I. MYTH OF ORIGINS
Steve Davis (1988) relates Wuthering Heights with the myth of origins. According to Davis, Emily believes in a primordial unity with Mother Earth, which she deifies. The (patriarchal) order is negative and prevails over evil, for which the Creator is responsible. Emily suggests the religion of the Mother against the patriarchal religion and elevates the mortal Earth over the immortal heaven.
This religion consists of loyalty to Earth and the loving and painful connection with their children, a loyalty that we can see in Heathcliff and Linton. They represent “the tribes of Seth and Cain…on both sides of the self”, as the three tombs symbolize at the end.
II. MYTH OF TWIN SOULS
According to Greek Mythology, God created souls that were androgynous, that is, they were neither male nor female, but beings that had both male and female attributes in one body, which consisted of four legs, four arms and a head with two faces. These beings started to provoke the gods and Zeus decided to split them in two halves (Heathcliff and Catherine represent one half each, especially when they are kids; since when they grow up, she marries another man), diminishing their strength. Since then, each being, now walking on two legs each, lives in a desperate search for its other half in order to become complete again.
The myth of the soul mates represents the human search for completeness and perfection. All living creatures aim to return to the original condition of perfect unity.
The part of the myth in which Zeus splits the perfect creature in two halves for being provocative towards the gods, symbolizes the need to become fragmented in order to achieve knowledge, and therefore, the genuine perfection (it is when they are separated that Heathcliff becomes reach and the master of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange), because some ask, "How could one ever be perfect if he was never given the opportunity to sin?"
III. MYTH OF CUPID AND PSYCHE
In this myth, a mortal marries an immortal from whom is separated after disobeying a command. Wuthering Heights can be interpreted as a myth of loss (Heathcliff loses Catherine), exile, rebirth and return (Heathcliff returns twelve years later being rich and powerful) which presents the human soul as female in search of his male part.
IV. PASSION-LOVE MYTH
In this life, the bodies separate lovers, preventing them from merging into one. The cause of this separation can be symbolized in various taboos such as adultery (the triangular relationship among Edgar, Catherine and Heathcliff), incest (Heathcliff and Catherine were like brother and sister) or marriage to another person (Catherine marries Edgar instead of Heathcliff).
V. MYTH OF THE FALL
The original harmony becomes discord and Emily blames the Creator for this evil (vs. Paradise Lost). The fall is the loss of the maternal world, the loss of innocence; and it is a necessary fall.
Catherine, powerless in the patriarchal society, is unable to negotiate the desire and falls, firstly, in the world of the grange and, secondly, falls ill when Heathcliff returns.
VI. MYTH OF REBIRTH
According to Nemesvari (1997) Heathcliff is “the axis around which a new chaotic system is organized” and constitutes a regenerating power. He is the subject of the myth of the individual that is self-made but neither is integrated into the social order nor gets independence (vs. Jane Eyre).
VII. MYTH OF OEDIPUS
In this myth, there is a transformation of the master of the horde that possesses all the women of the group prohibiting incest and forcing the exchange that constitutes the condition for the formation of human society. The characters of this novel play the leading roles of the drama.
Heathcliff represents the desire of the master of the primal horde, which threatens to destroy the established order. The father’s law, whose order Nelly attempts to impose, opposes this primal instinct. Cathy is the place where the opposing forces fight. Lockwood is a parodic version of Heathcliff.
Oedipus conflict can also be applied at a social level from the moment in which Heathcliff incorporates capitalism. In the novel, the given solution given is to take advantage of the separation between the sphere of production and the family one caused by capitalism, displacing thereby the energy of change to the first one and turning the second one into the space of order and orderly control of social subjectivity.
The above solution is just a fantasy because each sphere affects the other. Part of the peculiar power of Wuthering Heights derives from its resistance to imagine any solution of stable “commitment”, as it can be seen in the final sense that everything can happen again.
VIII. MYTH OF NARCISSUS
The anarchic energy of the capitalist individual could be used in the service of the revitalizing transformation of the social order, which would avoid the risk of a collective revolution.
The narcissist link not only joins Lockwood and the reader, but also both of them with the problem of the novel: the relationship between the dream of autonomy and control of the modern individual and the social order in a time of profound historical change.
by
ana_1310 (student)
