know that Heathcliff's revenge is mainly caused by his extreme love to Catherine and also Catherine's betrayal of him. That is the love to the hatred. Emily's Wuthering Heights concerns itself with love, and the various degrees of love as imagined by the author. The love takes many forms in Wuthering Heights: the grand passion of Heathcliff and Catherine; the coupleism of Hindley and Frances; the romantic silliness of Isabella; the puppy love of Cathy and Linton; and, at last, the hard-earning love of Cathy and Hareton. These lovers, with the possible exception of Hareton and Cathy, are self-centered and ignore the needs, feelings, and claims of others.In this section, however, I will still mainly analyze the love between Heathcliff and Catherine. Because it is the passion of Heathcliff and Catherine that most readers respond to and remember and that has made this novel one of the great love stories not merely of English literature but of European literature as well and even of world literature.The nature of their love seems to go beyond the kind of love most people know. In fact, it is as if their love is beyond this world, belonging to a spiritual plane that supercedes anything available to everyone else on Earth. Their love seems to be born out of their rebellion and not merely a sexual desire. They both, however, do not fully understand the nature of their love, for they betray one another: Each of them marry a person whom they know they do not love as much as they love each other. Love,in one way or another is the force which makes people unlikable. Receiving too much attention spoiled Catherine Earnshaw. Heathcliff was disliked because he had to grow up without a real family to love him. Finally, Hindley turned into a pitiful man because of the love that he lost. For some, affection can change people for the better, but for others love can be a poison for their souls.Many people intend to believe that the reason for Heathcliff and Catherine's traged lies in their characters. They hold that the sequel is due to the affinity in their stormy characters. For example, they are wild, vigorous, headstrong and untamed. But one thing should not be neglected: the environment that affects the relationship. In order to analyze Heathcliff and Catherine' s love in a deep perspective, we are going to go through their story from the very beginning to the end. Only in this way, we can comprehend Emily Bronte's essence of writing Wuthering Heights.2. The Social HierarchyWuthering Heights was published during the Industrial Revolution, a time of great economic change in which laborers fought for fair conditions in the workplace, and employers fought to defend themselves. People formed groups to work for their own benefit, thus, causing the separation of classes. The division of classes is based on cultural, economic, and social differences, and it greatly affects the。