Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies

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1 Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies ISSN: (Online) (Print) Impact Factor: 0.92 Volume 3, Issue 8, August 2015 Otherization and Ambivalence of Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights Sayantika Chakraborty M.A. in English, Presidency University Independent Researcher Abstract: The character of Heathcliff in Emily Bronte s Wuthering Heights is a richly complex one. Being a black and rustic, he is from the very beginning treated as an other and looked down upon in every possible respect in the white gentleman s society. The point, that even after he adopts the gentlemanly ways deliberately to use it as a tool against his oppressors, he can neither fit himself into the white gentleman s class nor can he slip back to his previous uncouth self, is the focus of this paper. This will be illustrated taking cues from Homi Bhabha s idea of mimicry from his The Location of Culture and will be read in conjunction with Frantz Fanon s thesis of black man s idealizing of the white race in his Black Skin White Masks. The paper will also draw insights from Homi Bhabha s concept of interstitial space and will take into consideration ideas of Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser and Sigmund Freud as and when necessary. Keywords: Other, Mimicry, Ambivalence, Class, Uncanny The character of Heathcliff in Emily Bronte s Wuthering Heights has time and again been the center of critical attention since the publication of the novel in In some of the existing readings, he has been viewed as a villain transgressing all bounds of ethics and going to the utmost level of cruelty. In some other readings he is seen as an archetype of the tortured romantic hero whose passion leads inevitably to the destruction of himself and those around him. Moving away from these popular readings, this paper tries to understand the character of Heathcliff with special emphasis on how he is otherised and how he resists this otherization using the ideological tools of the master. From the beginning of the novel one finds a kind of otherization of Heathcliff. He is always seen as a black man amidst the white people. When Mr..Earnshaw first acquaints Heathcliff with the other family members he demonstrates him as but you must ev n take it as a gift of god; though it s as dark as if it came from the devil. (Wuthering Heights, 31). The family members gathered around him had a peep at the dirty, ragged, black-haired child (WH, 31) which when set on its feet only started round, and repeated over and over again some gibberish, that nobody could understand. (WH, 31) Nelly Dean, the housekeeper of the Earnshaws was frightened and Mrs. Earnshaw was determined to get rid of the gipsy brat, (WH, 31) but Mr..Earnshaw s petition in favour of Heathcliff granted him some kind of a position in the Earnshaw house,which complicated things in a severe way for Heathcliff and for people surrounding him. Hindley and Catherine both held Heathcliff in contempt and they entirely refused to have it in bed with them, or even in their room. (WH, 32) Nelly dean put it on the landing of the stairs, hoping it might be gone on the morrow. (WH, 32) Although Catherine and Heathcliff soon became friends and Mr. Earnshaw preferred Heathcliff over his own son Hindley, the oppression from the rest of the Earnshaw family members never ceased. And after Mr. Earnshaw s death Heathcliff became more vulnerable to the Earnshaw family members except Catherine. Hindley regarded him as an usurper and though Nelly Dean s heart softened a bit after Heathcliff s awful sickness, yet she could not consider him as one of them. The same is with the Lintons as well. In the first meeting with the Lintons that took place at Thrushcross Grange, Heathcliff relates to Nelly Dean they had not the manners to ask me [him]stay (WH, 41) even when Catherine was being nursed and looked after over there for her wound. Mr. Linton vehemently expresses his contempt to his wife,on seeing him : Don t be afraid, it is but a boy yet the villain scowls so plainly in his face; would it not be a kindness to the country to hang him at once, before he shows his nature in acts as well as features. To which her wife, Mrs. Linton raised her hands in horror. and The cowardly children crept nearer with Isabella lisping Frightful thing! Put him in the cellar, papa and she was Available online at 119

2 amazed that Miss Earnshaw [was] scouring the country with a gipsy!. Mr. Linton contemplates : Where did she pick up this companion?...i declare he is that strange acquisition my late neighbour made, in his journey to Liverpool a little Lascar, or an American or Spanish castaway. To which Mrs. Linton also contemptuously says, A wicked boy, at all events,and quite unfit for a decent house! Did you notice his language, Linton? I m shocked that my children should have heard it. Even Catherine, for whom Heathcliff is more myself than I am [she is] (WH, 71) cannot end up marrying him because it will degrade her. (WH,71) Though she does not intend to part ways with him or be separated, she cannot marry him: He ll be as much to me as he has been all his lifetime. Edgar must shake off his antipathy, and tolerate him, at least. He will, when he learns my true feelings towards him. Nelly, I see now you think me a selfish wretch; but did it never strike you that if Heathcliff and I married, we should be beggars? whereas, if I marry Linton I can aid Heathcliff to rise, and place him out of my brother s power. (WH, 71) And though her love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I m [she is] well aware, as winter changes the trees. (WH, 72) But her love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. (WH, 72). she exclaims passionately to Nelly Dean Nelly, I am Heathcliff! (WH, 72),still she cannot marry him. Heathcliff neither has money, and more importantly he does not belong to the white gentleman class. He is an uncouth and raw man, who knows nothing about manners. Marrying him would turn Catherine into a castaway in a similar manner as Heathcliff is and she will never be considered a lady again in Victorian norms. Heathcliff s otherization also takes place through the acts of narration. Nelly Dean, who narrates things to Mr. Lockwood, has a deliberate strategy of ostracizing Heathcliff and holding him in derision. Her inclinations are towards her master and Catherine s present husband Edgar Linton. Heathcliff is seen almost as a threat to the apparently happy union of Catherine and Edgar. Through Nelly Dean s perspective Heathcliff is always treated as a tyrannical and cruel figure, someone who does not belong to the ethical and normative world. Through this process of otherization of Heathcliff the ideology of the white men is imposed upon him. This process is similar to Louis Althusser s concept of ISA as he explains in his Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. He takes cue from Antonio Gramsci s Selections From The Prison Notebooks where Gramsci talks about the functioning of the state and how it could not be reduced to repressive state appratuses, and includes a certain number of institutions from civil society (Hegemony), such as schools, church etc. Althusser develops it further more and explicates ISA: it is clear that whereas the unified - - (Repressive) State Apparatus belongs entirely to the public domain, much the larger part of the Ideological State Apparatuses (in their apparent dispersion) are part, on the contrary, of the private domain. Churches, Parties, Trade Unions, families, some schools, most newspapers, cultural ventures, etc., etc., are private the Repressive State Apparatus functions 'by violence', whereas the Ideological State Apparatuses' function 'by ideology (Lenin and philosophy and Other Essays, ) This happens to be the case with Heathcliff. Being a black man in a white man s family Heathcliff internalizes and gives consent to the hegemonic imposition of white man s ideology. He therefore comes to the conclusion that by behaving in a perfect gentlemanly way and making a fortune of his own alone he can get Catherine. Such functioning of ideology takes place in Heathcliff s psyche from the beginning. Even Catherine after coming back from the residence of Linton, now a lady in every possible way, reproaches Heathcliff how very black and cross you look! And how-how funny and grim! (WH, 47)and if you wash your face and brush your hair, it will be allright; but you are so dirty! (WH,4 7). Heathcliff slowly understands that he has to adopt the normative manners to fit into the white gentleman s world and he requests Nelly Dean Nelly, make me decent, I m going to be good. (WH, 49) He also expresses his grief : but, Nelly, if I knocked him [Edgar Linton] down twenty times, that wouldn t make him less handsome or me more so. I wish I had light hair and a fair skin, and was dressed and behaved as well, and had a chance of being as rich as he will be! (WH, 50) Homi Bhabha in his The Location of Culture describes how mimicry is one of the most effective tools of colonial power and knowledge: Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 3(8) August,

3 colonial mimicry is the desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a subject of a difference that is almost the same, but not quite. Which is to say, that the discourse of mimicry is constructed around an ambivalence; in order to be effective, mimicry must continually produce its slippage, its excess, its difference Mimicry is, thus the sign of a double articulation; a complex strategy of reform, regulation and discipline, which 'appropriates' the Other as it visualizes power. (The Location of Culture, 86) The self- fashioning of Heathcliff after his return post Catherine s marriage to Edgar Linton can be linked to a certain extent to Bhaba s depiction of mimicry. For Heathcliff the mimicry becomes a tool of protest against his oppressors and he deliberately manipulates his once oppressors using their tools against themselves. He superficially adopts the gentlemanly ways trying to fit himself into the white gentleman s world but underneath he is still the uncivilized and uncouth rustic. He sticks to his identity which is his power and that he asserts on his once oppressors, and for him the slippage, as Bhabha calls it,is deliberate. For him the mimicry acts as the culminating point of destruction for all, except Catherine. Heathcliff s deliberate attempt to fit himself into the category of the white gentleman class is somewhat similar to Frantz Fanon s idea of a black man s attempt to adopt the ways of white men illustrated in Black Skin White Masks: The black man wants to be white White men consider themselves superior to black men. There is another fact: Black men want to prove to white men,at all costs, the richness of their thought, the equal value of their intellect. (Black Skin White Masks, 3) He further illustrates his idea in the chapter entitled The Man of Color and The White Woman. He refers to the story of Jean Veneuse and depicts what happens to a black man when he comes into contact with a white man. His self-esteem evaporates, his ego ceases to be. His entire purpose is to become a white man and emulate him. But Fanon's thesis relates more to an unconscious desire of the colonized subject to act like the colonizer, as Fanon shows that Jean Veneuse displays the structure of an abandonment-neurotic of the negative-aggressive type (BSWM, 59) but Heathcliff s adapting of ways to be a gentleman is a deliberate strategy. He seeks to fit in the normative in order to achieve his goal. Heathcliff s complex model of behaviour and his mediating between gentlemanly and uncouth ways can be likened to the concept of interstice as Bhabha developed in his The Location of Culture. He describes: It is in the emergence of the interstices-the overlap and displacement of domains of difference-that the intersubjective and collective experiences of nationness, community interest, or cultural value are negotiated. How are subjects formed in between, or in excess of, the sum of the parts of difference (usually intoned as race/class/gender, etc.)?... (LOC, 2) The case with Heathcliff can be described almost in a similar manner. Whereas Bhabha tries to locate culture of the contemporary era in the realm of beyond (LOC,1) and holds interrogatory, interstitial space (LOC, 3) as the positive values that oppose to a retrograde historicism that continues to dominate Western critical thinking, the case with Heathcliff is that he mediates between two worlds on the one hand, a world which he deliberately imposes upon himself,with the gentlemanly attributes of ethics and on the other hand, a world of his own instinctive impulses. Still he belongs wholly to none. He neither belongs to the white race nor he can fully be called a gipsy, post his change of fortune. Nelly Dean expresses how Heathcliff, though now turned into a gentleman, has become an ambivalent figure: I was amazed, more than ever, to behold the transformation of Heathcliff. He had grown a tall, athletic, well-formed man ; beside whom, my master seemed quite slender and youth-like a halfcivilized ferocity lurked yet in the depressed brows and eyes full of black fire, but it was subdued; and his manner was even dignified:quite divested of roughness, though too stern for grace. (WH, 84) Edgar s surprise was at height seeing the gentleman turned Heathcliff, who was at a loss how to address this ploughboy (WH, 84) and finally chose to say sit down, sir. (WH, 84) Heathcliff, now a gentleman, though superfluously, achieves bit by bit what he wanted to achieve, as Nelly Dean tells Catherine He is reformed in every respect, apparently: quite a Christian: offering the right hand of fellowship to his enemies all around! (WH, 87). Heathcliff imprisons Hindley in his debt and continues to reside at Wuthering Heights. Meanwhile an event occurs that puts him in an advantageous position, that is, Miss Isabella Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 3(8) August,

4 Linton s sudden affection for him. She considers him under her false notion someone like a Byronic hero, endowed with a mysterious air around him and resolves to marry him, even if that means that she has to sever all ties with her brother and sisterin-law. Catherine Linton s is an apt narration of Heathcliff s rough nature that underlies his apparent gentlemanliness : Nelly, help me to convince her of her madness. Tell her what Heathcliff is: an unreclaimed creature, without refinement, without cultivation He s not a rough diamond a pearl-containing oyster of a rustic: he s a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man he d crush you like a sparrow s egg, Isabella, if he found you a troublesome charge. I know he couldn t love a Linton; and yet he d be quite capable of marrying your fortune and expectations (WH, 90) or Nelly Dean s caution He s a bird of bad omen: no mate for you (WH, 91) could prevent her. He marries her and what follows, is a disaster. Isabella, completely crushed and deceived by the mask of gentlemanliness that Heathcliff wears, describes Heathcliff to Nelly Dean as Monster! would that he could be blotted out of creation, and out of my memory! (WH, 152) and He s not a human being I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to death, and flung it back to me. WH, 152) Isabella, a gentle lady of Victorian era could not tolerate her husband s rugged antics anymore and with her son left for London. Finally with Hindley s death Heathcliff completely gains the control over his enemies. Nelly Dean sums it up as: The guest was now the master of Wuthering Heights: he held firm possession, and proved to the attorney who, in his turn, proved it to Mr. Linton that Earnshaw had mortgaged every yard of land he owned for cash to supply his mania for gaming; and he, Heathcliff, was the mortgagee. In that manner Hareton, who should now be the first gentleman in the neighbourhood, was reduced to a state of complete dependence on his father s inveterate enemy; and lives in his own house as a servant. (WH, 165) With an all pervading desire to avenge completely his once oppressors, Heathcliff seems deliberately to occupy an interstitial space. (LOC, 3) He cannot wholly be what he once was, nor can he suppress his roughness under the façade of being a gentleman. He sticks to his earlier identity, his real self, but he still wears a mask of gentleman. He mediates between the two worlds. Mr. Lockwood s first encounter with him leaves him bewildered, as he records his experience. In the very first meeting of them Heathcliff uttered walk in (WH, 1) with closed teeth, and it expressed the sentiment, Go to the Deuce (WH,1) and when Mr. Lockwood attempted to pat the dog Heathcliff growled You d better let the dog alone (WH, 4). Though later he tries to lessen his uncivilized manner by telling Mr. Lockwood Come, come you are flurried, Mr. Lockwood. Here, take a little wine. Guests are so exceedingly rare in this house that I and my dogs hardly know how to receive them. Your health, sir? (WH, 5). To this cold civility Mr. Lockwood bowed and returned the pledge (WH,5) as he did perceive that it would be foolish to sit sulking for the misbehaviour of a pack of curs. (WH,5) and he determined to pay another visit on the next day though he knew that Heathcliff evidently wished no repetition of my [his] intrusion (WH, 5) but he could not resist it as he felt himself sociable compared to Mr. Heathcliff. To some extent Heathcliff s complex subjectivity derives from as well as contributes to a kind of uncanny figure he emerges to be, even at the end of the novel, when he cannot any more be called just an Other. This is specially the case if one reads the idea of uncanny in the way Sigmund Freud talks about it in his essay The Uncanny : The German word unheimlich is obviously the opposite of heimlich [ homely ], heimisch [ native ] -the opposite of what is familiar; and we are tempted to conclude that what is uncanny is frightening precisely because it is not known and familiar. Naturally not everything that is new and unfamiliar is frightening, however; the relation is not capable of inversion. We can only say that what is novel can easily become frightening and uncanny; some new things are frightening but not by any means all. Something has to be added to what is novel and unfamiliar in order to make it uncanny. (Uncanny, 2) Heathcliff cannot be assimilated in the mainstream social structure yet he constantly threatens the social order. He behaves in such a strange way that it arouses an uncanny fear and horror in everyone, especially in Nelly Dean, when Heathcliff tells how he has bribed Sexton to pull a side of Catherine s coffin to make a place for him and Nelly Dean accuses him of disturbing the dead he replies: I Disturbed her? No! she has disturbed me, night and day, through eighteen years Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 3(8) August,

5 incessantly remorselessly till yesternight; and yesternight I was tranquil. I dreamt I was sleeping the last sleep by that sleeper, with my heart stopped and my cheek frozen against hers. (WH, 255) In order to perish with her, Heathcliff starts wandering in the moor, starves himself, feels the presence of the spirit of Catherine around everywhere which compels Nelly Dean to think Is he a ghoul or a vampire? (WH, 293) She also exclaims her horror to Mr. Lockwood regarding Mr. Heathcliff s death : Reference I hasped the window; I combed his black long hair from his forehead; I tried to close his eyes: to extinguish, if possible, that frightful, life-like gaze of exultation before anyone else beheld it. They would not shut: they seemed to sneer at my attempts; and his parted lips and sharp white teeth sneered too! Taken with another fit of cowardice, I cried out for Joseph.(WH, 298) Whether Heathcliff becomes an uncanny figure or he maintains an uncanny identity remains ambivalent. The reasons may include ideological pressures as well as assertion of subjectivity. Althusser, Louis. (1971). Lenin And Philosophy And Other Essays. Trans. Ben Brewster. New York:Monthly Review Press. Bhabha, Homi K. (1994). The Location of Culture. London : Routledge. Bronte, Emily. (1995). Wuthering Heights. Ed. Ian Jack. New York : Oxford University Press. Fanon, Frantz. (1986). Black Skin White Masks. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann. London : Pluto Press. Freud, Sigmund. Uncanny. Retrieved July 19, 2015 from Gramsci, Antonio. (1999). Hegemony (Civil Society) and Separation of Power. Selections From The Prison Note Books. Eds. and trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. London : Elecbook. Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies, 3(8) August,