Analysis of a quote by Simon Critchley on love and its relation to the novel ‘Wuthering Heights’by Emily Brontë - Reflections on the quote and the extent to which its truth is experienced through the reading of the ‘Wuthering Heights’ – Examples of the quote’s demonstration in the context and plot of the novel
[The author’s name]
Abstract
This paper will present you with the demonstration of a quote. The quote is written and said by Simon Critchley and it is about love. Simon Critchley is an English philosopher who serves the field of philosophy. Critchley (2009) states that philosophy is born by the disappointment people experience in the field of politics, ethics, and / or religion. When people enter the puzzling maze of disappointment, fear, and / or anger, then philosophy comes to provide them with its enlightening answers, giving them food for thought and showing them a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. His present teaching position is at The New School, where he writes and teaches – as stated in his professional profile - the history of philosophy, political theory, religion, ethics and aesthetics. According to Critchley (2009), philosophy comes to raise and answer questions on nihilism, on the need for a coherent theory of ethics, on the feeling that nothing seems to work properly. The source and inspiration for this quote were the words said by Marguerite Porete, a French female Mystic who died on June, 1 in 1310 by being burnt at the stake. Marguerite Porete devoted her life to interpreting the notion of Divine Love. She wrote a book ‘The Mirror of Simple Souls’ - also known as ‘The Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls - in which she expressed her ideas on what love is, what it is supposed to be and how are human souls to look for it. According to Porete (1310), love is to be experienced as a daring action through which humans will annihilate their ego, their own self and will create all the space necessary for love to come and inhabit the inner part of their souls. But love is not like any kind of plain, simple love. Porete talked about Divine love. Through the collection of her prose and poetry in her book – which was actually the main reason for her being sent on trial and sentenced to death during the dark medieval years, since she refused to withdraw the book from circulation –Porete (1310) expresses her belief that all humans ought to look for this kind of love which floods one’s soul when he / she decides to unite God. Love means the loss of one’s personal identity who experiences the total, full, mystical union with the Divine. Porete represents the movement of mysticism which believed in the Divine inhabiting people’s souls and leading their lives. In her book ‘The Mirror of Simple Souls’ Porete (1310) has written ‘God has nowhere to put his goodness, if not in me. No Place to put himself entire, if not in me. And by this means I am the exemplar of salvation, and what is more I am the salvation itself of every creature, and the glory of God’. These are the words which inspired Simon Critchley and motivated him to look into this matter of love. According to Critchley (2012), what he finds ‘most compelling in Porete is the idea of love as an act of absolute spiritual daring that eviscerates the old self in order that something new might come into beinglove dares the self to leave itself behind to enter into poverty and engage with its own annihilation to hew and hack a space that is large enough for love to enter’. In one of his recent interviews to Tyler Malone in April 2012, which was published in the magazine ‘Full Stop’, Simon Critchley answers one of the questions addressed to him by the journalist, concerning the themes of his book ‘The Faith of the Faithless’, using this quote. In his effort to explain the perception he holds as far as love is concerned, Critchley (2012) says that one of the reasons why he was led to pick the theme of love as one of the two main thematic cores of this book is his being led ‘into these female mystics from the Medieval period, for whom love is this extraordinary act of daring – [love] for God, God in the form of Crist, and a Christ who is very incarnate, and very much an object of desire.’ He goes on saying ‘So I ended up with an idea of love as an act of spiritual daring and an act of impoverishment, where you sort of empty yourself. Love is, as one of these mystics [Marguerite Porete] says, hacking and hewing away at oneself to make a hole that’s large enough for love to enter in.’This paper will present you with the demonstration of this perception of love in the novel ‘Wuthering Heights’ which was written by Emily Brontë.
Key words: love, mysticism, symbolism, gothic, vengeance, passion
Analysis of a quote by Simon Critchley on love and its relation to the novel ‘Wuthering Heights’by Emily Brontë - Reflections on the quote and the extent to which its truth is experienced through the reading of the ‘Wuthering Heights’ – Examples of the quote’s demonstration in the context and plot of the novel
Emily Brontë, the sister of Charlotte Brontë, writer of the famous novel Jane Eyre, started writing the ‘Wuthering Heights’ in October 1845 and completed it in June 1847. The success of her sister’s, Charlotte’s, novel, led Emily to deciding to publish her own piece of work in 1847 using the pseudonym Ellis Bell. Unfortunately, Emily did not live long enough to witness the success and great effect of her novel on readers. Emily died one year after the first publication of her novel at the age of 30. The innovation and peculiarity of ‘Wuthering Heights’ lies into the fact that it surprises the audience of its era due to the way it approaches the theme of love.
‘Wuthering Heights’ is a novel of the second half of the 19th century, which is known within the borders of the literary community as the Victorian Period. Victorian period, named after Queen Victoria’s accession to the throne in 1837, lasting till her death in 1901, is a period characterized by major changes in industry, social structure, science, art and literature. Both the Industrial Revolution and the expansion of the British Empire with the outburst of British colonialism, brought major changes in people’s perception of life. Both the Roman and Medieval period are two of the axes of influence on the literary production of that time.
‘Wuthering Heights’ express ideas of the Medieval period since it is a novel which appears to combine the symbolism and gothic style and element of the medieval period with the realism of the Victorian period.
Love is the main thematic core of the ‘Wuthering Heights’. Love which remains unfulfilled and even not confessed, love which makes people vindictive, love which turns people into savage creatures seeking for a way to fill their uncompromising need to be loved, to experience love, to enter its mystified, magic world.
It is the love developed between Catherine and Heathcliff,the core around which the plot of the novel unfolds. Catherine, the daughter of the owner of the Wuthering Heights, a farmhouse on the Yorkshire moors, meets Heathcliff, the abandoned boy which her father brings home, at a very early age.
Their love is born within their childhood, the age of innocence, the age during which people are asked to perceive and explain the world around them without having reached the level of maturity necessary enough to provide them with reason for whatever they do or they feel.
Their brotherly love starts turning into romantic love without them, especially the woman, being able to admit and accept it. They insist on not doing anything they can in order to experience their mysterious, passionate bond. They stay imprisoned in themselves keeping their love as a secret. Not only do they seem to spend their whole lives doing everything they can so that they can get rid of that secret’s burden – it is not by luck that they both choose different companions to get married to – but they are drawn by this love’s incompleteness to hurt each other. They seem as if they want to spend their lives taking revenge on the person who made them feel this powerful love which they seem unable to control.
When Catherine accepts the proposal of Edgar she says to Nelly in Chapter IX ‘It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him; and that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and [Edgar’s] is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.’
So, the love motivating the plot is not the classic type of love developed between two heterosexuals. Emily Brontë portrays a kind of love different from the usual, common types of love. She talks about highly spiritual love which is developed between people who feel they have become one unity with the other. They have lost their identities and they have given in the need for uniting themselves into something of divine power which will elevate them upwards to the magnitude existing in high spiritual experiences.
Critics have not reached a conclusion as far as Brontë’s intention is concerned on what she really wanted to say about love and passion. Did she just want to criticize her society’s conventional morality and the effect it can have on people who fall in love despite their different social status? Or could it be something deeper? Could ‘Wuthering Heights’ aim at awakening people towards what love really is? Or what it could really be if people dared to accept it?
This is the point where Critchley’s quote comes in mind and the arising question starts troubling the reader’s minds. If Catherine and Heathcliff dared to annihilate themselves, if they had the courage to put aside their conventions, their obsession with being stuck to the morality they were taught to believe in, their insistence on not changing, on not allowing love, this new feeling to enter the inner part of themselves, could they have experienced the divine effect that true love can have on people? Would they have their own chance to find happiness and peace?
No one can say. The undeniable truth remains though, that this everlasting passion between the two main leading figures of the novel, is destructive and not even death itself seems able to stop it. Because they do not dare to live it.
When Catherine dies, Heathcliff cries that he cannot live without his ‘soul’ and he admits in Chapter XXXIII ‘The most ordinary faces of men and women—my own features—mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!’ Heathcliff has lost his soul, has lost his identity, and has even lost touch of his real surrounding world.
Following Critchley’s words, it seems as if the main leading figures in ‘Wuthering heights’ made the hole in themselves for love to come and inhabit themselves, but they covered it in their denial to acknowledge love’s accommodation. Love did enter their inner part but they decided to turn their eyes elsewhere. So, love ultimately led their souls to get rid of their earthly fear and go on to their voyage in the spiritual sphere, hoping to be able to experience the Love there.
References
Bronte, E., (1847/1996). Wuthering Heights, Dover Thrift Editions, Dover Publications
Critchley, S., (2009). The Book of Dead Philosophers, Vintage Books USA
Critchley, S., (2012, April 2) Thinking the Present, Interview, Full Stop, retrieved from http://www.full-stop.net/2012/04/02/interviews/tyler-malone/simon-critchley/
Porete M. (1310/1993). The Mirror of Simple Souls, Classics of Western Spirituality, Paulist Press
