Essay Sample on Heathcliff's Struggles: Wuthering Heights Shows Race, Class Impact of Industrial Revolution

Introduction

Emily Bronte uses Catherine Earnshaw's remark, "Nelly, I am Heathcliff!" in Wuthering Heights to portray the intersection of race, class, and social transformation as a result of Industrial Revolution. The class and social changes that occur in the era depicted in Wuthering Heights explain the prevalent inequality and racial bias that discriminated colored immigrants like Heathcliff. The novel covers a period in history when Industrial Revolution and abolition of slavery challenged the seventeenth and eighteenth century traditional British family structure. The arrival of Heathcliff makes the Earnshaw family face a number of these challenges (Ozturk 2019). Similarly, Heathcliff experiences limitations and challenges in the Earnshaw family. His immigrant status and perceived lack of refinement excluded Heathcliff from many social spaces in Bronte's novel. The quote relates historical parallels between the socio-economic transition that was taking place in Britain and Heathcliff's exclusion.

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The Context of the Quote

Catherine makes the remark in a conversation with Nelly in one of their nights at the Heights. It all begins when Catherine informs Nelly that Edgar Linton proposed to her and she accepted. Nelly is surprised with Catherine's new development because she believes that there is no any good reason for her to love Edgar. Nelly's view about the situation is accurate, given that even Catherine admits to her that she feels the idea of marrying Edgar is wrong. She also notes that she feels closer to Heathcliff but it would be degrading to marry him because his class is too low. However, Catherine maintains that she shares in Heathcliff's miseries and she would not mind being with him if he were all she is left with on earth. She tells Nelly, 'I am Heathcliff.' She admits that even if she marries Edgar, it would never change this fact in her mind.

Heathcliff, Edgar, and Catherine are caught up a typical love triangle. In this relationship, Catherine regards Edgar as her socially acceptable partner and Heathcliff as a best friend. Actually, Heathcliff is Catherine's only friend at the moment because has separated herself from the rest of the people in her circle of friends. While Heathcliff is prickly, brooding, and dark, Edgar easily shows outward affection. Catherine loves both men, though with different intensity. She feels that her love for Edgar will change with time because they are extremely different from each other. She nevertheless agrees to marry Edgar to gain the status of being his wife and get money to help Heathcliff get a better life. Since they understand each other very well, Catherine is not willing to lose her friendship with Heathcliff either. Therefore, she would rather maintain the love triangle. However, Heathcliff protests Catherine's choice by leaving the Wuthering Heights and promises to revenge on Edgar.

The Intersection of Race, Class, and Social Transformation

The author employs Nelly's narration to manipulate how her readers perceive Heathcliff. The two protagonists, Nelly and Heathcliff, are both socially marginalized characters. Nelly is a servant while Heathcliff is an outcast. However, in the novel, Bronte presents the two as principally separate forces. The actions of Heathcliff are characterized in such a way that they depict what might have motivated Nelly, a female servant to negatively influence how readers perceive him.

Nelly begins to demean Heathcliff's character right from the moment he enters the Earnshaw family. She sees him as a threat to her role as the trusted servant of Catherine. Nelly's observation of Heathcliff's incumbency as a threat portrays how most people in Britain felt when Industrial Revolution began to alter social structures in the in the 19th century. The fictional manipulative approach that Nelly employs in Wuthering Heights represents the social complexities that people experienced in England due to Industrial Revolution. Based on Nelly's narration, readers can appreciate how the story depicts the historical social conditions experienced in Emily Bronte's time.

Time setting is an essential element of Bronte's novel. The author explicitly mentions the historical era of the events at the beginning of the novel as a cue for the reader on the importance of time, and how the narrative develops with it. Therefore, to understand the novel, it is important to closely pay attention to the times and dates of the events taking place in the novel. Some critics have described the novel as an agent of history, observing that Bronte was keen on redefining and rewriting history itself. The story vacillates between pre-industrial and post-industrial periods and is depicted as mediation between two successive historical moments. Precisely, the setting of the novel falls between 1757 and 1801, the period when England experienced most of the changes brought by Industrial Revolution.

Heathcliff entering a customary patriarchal English family is a representation of the new entrants joining established family structures. Bronte deliberately sets the dating of the story to end in 1801 to limit the events to the time when cultural and social changes were to rout, tame, and challenge the "old rough farming culture." The family of Mr. Earnshaw is self-sufficient in many ways. The rear their own cattle for milk and meat, and have servants such as Josesph whose manual work is extensively described. The author very rarely mentions visits to town.

At the onset of the novel, the Earnshaw family is portrayed to be having a "rough farming culture," with great need for physical labor to maintain the Heights. However, after experiencing the taming and challenging changes, the author depicts the Heights as more charming. When the novel ends, the Heights have experienced so much taming changes that Lockwood who had been away notices the improvements upon return. He observes that he that no longer has to knock nor climb the gate as it just yielded to his hand (Bronte, 1998). He also notices that the Heights has a new flowery "fragrance. It is now a less rough and more conducive place. Bronte shifts Earnshaw family from their old rough state to a new tame culture to demonstrate the social transformation in the larger society. Notably, the Earnshaw family has to endure many challenges as it progresses from its rough state to the new tame nature. One of those challenges is the arrival of Heathcliff. Heathcliff's presence in the Heights is significant because it immediately changes the master and servant dynamic in the family. The family attempted to resist Heathcliff's entrance in many instances. As the immigrants that moved to England to take advantage of its opportunities face challenges, so did the traditional English family.

The main cause of Heathcliff's challenges in the Earnshaw family was his lack of what many critics of the work love to refer to as 'gentility'. In discussions about the novel, the term 'gentility' is used as the defining characteristic of the class and racial exclusivity of the elite society. Before Industrial Revolution, gentility or refinement was a kind of social superiority that came from belonging to a gentle family by blood. It could also be demonstrated through appearance, behavior, and gentle manners. Since the standards for gentility were largely defined by racial undertones, people from certain races could never attain it fully. Only white elites born in families of 'gentle blood' could attain this social superiority to the fullest. Industrial Revolution increased upward economic mobility and started to change the well-established 'gentility' notions. Contrary to how it was previously understood, gentility became something that one could acquire with wealth. However, it still remained racially exclusive.

Moreover, the author uses Heathcliff's relationship with the Earnshaw family to show the limited opportunities and class-consciousness that outsiders struggled with before the Industrial Revolution. Arguably, cultural changes came with new ideals of refinement as well as the Victorian class consciousness. Although besides bringing new threats to the natural social order, Industrial Revolution made people more protective of their social status; class consciousness has a historical president that began long before the Industrial Revolution. In England, rank and class started to become important in the prehistoric period when people shifted from the lifestyle of hunting and gathering to farming. The Agrarian Revolution came with division of labor, which created deep class divisions. The division of labor is also the idea behind the creation of workers versus rulers, which entrenched class consciousness further. In the primitive social organizations, class consciousness was motivated by the need to protect class position and food.

Wuthering Heights is an exploration of how class and race intersect in a changing social environment. The novel excludes Heathcliff from social spaces to demonstrate the extent of racial exclusivity. The characters living in the Heights, including Heathcliff highly regard the existing racial exclusivity. When he was a child, Heathcliff admired the boy Edgar Linton who was the heir to the family wealth of the neighboring estate. Speaking to Nelly about Edgar, Heathcliff says;

"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" (Bronte 1998).

Heathcliff wishes he had the race-based physical appearance and manners of Linton because he thinks that they are the qualities that attracted Catherine to him. Heathcliff unfulfilled desire to be like Linton shows that the society's belief that gentlemanly manners were only found in wealthy families of the Anglo-Saxon ancestry. The central aspects of the character's wish were a light skin and soft hair. Heathcliff was persuaded that having a lighter skin tone would make him be seen as possessing the superior qualities. It further shows Heathcliff's recognition of the things that limit him from participating in the modest society. These limits consequently prevent him from getting Catherine's love. Nelly also strengthens the association between being white and belonging to the high class. She tells Heathcliff:

Wish and learn to smooth away the surly wrinkles, to raise your lids frankly, and change the fiends to confident, innocent angels. (Bronte 1998).In other words, Nelly suggests to Heathcliff that he should reduce his being black to qualify to recognized as a gentleman. In her description of Heathcliff's looks, Nelly even associates his appearance with that of the devil. She calls his eyes "black fiends." Usually, fiend means enemy but it can as well refer to the devil. She advices Heathcliff to "learn" in order to become an innocent angel. The statement is inherently racist by all standards. While the use of the word "devil" has become less common in modern racist discourses, it was very common at the time.

The readers of Bronte's time must have been able to appreciate the racial undertones in Nelly's description of Heathcliff's eyes better than today's readers. The author's use of the word "learn" in this statement is equally interesting in the context. Nelly openly mocks Heathcliff by claiming that he can learn the traits that whites are born with. Nelly is simply being sarcastic because she knows what she says is not possible. Heathcliff's origin and race make him inherently different from Edgar and no amount of learning can enable him acquire these qualities. Bronte's contemporary readers must have noticed the deceit in the words of Nelly meant to make a fool of Heathcliff when she knows that he is of a different race. In another instance, Nelly spitefully says that "little dark thing" could never have gotten "a fit parentage" (Bronte 293). Being a...