Wuthering Heights and Marxist criticism

As it is well known, the original Marxist was the 19th century German philosopher Karl Marx, author of the seminal work of the communist movement, Das Kapital. He was also the first Marxist literary critic and he considered aesthetic matters as being dependent upon politics, economics and history. Central to Marxism and Marxist literary criticism is the materialistic insight that consciousness, without which such things as art cannot be produced, is not the source of social forms and economic conditions, but rather it is their most important product. The communist society that was anticipated by Marx and Engels would produce new forms of consciousness and belief and therefore, ultimately, of art. Nevertheless, a Modern Marxist literary critic must not necessarily be a political revolutionary or to focus solely on literary works with a radical social vision. He must, however, adopt a radical vision of the purpose and function of literary criticism. Marxism does not attempt to discover hidden meanings in texts, in contrast with more traditional forms of criticism that, in the words of Pierre Macherey, try to coax the text into giving up its true, latent or hidden meaning. If it results that such a meaning is revealed by Marxist criticism, it happens only after seeing the text as a material product to be understood in broadly historical terms. That is to say, a literary work is first viewed as a product of work and hence of the realm of economics. Secondly, it is viewed as a work that also performs work of its own by enforcing and reinforcing an ideology. Marxist criticism does not simply describe the obvious, but it reveals the complexity of a text by taking into account the social and economical relationships that were prerequisite to the works creation. The Marxist critic Terry Eagleton states this type of criticism shows the text as it cannot know itself and manifests those conditions of its making (inscribed in its very letter) about which it is necessarily silent, rather than seek to intermediate between the reader and the text. I shall now go on to present Terry Eagletons essay on Wuthering Heights, Myths of Power, which treats the novel in terms of its reference to history, class and economics and also in comparison with Charlotte Brontes novels. The critic starts from the premise that, if the function of an ideology is to provide a deceptive solving of contradictions, then Charlottes novels are ideological in the sense of myths. Jane Eyre is a myth because opposing forces are brought together in a coherence of interests and the novel achieves a proper ideological closure. Nonetheless, the same term is applied to Wuthering Heights-therefore, a distinction must be made between ideology and what Lucien Goldmann called world view, that is the true, total and coherent understanding of social relations. Pierre Macherey, a French Marxist literary critic, claimed that literary works do not only reflect ideology, but they are also fictions, aesthetic works incorporating a certain

world-view. Wuthering Heights is then a different type of myth, which transcends time and approaches a world view. It is able to perceive and display the contradictions that exist within culture while maintaining a clear and consistent unified vision of the universe. What distinguishes the writing of Charlotte and Emily Bronte is the manner of dealing with antagonizing forces: the former subjects and integrates them in a resolution, while the latter draws upon contradictions and constantly confronts them. Catherine Earnshaw, for example, is the embodiment of the idea that the conflict between passion and society is not fundamentally reconcilable. While Jane Eyre is the story of a governess who ends up rich without compromising either her love for Mr. Rochester or her middle-class morality, Catherine must choose between authenticity and social convention, that is between Heathcliff and Edgar. Her attempt to compromise will give rise to conflicts that eventually lead both her and Heathcliff to death. While discussing Heathcliff, the critics main focus lies on the contradictions he represents and also generates. He has an unknown identity and no social relations and thus poses a threat to the Earnshaws, being the outsider who challenges every member of the family and the limits of their self-enclosed social structure. Based on this social perspective, Hindleys aggression is motivated on his feeling that his social role of inheritor is subverted by Heathcliffs intrusion. Catherines attachment, on the other hand, comes naturally, as she had no expectance of inheritance. Her association with Heathcliff takes her down in the class system and at the same time outside it, as Heathcliffs gipsy status signifies lower social class but also classless human being. However, this type of freedom is eventually turned against him by being denied access to culture by Hindley and being reduced to the status of a farm worker. The following instance of social criticism can be identified here: if in a burgeois society there is no liberty within its limits, neither is there more outside its borders, where Heathcliffs ability of running wild is paid with the price of cultural impoverishment. In the world of Wuthering Heights, personal integrity is transformed by culture. Heathcliff returns a changed man after his two years absence and he utilises the cultural capital he has acquired to take revenge upon the society that had cast him off. He now has the role of the oppressor, but this does not signify liberty - by repeatedly tormenting others, he imprisons himself. In a way, he is sustained by his victims pain, but separation from Catherine leads to his destruction. The course followed by him goes from being Hindleys victim to being the oppressor and eventually his own executioner. He tries to subvert the social system from inside it, but freedom cannot be achieved in this manner because his social self is a false one, having been created only to enable his passion for Catherine and eventually being reduced to a repetitive ritual of punishment of others. Eagleton also marks the complexity of Heathcliffs social relations with Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. During adulthood, he is the representative of a capitalist property dealing who wants

to destroy the yeoman settlement represented by Hareton. However, he does this by employing weapons such as arranged marriages and property dealings that were typical of the Linton world, of the landed gentry. There is a duality in Heathcliffs actions: the force of his vengeance is that of the Heights, wild and brutal, but the methods utilised are those of the Grange. The question of who is victorious in the end arises, but there is no definite answer, the edges of the different worlds are blurred as Hareton, the last of the traditional order, is smoothly incorporated into the Grange. Moreover, even if Heathcliff is associated with the capitalist power of the Grance as the bourgeois economy belonged with that of the gentry and opposed together the yeoman society from a cultural point of view, he is closer to the traditional world of the Heights and in this respect he feels a certain affinity with Hareton. What is considered as Heathcliffs tragedy is the impossibility of simultaneously rejecting society, as he does in his love for Cathy, and being part of that society as a skilful exploiter who expropriates the wealth of others. In support of this argument of irreconcilable contradictions, the example of Catherines union with Hareton is given. It is true that she imparts culture to Hareton in teaching him how to read and their future offsprings will represent the harmonization of passion with civility, but this resembles Jane and Mr. Rochester rather than provide a solution for Heathcliffs relationship with Cathy. Another difference from the manner in which Charlotte Brontes novels end, that is by a balance of the bourgeois and genteel traits, is to be noted: the yeomanry of Wuthering Heights is no longer a strong social class, but an outdated force and Haretons marriage to Catherine is the final attachment of a dying class to a stronger one and not a historical fusion of equal social classes. In the essays conclusion, we are reminded that the novel has been alternatively read from a social and metaphysical point of view. Bearing in mind that it depicts a world in which love, freedom and equality cannot be translated into social language, such values can exist only as myth and in the realm of metaphysics. Myth is the only recourse in a society where the ideal is reduced to an insignificant instance of the actual. To sum up, in what concerns the treatment of Jane Eyre in this essay, one can identify the influence of Machereys thought: he saw ideology as a system of illusory social beliefs and the novel does bear its ideological message, that romance is realistic and that one can be authentic while remaining within social conventions. Wuthering Heights, on the other hand, displays irreconcilable contradictions while being unriven, undivided by them. Therefore, it is a literary work which escapes simple formulations, even Marxist ones.