{"id":467,"date":"2017-11-05T22:00:46","date_gmt":"2017-11-06T03:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/?p=467"},"modified":"2021-08-18T15:19:16","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T19:19:16","slug":"blog-6-occasional-criticism-the-culture-of-britain-after-the-emancipation-of-colonial-slaves-its-relation-to-wuthering-heights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/2017\/11\/05\/blog-6-occasional-criticism-the-culture-of-britain-after-the-emancipation-of-colonial-slaves-its-relation-to-wuthering-heights\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog 6, Occasional Criticism: The Culture of Britain After the Emancipation of Colonial Slaves & its Relation to Wuthering Heights"},"content":{"rendered":"

When crafting a list of primary resources for my thesis, I hesitated to include Emily Bront\u00eb\u2019s Wuthering Heights <\/em>due to the fact that Heathcliff, the character whom I considered to be the primary \u201cmonster\u201d figure in this novel, is not the conventional type of monster like those depicted in the works of Frankenstein<\/em> or Dracula<\/em>; He is undoubtedly a human, develops and maintains a lifelong (albeit twisted) relationship with Catherine, earns the affection of women, and even manages to somewhat assimilate into Victorian society by becoming a gentleman. On the other hand, however, I felt that Heathcliff\u2019s constant status as a \u201csavage\u201d outsider with unknown origins and \u201ca bloodline [that] is unambiguously tainted by color\u201d might enable me to better achieve my goal of viewing the concept and construction of monstrosity through a postcolonial, imperialistic lens (Sneiden 172). For this reason, in order to solidify the value of this novel for my thesis, I determined that it would be in my best interest to gain an understanding of the significance that race had in the development of societal relations and perceptions during the time period in which Heathcliff inhabited England. It is through engaging in an analysis of the culture of England surrounding foreigners, as well as a brief history of slavery in England, that I will be able to truly assess whether or not Healthcliff can be considered a \u201cmonster\u201d figure due to his racial otherness, as well as gain a better sense of how I will define a \u201cmonster\u201d within my thesis.<\/p>\n

As described by Sneidern in her \u201cWuthering Heights and the Slave Trade,\u201d the people of England in the late 18th and early 19th century had grown accustomed to placing a large societal emphasis on the success of the country\u2019s slave trade and colonial endeavors. Despite the fact that the legal subjection of those of other races ended in Britain upon the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and the emancipation of colonial slaves in 1834, the country\u2019s historical focus on the conquering of peoples of other nations led to the development of a sentiment of racial superiority amongst Englishmen in which \u201cblacks, browns, yellows, reds and non-English speaking Celts were excluded\u201d (Sneidern 173-174). This sense of hierarchy among the English not only placed their own countrymen and race at the pinnacle of society, however, but also undermined the humanity and societal value that Englishmen associated with those of a different race. Often times, the inhabitants of nations that were colonized by England were referred to as \u201canimals\u201d and \u201csavages\u201d that required the civilizing of English intervention in order to be enlightened about the correct way of living (Brantlinger 65). Because these conquered people were almost always of a different race than that of the people of England, the predominately white population of England learned to associate a darker skin tone with a poor, bestial character and an inherent mediocrity. In this way, England\u2019s imperial expansion and colonization of foreign nations served as the catalysts for the people of England to have \u201ca more racist consciousness\u201d and a sense of racial superiority over those of a darker skin color even when the \u201cimperial mission of educating and civilizing colonial subjects in the literature and thought of England\u201d had been achieved (Thompson 186; Viswanathan 2). Ultimately, the civilizing mission of English colonialism not only influenced Englishmen\u2019s relationships and interactions with those of different races, but also caused those persons of different races that inhabited England to be deemed as inferiors regardless of their efforts to assimilate into British culture.<\/p>\n

By possessing this more in-depth, historical, cultural understanding, I then used this information to further analyze Healthcliff\u2019s position within the text of Wuthering Heights. <\/em>While I struggled to find an instance in which Healthcliff was ever termed a \u201cmonster,\u201d this cultural context encouraged me to view Heathcliff\u2019s status as that of a hybrid: he is inwardly British due to his upbringing within the country, but is racially and physically foreign. Furthermore, even though Healthcliff recognizes himself as a citizen of England and transforms into a \u201cwell-formed,” intellectual man, his actions do not allow him to escape the post-slavery culture in Britain, causing people to always suspect that Heathcliff is an \u201cevil beast\u2026waiting for his time to spring and destroy\u201d (Bront\u00eb 107). Like the monster in Frankenstein, <\/em>it is this societal rejection that causes Healthcliff to eventually carry out the cruel acts that society expects of him, such as inflicting physical and emotional abuse onto his wife. In this way, I believe that I can consider Healthcliff to be a monstrous figure within Wuthering Heights <\/em>by defining a monster as a figure whose carries out evil acts and who possesses an appearance, often on account of being an \u201cother,\u201d that instills fear in the people of England. Moving forward, I hope to utilize Wuthering Heights <\/em>in tandem with Charlotte Bront\u00eb\u2019s Jane Eyre <\/em>due to the fact that both of these novels depict foreign persons in England as \u201cmonsters\u201d that are never fully equals.<\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n

Brantlinger, Patrick. Taming Cannibals: Race and the Victorians<\/em>. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2011. Print.<\/p>\n

Bront\u00eb, Emily. Wuthering Heights. Ed. Pauline Nestor. London: Penguin, 2003. Print.<\/p>\n

Sneidern, Maja-Lisa Von. “Wuthering Heights and the Liverpool Slave Trade.” ELH<\/em> 62.1 (1995): 171-96. JSTOR. Web. 07 Sept. 2016.<\/p>\n

Thompson, Andrew S. The Empire Strikes Back? The Impact of Imperialism on Britain from the Mid-nineteenth Century.<\/em> Harlow, England: Pearson Longman, 2005. Print.<\/p>\n

Viswanathan, Gauri. Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India.<\/em> New York: Columbia UP, 1987. Print.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When crafting a list of primary resources for my thesis, I hesitated to include Emily Bront\u00eb\u2019s Wuthering Heights due to the fact that Heathcliff, the character whom I considered to be the primary \u201cmonster\u201d figure in this novel, is not the conventional type of monster like those depicted in the works of Frankenstein or Dracula; … Continue reading Blog 6, Occasional Criticism: The Culture of Britain After the Emancipation of Colonial Slaves & its Relation to Wuthering Heights<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2502,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[145910,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2017-blog-posts","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2502"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/403lit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}