Allegories, The Bible, and Unflattering Imagery: Religious Propaganda in Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene”

Religious propaganda was an influential force behind literary production in late-16th Century England, the time when Edmund Spenser began his epic poem The Faerie Queene. Its characters are allegorical representations of Virtues, Sins and the Catholic and Protestant juntas; Spenser’s interest is to caricature a sinful, unholy Catholic Church which in his time conspired against the reigning Queen Elizabeth I. In Book 1, he achieves this through the viscerally striking characters Duessa and Errour, and by the abjectly evil ones Archimago and Orgoglio. In contrast, the virtuous heroes of Book 1 – Redcrosse, Una, Arthur and the Faerie Queene – represent Anglicanism. Spenser alludes through symbolic imagery to the Bible, and its opposing factions of Good and Evil, to suggest an alternative interpretation of it within the context of an anti-Catholic Reformation.

The Redcrosse Knight, the protagonist of Book 1, is presented with the striking image of a red cross on his garb:

“(…) on his brest a bloudie Cross he bore, / The deare resemblance of his dying Lord, / For whose sweet sake that glorious badge he wore, / And dead as living ever him ador’d (…)”

Here it is strongly suggested that the red cross he wears symbolizes the Crucifixion of Jesus; this connection emphasises Redcrosse’s function as an allegory for the virtue of Holiness. Connecting him to the Crucifixion and Resurrection foreshadows his symbolic rebirth at the House of Caelia after being led astray and made to suffer at the hands of Duessa and Orgoglio, who will imprison him in an underground cell, referencing Jesus’s entombment. The red cross is also the symbol of St. George, patron saint of England. Spenser’s propagandistic angle comes in here; upon breaking away from Roman Catholicism to establish Anglicanism as the national English religion, the veneration of St. George was magnified to support a sense of Anglican political-religious identity. Spenser’s use of St. George in an anti-Catholic context represents the foundation of an independent Church with its own branch of saintly worship; it also gives Redcrosse the heroic attribute of a true Christian fighting against heretics.

Redcrosse’s companion, Una, is also presented with extensive Biblical symbols:

“Una rode (Redcrosse) faire beside, / Upon a lowly Asse more white then snow, / Yet she much whiter, but the same did hide under a vele, / (…) a milk white lamb she lad.”

Her riding upon a donkey alludes to Jesus’s entrance into Jerusalem in the Gospels; the use of the colour white, her veil, conveying modesty, and another Christ symbol, the lamb, also emphasise her holy aspects. Her name’s literal meaning is one or oneness, reflecting the singular nature of Truth, which she represents, and that of the Protestant Church. These two ideals’ embodiment in a single character reinforces their inseparability in the poem’s context. Female figures in the Booke of Holinesse are symbolic to opposing religious factions – the most prominent being Una and, later on, Duessa. The agressive male characters they are attached to – Redcrosse and Orgoglio respectively – embody the battles undertaken between these. In Redcrosse’s case, the tasks he must complete represent the progressive struggle of the Anglican Church to fight foreign Catholics and establish Anglicanism as the dominant English Church.

Redcrosse’s first task in the poem is to destroy the dragon Errour. The monster is described with startling imagery:

“Her vomit full of bokes and papers was, / With loathly frogs and toades, which eyes did lacke, / And creeping sought way in the weedy gras,” and her young “flocked all about her bleeding wound, / And sucked up their dying mothers blood, / Making her death their life, and eke her hurt their good.”

The image of Errour vomiting books and papers alludes to the negative propaganda the Catholic See veered against Elizabeth I. They are also a reference to Papal writings, such as bulls. It expresses the idea that erroneous information is the enemy to be vanquished; Papal literature is, by implication, deliberate misinformation. The frogs and toads allude to the following monsters in the Bible’s Book of Revelation:

“16:13-14: And I saw coming out of the mouth of the dragon and out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet, three unclean spirits like frogs; For they are spirits of demons, (…)”

These creatures are associated with deceit and heresy; their use in the poem’s context suggests that Spenser is using the Revelations, interpreted in his time as an apocalyptic prophecy, as a denunciation against the Catholic Church. When Errour’s brood drink her blood, Spenser illustrates how lies and misinformation feed on each other: though the battle against Errour has finished, the evil forces which sustain her kind are still there. This elevates the tension in the narrative, indicating that Redcrosse will face future fights. It is also an allegory for the ever-present Catholics who still conspire against Anglicanism, despite the strength of Spenser’s attack.

After slaying Errour, Redcrosse and Una fall into the power of Archimago, a primary antagonistic character in the poem. Archimago appears disguised as an old hermit-friar:

“For that old man of pleasing wordes had store, / And well would file his tongue smooth as glas; / He told of Saintes and Popes, and evermore / He strowd an Ave-Mary after and before.”

The reference to Saints and Popes, cornerstones of Catholic practice, is the key: Spenser has caricatured the Pope through Archimago. Archimago’s wizardly powers, and his use of words to seduce and confound plays on the disparaging view Anglican theologians had of the Pope. These traits are possibly a reaction against Pope Pius V’s papal bull of 1570, Regnans in Excelsis, which excommunicated Elizabeth I and her followers, accused her of being a “heretic and favourer of heretics”, and attempted to depose her. As a riposte, Spenser introduces a Pope-like figure who lures Holiness away from Truth.

The name “Archimago” means arch-image: it is an allusion to the rich tradition of Catholic iconography, which Protestants curbed in their own churches, believing them idolatrous. This is represented by Archimago’s use of illusions – by disguising himself, as in his first appearance, or later on when he induces dreams on a sleeping Redcrosse:

“He that the Stubborne Sprites can wisely tame, / He bids thee to him send for his intent / A fit false dreame, that can delude the sleepers sent. / (…) That troublous dreame gan freshly tosse (Redcrosse’s) braine, / With bowres, and beds, and Ladies deare delight: / But when he saw his labour was all vaine, / With that misformed spright he backe returne againe.”

In Elizabethan times such dreams were seen as portentous, and the reference to sprites (nature spirits) gives the passage a hellish tone. It is through Archimago’s use of dark magic that Spenser demonizes the Pope. Another key point in the poem in which Spenser’s propaganda manifests itself is in Cantos VII and VIII – specifically, through the characters Orgoglio and Duessa. Their relationship represents the Catholic Church’s combination of Satanic power – as represented by Orgoglio – and deceitfulness (Duessa).

Orgoglio’s name, meaning Pride in Italian, links him to the Bible’s Satan: Pride is the greatest of the Seven Deadly Sins, since it is the one which drove Satan out of Heaven and into a war with God. They are both antagonistic figures constructed on the theme of opposition and defiance: satan is a Hebrew noun deriving from the verb to oppose; they are both hubris-driven characters who fall when they are blinded by their self-regard. To reinforce these points of Orgoglio’s character, Spenser also references Classical mythology by characterising him as the son of the Earth-goddess Gaia and the Wind-god Aeolus:

“The greatest Earth his uncouth mother was, / And blastring Aeolus his boasted sire.”

Orgoglio is a brutal giant born from the Earth, like the mythical Greek Gigantes, beings who hubristically defied the Olympians in a war known as the Gigantomachy. These references are tied together in a figure which represents passion-driven antagonism. His Italian name is an attack on Rome, centre of Catholicism; Spenser provides a clear associative link between Satanic hubris and Papal dominion.

In another literary reference, Spenser alludes to the Book of Revelations when Orgoglio gifts Duessa with lavish clothes and a seven-headed monster:

“He gave her gold and purple pall to weare, / And triple crowne set on her head full hye, / And her endowd with royal maiestsye: / Then for to make her dreaded more of men, (…) Upon this dreadfull Beast with sevenfold head / He set the false Duessa”

alludes directly to Revelations 17: 3 – 4,

“(…) and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. / And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and and precious stones and pearls, (…)”.

The Biblical figure is the Whore of Babylon; Spenser associates her to Duessa to reinforce anti-Catholic interpretations of the Revelations. The title Whore is metaphorically translated from the Greek to mean Idolatress, drawing a parallel to Duessa’s role as an idol of, and provoker of, false worship.

Physical description appears again at Canto VIII’s close, with the disrobing of Duessa, describing the witch’s terrifying physical appearance:

“A loathly, wrinckled hag, ill favoured, old, / Whose secret filth good manners biddeth not be told. (…) Such is the face of falshood, such the sight of fowle Duessa, when her borrowed light / Is laid away, and counterfesaunce knowne.”

The intensity of the imagery parallels the previous passage; however, here the vivid description is meant to disgust and repel, contrasting with the mystical beauty of Una and the Faerie Queene. In Spenser’s time, physical appearance was seen as a reflection of a person’s true character: in the poem, beauty represents good while ugliness shows evil. Much like the Devil, Duessa cloaks her true appearance with a charming illusion, a contrast which embodies the ugly nature of duplicity. This is conveyed by the juxtaposed words borrowed light, where light, a symbol of goodness, is demeaned in value by the bathetic adjective; it also mirrors the invocation of the Faerie Queene in the prologue to Book 1, “Great Lady of the greatest Isle, whose light / Like Phoebus lampe throughout the world doth shine,” which uses light symbolism to convey her glory. The Faerie Queene represents Queen Elizabeth I, re-establisher of Protestantism in England, and the light imagery alludes to the quasi-saintly veneration Anglican Reformists held her in.

Another prominent use of it is during the battle in Canto VII, when Arthur’s shield falls and reveals a stunning light:

“the light thereof, that heavens light did pas, / Such blazing brightnesse through the aier threw, / That eye mote not the same endure to vew.”

Light is a prominent image in the Bible to represent a holy presence: God appears in the Old Testament as a burning bush which radiates light; Christ’s Transfiguration is accompanied by a flash of blinding light. In The Faerie Queene‘s Book 1, light has been associated to the titular character, and now to Arthur. This character is the King Arthur from the earliest Medieval British mythology, mixing Pagan and Christian elements alike. The light symbolism connects him to the Biblical King of the New Testament, Jesus; in this way the interconnected light imagery becomes representative of the mystical span of English Royalty. By using mythical history of Britain’s origins, Spenser implies that this legacy is more powerful than that of the Pope; it resonates with the fact that Anglicanism bases the head of its religion around a local monarch instead of a distant bishop.

Arthur’s prevalence in English literature ties in with the literary history Spenser draws upon to create a propagandistic side to his poem. By targeting the Italian language through Orgoglio’s name, he reaches the foundation of a culture he seeks to antagonise. And by connecting Archimago and Errour through the idea that they use language to deceive and spread evil, Spenser portrays the side of a religious war fought with letters. Implicitly, The Faerie Queene itself is partly Spenser’s literary contribution to this wider conflict, as the voice of Anglican Protestantism.

“Tess of the d’Urbervilles”: A Bloody Tragedy

Tess of the d’Urbervilles is a novel rich in conflicts expressed in sexuality, physical violence and social conflicts as a result of class and gender norms. Thomas Hardy ties these themes together through images relating to blood; sexuality, for example, is suggested by the carnality of blood imagery, and the relationship of sex with violence is explored through similar images of bloodshed. The figurative meaning of the word blood as relating to one’s family and ascendency also connects this imagery to conflicts surrounding the fact that Tess, the humble protagonist, is descended from an ancient knightly family with a history of bloodshed. The misfortunes which befall her – poverty, rape, pregnancy, failing to enter in a happy marriage – are prepared by Hardy reminding the reader that it is in Tess’s blood that she will fall victim to these events.

“The pointed shaft of the cart had entered the breast of the unhappy Prince like a sword; and from the wound his life’s blood was spouting in a stream, and falling with a hiss onto the road.

In her despair Tess sprang forward and put her hand upon the hole, with the only result that she became splashed from face to skirt with the crimson drops.”

The death of the horse Prince foreshadows Tess’s crisis in the First Phase: her sexual encounter with Alec d’Urberville. The abundant imagery of blood alludes to the destruction of Tess’s physical virginity; this is intensified by the phallic image of the mail-cart, conveyed by the words “shaft” and “sword.” This episode is the first of Tess’s series of misfortunes which lead to her demise, and arguably it triggers the other’s beginnings: following the horse’s death Tess will be forced to attempt to claim kin with the Stoke-d’Urbervilles, bringing her into contact with Alec. Whether their sexual encounter was rape is left ambiguous by the narrator: any descriptions are omitted and the reader is left to speculate on a narrative gap. However, given the afore description, the violence of the horse’s death suggests that Alec was equally violent with Tess.

In contrast, Angel Clare’s love for Tess is bloodless in the sense that it avoids the carnal or earthly side of affection. His very name suggests a personality tied to the spiritual and unworldly. Angel is passionate during their courtship, in one scene in Chapter 28 kissing “the inside vein of (Tess’s) soft arm (…) she was such a sheaf of susceptibilities that her pulse was accelerated by the touch, her blood driven to her finger ends and the cool arms flushed hot.” The act of kissing, and the recurrence of blood imagery, through the vein and blushing, gives their relationship a certain level of sexual tension; but it is conditioned by the Romantic courtship rituals which Angel follows, giving the scene a sense of unreality. The blood imagery is not as extravagant as that of the horse’s death scene, which anticipated Alec’s appearance, suggesting that Angel will not be as physical a lover with Tess. Later on, the narrator describes how Tess “had not known that men could be so disinterested, so chivalrous, protective, in their love for women as (Angel). (…) Though not cold-hearted he was rather bright than hot; less Byronic than Shelleyan. He could love desperately, but with a love more specifically inclined to the imaginative and ethereal.” The imagery of brightness over warmth, and ethereal over worldly, are antithetic to the rest of the blood imagery discussed in this essay; the unreality earlier suggested is here confirmed. Angel becomes an ambiguous character, since this description of his spirituality raises the question of whether Angel will be able to see past Tess’s fall from grace, once her history with Alec is revealed.

These images will be echoed near the climax of Phase Seventh when Tess stabs Alec to death with a knife. The murder scene, like the rape, is not shown to the reader. Instead, Hardy uses the haunting image of blood leaking from the floor of Alec’s bedroom to convey the idea:

“It was about the size of a wafer when (Mrs. Brooks) first observed it, but it speedily grew as large as the palm of her hand, and then she could perceive that it was red. The oblong white ceiling, with this scarlet blot in the midst, had the appearance of a gigantic ace of hearts. (…) It was damp, and she fancied it was a blood-stain.”

In a twist filled with poetic justice, Tess finds retribution for her rape by piercing Alec and making him bleed to death. The blood stain on the ceiling echo the ones on Tess’s skirt in the earlier horse’s death. It also represents Tess’s emotional devastation as well: the contrast of the colours white, connoting purity (in this case sexual), and red, the colour of blood, lust and violence, and the stain’s comparison to a heart shape connect the destruction of Tess’s virginity and her suffering to her subsequent metaphorical bleeding heart. The murder is the culmination of Tess’s career as a killer; ironically, while she is haunted by guilt after the horse’s death, she is euphoric, even delusional, after killing Alec.

The scene in which Tess kills a flock of dying pheasants is also rife with blood symbolism:

“their rich plumage (was) dabbled in blood; some were dead, some feebly twitching a wing, some staring up at the sky, some pulsating quickly (…) – all of them writhing in agony.”

Hardy creates a frightening image of death by not just mentioning blood spatters but the protracted and martyr-like suffering of the pheasants. Like Tess, these pheasants have been made to bleed at the hands of men. The light on he eyes of the pheasant-hunters is “bloodthirsty”; humans, particularly men, are the perpetrators of violence against innocents. Their association with blood makes them seem vampiric and unpitiable. In contrast with them, Tess puts the dying pheasants out of their misery and in doing so she performs an act of mercy:

“With the impulse of a soul who could feel for her kindred sufferers as much as for herself, Tess’s first thought was to put the still living birds out of their torture, and to this end with her own hands she broke the necks of as many as she could find (…)”

The neck breaking foreshadows Tess’s death at the end of the novel: she will be executed by hanging, and her death will be her release from worldly torment. Conversely, bleeding is related to a life of suffering, and intensifies the emotional impact of the scene. When Tess is hanged, it is the moment of catharsis for her and the reader, since she will no longer experience emotional or bodily pain. When Tess provides the pheasants with this catharsis, she becomes a benevolent figure, gaining the reader’s sympathy.

Blood can also be read as representing lineage and inheritance. In Tess’s case, she is descended from a noble line which has degenerated to the present day. Her ancestors’ downfall can be seen as a parallel to Tess’s own tragedy. In the manner of Aristotelian tragic form, Tess is driven by a hamartia or fatal flaw to murdering Alec. This connects to her lineage in the sense that Tess inherited this trait from her d’Urberville ancestors. In particular, the legend of the d’Urberville coach, relating to a historic d’Urberville murderer, links Tess’s inescapable fate with her ancestry:

“It is that this sound of a non-existent coach can only be heard by one of d’Urberville blood, and it is held to be of ill-omen to the one who hears it. It has to do with a murder, committed by one of the family (…) is said to have abducted a beautiful girl, who tried to escape from the coach he was carrying her off, and in the struggle he killed her – or she killed him – I forget which.”

This ironically foreshadows Alec’s murder, since it is Alec himself who tells this to Tess. The word “blood” here is the key, connecting heredity and biology to a supernatural force – fate – which drives Tess’s destiny. The fact that only Tess can hear the ghostly coach emphasises the terrifying inevitability of her downfall, as well as the misfortune which haunts her lineage.

The idea of Tess’s fate being influenced by her heredity draws similarities with a poetic interpretation of neo-Darwinism, a school of thought contemporary with Hardy. It stretched into the areas of not only biology but philosophy and anthropology, and the publication of neo-Darwinist August Weissmann’s Essays upon Heredity influenced, according to Peter R. Morton (the essay Neo-Darwinist Fate in Tess of the d’Urbervilles), Hardy during his writing of the novel. Morton explains that, ironically,

“as (Tess) rallies after the death of Sorrow, is mistaken enough to suppose that of her ancestors “not a thing of theirs did she retain but her old seal and spoon” (80), she fails to perceive the non-material legacy bequeathed to her by the mindless forces of heredity which control her motivation and impulses.”

Tess does not inherit her ancestors’ fame and riches, but their turbulent nature. It is what constitutes her hamartia and drives her tragedy forward. The pathos of her final downfall comes from her ignorance of the inescapable force of Fate. It also comes from the sheer injustice of the judgement pronounced upon her, as a result of misfortunes which were outside of her control. Her tragedy is, in this light, an exploration of Tess’s struggle to survive against her fate in an unjust world.

Bibliography:

Morton, Peter R. Tess of the d’Urbervilles: A Neo-Darwinist Reading, Southern Review 7 (1974): 36-51

Five Great Sentences From “David Copperfield”

“It made a great impression on me, and I remembered it a long time afterwards; as I shall have occasion to narrate when the time comes.” (Chapter XVI)

This sentence-paragraph closes Chapter 16 of the novel and reminds the reader of the unique way in which it is being narrated. Sentences like this, which occur often in the novel, have the effect of a mild time-warp: the reader is being reminded that an adult David Copperfield is recounting his youthful experiences. Though there has been no narrative glimpse of the adult David, these asides of his narrative voice suggest towards whom David will become as an adult. As the novel ends, David reveals himself a distinguished writer who is now composing his autobiography; the mystery surrounding his appearing-and-vanishing adult voice is only then resolved. This sentence is particularly relevant since it also fleshes out a character trait of David: to remember events which have given him strong “impressions” or feelings, and during this incubation turning them into narrative later on. It is, in essence, the personality of the author David will become.

They also enhance a sense of mystery as to what will happen to David and propel the plot forward through foreshadowing. In the scene which has just preceded, a young David witnesses something he cannot fully understand: Annie Strong begging her husband for mercy. It is implied, though not understood by David, that Annie engaged in an extramarital affair. Though these are minor characters, this small conflict foreshadows the romantic treachery and betrayal David will witness as a young adult, such as Steerforth’s seduction of Emily.

 

“The first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart.” (Chapter XLVIII)

This phrase, and variations made upon it, haunt David throughout his story. Since his infancy he is made to struggle against his natural, “undisciplined” impulses: a powerful example can be made of his harsh upbringing at the hands of his stepfather and step-aunt, Mr. and Miss Murdstone, who seek to harden his character. Even when raised by his loving great-aunt Betsey there is a hint of this in her determination to raise him a “firm man.” It is important to note that discipline over the heart is not presented negatively in the novel. Indeed, it echoes contemporary Victorian ideals of the self-reliant, hard-working self-made man.

Undisciplined hearts are a source of conflict, and a notable example is the slow disillusionment cast over David’s marriage to Dora Spenlow. David marries her out of an essentially amorous impulse; Dora, on her part, is childlike and unable to cope with adult life and being a housewife. Their marriage ultimately fails, as a result of their indiscipline. In extreme contrast with Dora is Agnes Wickfield, David’s childhood friend and later second wife. While Dora is not presented in a very negative light overall, it is Agnes who proves the most virtuous. Agnes’s life experiences corroborate this; while Dora was spoiled by her parents, Agnes, after her mother’s death, becomes a parentified child to her weakening father. Her life is subsequently one of self-denial and self-sacrifice, making her a saintly figure. When she marries David, she is free of her childhood role and becomes an incarnation of the ideal housewife. Agnes has, in contrast to Dora and even David, a completely disciplined heart.

 

“When I walked alone in the fine weather, and thought of the summer days when all the air had been filled with my boyish enchantment, I did miss something of the realization of my dreams; but I thought it was a softened glory of the past, which nothing could have thrown upon the present time.” (Chapter XLIV)

In a long, rambling sentence, David briefly recalls a childhood memory. Its length and many sub-clauses suggest the meandering nature of a train of thought. Yet Dickens is not writing in stream-of-consciousness; rather, as Mark Spilka argues in David Copperfield as Psychological Fiction, he is projecting David ‘s feelings so that “surface life reflects the inner self.” (Spilka, 1959, p.292-301.) External and psychological conflict are inextricably though subtly linked. At this point David is in a melancholic state due to the incompetence of his newly-wed wife Dora at housekeeping. David dotes on her as if she were his daughter and calls her his child-wife. Despite his overt affection for her, this passage suggests that he, unlike Dora, is becoming more acquainted with the challenges of adult life; he is increasingly disparate from her as he grows into the seriousness of adults.

David’s implicit maturation contrasts with his memory of childhood summer days. The words “boyish enchantment” are key to this wistfulness, suggesting that David is, on first encounter with adult life, disillusioned. The hint that David is currently unable to fulfil his dreams raises the question if he is being disadvantaged by his marriage. After the semi-colon, David goes against his train of thought and dismisses the past as irrelevant. Ironically, this contrast warns the reader that David is mistaken in doing this. The conflicts of the present are conditioned by the experiences of the past; the irony is in that David would not be experiencing this conflict had he not married Dora in a naïve, boyish impulse.

Bibliography:

-Spilka, Mark, “David Copperfield as Psychological Fiction, from Critical Quarterly, 1 (1959), 292-301

 

“The scent of a geranium leaf, at this day, strikes me with a half comical, half serious wonder as to what change has come over me in a moment; and then I see a straw hat and blue ribbons, and a quantity of curls, and a little black dog being held up, in slender arms, against a bank of blossoms and bright leaves.” (Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Chapter XXVI)

Such is David’s early infatuation with Dora Spenlow that a synaesthetic association of smell and sight brings him a vivid memory of her. This sensory and emotional experience is captured in a long arch of a sentence. Its nature and length almost anticipate the writings of Marcel Proust, according to J. Hillis Miller. Yet Dickens’s language has more in common with early-to-mid 19^th Century Romantic nature poets; his use of flower and leaf imagery to accompany a highly idealised memory being reminiscent of Wordsworth, and the sentence’s overall length and rich imagery themselves evoke a poetic register.

Bibliography:

-Miller, J. Hillis, Charles Dickens: The World of His Novels, Harvard University Press, (1958), 150-159

 

“Can I say of her face – altered as I have reason to remember it, perished as I know it is – that it is gone, when here it comes before me at this instant, as distinct as any face that I may choose to look at in a crowded street?” (Chapter II)

Dickens warns the reader of David’s mother’s death several chapters before it happens; this is one of the first instances where the adult David, the writer, interrupts the narrative pace to acknowledge his existence and the emotional impact the events he tells still have on him. The first sub-clause, between the two dashes, suddenly darkens a moment in an otherwise light-hearted childhood story. Its metrical parallelism and balancing of two clauses give it a poetic utterance; it is solemn and heavy in mood. The effect is an ominous foreshadowing of Mrs. Copperfield’s marriage to Mr. Murdstone and her future suffering at his hands. Her death will not come as a surprise but as an emotional climax; the deep anguish David expresses in this sentence will return when his younger self experiences becoming an orphan.

The Internal and External in Chapter 8 of “The Mill on the Floss”

In Chapter 8 of The Mill on the Floss, Mr. Tulliver’s journey to his relatives the Mosses’ farm to have his loan repaid combines a background of vivid images which suggest the poverty of the Mosses’ town of Basset while also using Mr. Tulliver’s subjective point of view to outline his psychological reasons behind his visit. The imagery of a decayed and infertile natural world evoke sympathy for the Mosses, who are the unprivileged and impoverished country workers left behind in an increasingly city-based and mercantile society. However, Mr. Tulliver’s insistence in being repaid is presented in a manner recalling an internal monologue; Eliot outlines the psychological reasons behind his visit. Mr. Tulliver’s fundamentally sympathetic instincts are here put in conflict with his need to survive in a money-oriented society, and the pride that is driving him on.

The first paragraph of the extract explores the motivations behind Mr. Tulliver’s decision to see the Mosses. The first sentence juxtaposes Mr. Tulliver’s “strong feeling” with his “painful sense of that complicated puzzling nature of human affairs”, and suggesting that despite his puzzlement when facing such and interaction, his determination to have his loan repaid has prevailed. However, these juxtaposed ideas recall his similarity to his wild, emotional young daughter Maggie. The fact that he experiences a “strong feeling” suggests that his emotional impulses are not at odds with those of his daughter, a character whose emotional complexity contrasts starkly with an increasingly materialistic and impersonal social context; his puzzled feelings towards human affairs similarly suggest a childlike view of the world. Like Maggie, Mr. Tulliver appears to be isolated from the shifts in society that began in the early 19^th Century in Britain in which the novel is set; against a more mechanised society, Mr. Tulliver’s work in the less sophisticated countryside as a miller suggests that he is fundamentally at odds with the new social duties of the time – hence his puzzlement towards the act of demanding repayments. In the light of this, his ability to conduct “dispassionate deliberations” falls into a slight irony; it seems unlikely that Mr. Tulliver can be as socially self-interested and as emotionally detached as the Dodsons. This foreshadows his failure later in this chapter to have the Mosses repay their debt.

This may also be seen as foreshadowing own economic downfall. “For getting a strong impression that a skein is tangled, there is nothing like hastily snatching at a single thread” linguistically connects forward to the title of the final Chapter of Book One, “Mr. Tulliver Further Entangles the Skein of Life”; the contrast of these two images of tangled skeins ironically foreshadows how in Chapter 8, as in Chapter 13, Mr. Tulliver will not disentangle his troubles, but rather in attempting to do so will make these problems worse. This also ominously foreshadows Mr. Tulliver’s own inability to untagle his financial problems later on, leading him into a descent into bankruptcy. This foreshadowing has an added touch of irony, as the poverty of the Mosses and of Basset, as Mr. Tulliver will witness, will be echoed in his own downfall in Books Third and Fourth.

George Eliot intensifies this sense of irony by stating that Mr. Tulliver is unaware of his fate to the point that “it was his habit to think of poverty and ruin with (…) remote pity”. This contrasts strongly with his own self-satisfied perception of his success; his enjoyment of hearing others talk of his “advantages” reinforces his self-satisfaction, and suggests that he is seeing himself through the eyes of society, who deems him to be a wealthy and financially secure man. However, the fact that he could just as easily have “forgotten that there was a mortgage of two thousand pounds on his very desirable freehold”, were in not for his regular payments, contrasts with his self-satisfied view to create an ironic and comical effect; this irony reminds the reader of Mr. Tulliver’s childlike world view, suggesting that his self-satisfaction is something ultimately naïve. It can also be said that Eliot is using these two conflicting statements to suggest that they are coming from Mr. Tulliver’s own internal thought process; the self-satisfied tone of the sentences suggests that they are coming from Mr. Tulliver’s internal voice. Eliot suggests here that Mr. Tulliver is gradually convincing himself of his own social superiority.

Mr. Tulliver’s interactions with Mrs. Moss parallel the relationship between his children, Tom and Maggie. Though he is affectionate towards her, Mr. Tulliver tends to see his sister in a critical light; the things he associates her with are all negative: “who had not only come into the world in that superfluous way characteristic of sisters, creating a necessity for mortgages, but had quite thrown herself into marriage, and had crowned her mistakes by having an eighth baby”. In particular, his criticism of Mrs. Moss for her fate in marriage and motherhood foreshadow Tom’s rejection and expulsion of Maggie in Book Seventh after her failed elopement with Stephen Guest. When Tulliver faces Mrs. Moss, the images of him “in his saddle, and speak[ing] from that height, above the level of pleading eyes” illustrates his dominance as a man; height here connotes power, while in contrast the female figure’s lowness coupled with the verb “pleading” suggest the opposite – powerlessness. This recalls Tom’s dominant, often castigating role in his later conflicts with Maggie; both these conflicts of male versus female are founded on the patriarchal principle of the authority and responsibility that men have over the women in their family, a feature of The Mill on the Floss‘ social context. Eliot adds that Mr. Tulliver’s intended harshness towards his sister is due to him being “in a mood more becoming a man of business”; this also foreshadows Tom’s development later on as he, by becoming a man of business, retrieves the family’s lost financial stability. However, given that he will fail to act later in this chapter as Tom would have, and that Eliot is using Mr. Tulliver’s own perspective for a satirical effect, these words fall into irony. Mr. Tulliver is not really a “man of business” as he thinks he is; ultimately the emotional and sympathetic characteristic that he shares with his daughter will prevail in the incoming situation.

Through imagery of poverty and infertility in the natural world, Eliot evokes the miserable livelihood of Basset. “The abundance of foul land and neglected fences” suggests that the natural world of Basset has decayed, perhaps due to absent will or energy to farm in the face of poor conditions; this is further emphasised by Mr. Moss being described as an “unlucky agriculturist”: his own financial poverty goes hand in hand with the sense of corruption or decay which dominates his farmland. “Basset had a poor soil, poor roads, a poor non-resident landlord, a poor nonresident vicar, and (…) a curate, also poor”: this repetition of the word “poor” emphasises, to an almost hyperbolic degree, the inescapable poverty that unites Basset at both natural and social levels. The landlord, vicar and curate, considered pillars of these societies, lack importance and are described at the same level as the dirt on the ground. This sense of decay suggests that in the new industrialised world, the people of Basset are unprivileged ones. It further connects to Eliot’s literary context as a socially critical mid-19^th Century novelist who sought to criticise the social backlash of industrialisation through harsh realism. The “melancholy pimpled face” of Mr. Dickinson, an inhabitant of Basset, is a harsh and vivid image which evokes the misery experienced by less fortunate classes.

However, this imagery may also be seen as Mr. Tulliver’s internal judgement of Mr. Moss’ poverty. The harsh words which are used to describe the roads and fields of Basset recall the similarly harsh terms Mr. Tulliver uses to criticise his sister. Tulliver’s “determination” to see that Mr. Moss pays his debt suggests that, in order to suppress the sympathetic and indulgent instincts he shares with Maggie, he must work himself up into an angry state in which he can unsympathetically demand he repayment. While on his way through Basset, Mr. Tulliver “got up a due amount of irritation against Moss as a man without capital” by observing the poor state of the roads; just as the Basset roads symbolically reflect the poverty of the village, to Mr. Tulliver they represent corruption by the hand of “the father of lawyers” – the Devil. This diabolical allusion to lawyers recalls Mr. Tulliver’s fierce conflict with Lawyer Wakem, whom the former associates with the Devil; it also emphasises this paragraph’s resemblance to an internal monologue through its use of Mr. Tuliver’s emotional tone and subjective viewpoint. The sequence of images leading up to the end of the extract are all constructed in one large paragraph, strongly suggesting an uninterrupted flow of thoughts, a characteristic of internal monologues. Having convinced himself of his social and financial superiority, Mr. Tulliver convinces himself of the rightness and justice of his intended actions.

Liminal, Supernatural Dreams in “Wuthering Heights”

In a novel rich with Gothic literary allusions and elements, dreams are part of the supernatural forces at work in Wuthering Heights. They are niches in the novel’s multiple and interlocking narratives, setting the tone and mood of a scene or even the setting (Lockwood’s dreams in Chapter 3, for example), and foreshadowing the conflicts to come. Dreams also develop characterisation by associating characters to actions, images and motifs – such as Catherine appearing as a ghost, or being cast into the moors from heaven.

“I’ve dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they’ve gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.”

To Catherine, dreams are powerful, even sensual experiences. The image of wine and water suggests both fluidity and eroticism, as it employs the sexually charged colour red, embodied in wine, a drink of ecstasy. However, wine also recalls blood, representing her vitality and the violence which surrounds her. The “colour of her mind”, then, is one subject to passions and changes; dreams, volatile things, represent Catherine’s many moods and her own volatility. Arguably, they are a symbol related to her characterisation, in particular regarding her passionate relationship with her adoptive brother Heathcliff.

Ellen’s approach to dreams also helps inform the reader about her character. She mistrusts and even fears them: her immediate outcry against Catherine telling her dreams is that she will conjure “ghosts and visions to perplex us.” Ellen soon after explains her reaction as thus:

“I was superstitious about dreams then, and am still; and Catherine had an unusual gloom in her aspect, and that made me dread something from which I might shape a prophecy, and forsee a fearful catastrophe.”

Ellen, as the first-person narrator for most of the novel, is also an embodiment of the reader’s own consciousness as they interpret the story. Her reacting with superstition to dreams aligns her with readers in Bronte’s time, who were more fearful of prophetic dreams than most modern readers. Given that Wuthering Heights is set in the less educated provinces of 19th Century Yorkshire, and that Ellen is a humble housekeeper, the superstition would be exacerbated. However, her noting of Catherine’s “gloom” gives this passage an ominous tone. Its effect is foreboding, as the reader will now associate Catherine’s dreams with impeding disaster.

Lockwood’s dreams in Chapter 3 contain elements of the Gothic literary genre, most notably in the supernatural appearance of Catherine’s ghost. The sheer horror of the apparition is made clear when the ghost’s hand is described as being “ice-cold”; and Lockwood also refers to the ghost as a “creature” and uses the neutral pronoun “it”, suggesting that he sees the ghost as something devoid of humanity. This dark passage arguably sets the mood for the entire novel. The house in which Lockwood now lives is made grim, from now on apparently haunted by Catherine’s ghost.

The ghost’s voice is described as “mourning” and referred to as a “lamentable prayer”; the religious origins of these terms recall Lockwood’s previous nightmare. In it, a tedious church service is abruptly turned into a violent attack on Lockwood. Both dreams share acts of brutality; they are shocking, and their climaxes are driven by fear and violence. In the dream with the ghost, Lockwood at one point attacks its groping hand:

“Terror made me cruel; and, finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bed-clothes.”

The act of slitting the wrist, and the strong image of a vast bloodshed, are both horrifying and at the same time vividly realistic. While ghosts are usually insubstantial, Catherine’s ghost, by being made of flesh and blood, implies that she is reappearing in a more animal form. This connects to her deep bond with the surrounding natural landscape, and to the animalistic language with which Bronte will present Catherine’s impulsive passions.

However, Lockwood’s sudden display of violence towards an otherwise pitiful figure is also frightening. He himself admits that “terror made me cruel”: like in the previous dream, it is fear which incites him to violence. Since this is presented early on in the novel, and since it precedes all the significant episodes of violence in Wuthering Heights, arguably the nightmares foreshadow the shocking scenes which are to come. It is significant that it is Catherine who inspires this violence, foreshadowing Ellen’s recounting of Catherine and Heathcliff’s tempestuous relationship. Though Heathcliff is almost always the character who acts violently, Catherine is the one who originates conflicts.

In the first glimpses that the reader will get to know of her life, through Ellen’s tale, Catherine will still be a child. This ominous dream sequence, like a prologue to Ellen’s tale, sets the mood for the coming scenes and foreshadows Catherine’s progression from a child of Wuthering Heights to her separation from it. It is also exposition for one of Catherine’s most prominent traits: her attachment to Wuthering Heights and her desire to be reunited with the place. In appearing as ghost of her child self, Catherine is returning to her memories, and to the place where she and Heathcliff had the happiest moments of their childhood. Both these characters live in the past in the sense that they value their time as children above all else in their lives; and their extreme desires and passions as adults suggest that they never truly grew out of those days.

Connected to her appearance as a ghost is Catherine’s passionate recounting of a dream to Ellen in Chapter 9. While dreaming of dying and reaching the afterlife,

“heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to the earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out, into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.”

The tone is different from Lockwood’s dream: Catherine speaks in a single, sustained outburst of a sentence, and she uses intensely emotional and poetic figurative language to describe her extremes of feeling. However, the fundamental idea – of Catherine striving to reunite with Wuthering Heights – is the same. Both dreams consist of a soul losing itself in the afterlife, an element of the Gothic genre. Her fight with the angels likens her to Lucifer’s fall from heaven; indeed, she resembles a nature goddess in her return to Earth and to a patch of heath she has fixed in her memory. Through this dream, Catherine has come into contact with a wilder side of herself; as Ellen puts it, in rejecting heaven Catherine becomes a “sinner.” This foreshadows Catherine’s death and burial “in a corner of the kirkyard, where the wall is so low that heath and bilberry plants have climbed over it from the moor.” Nature is evocatively described here, recalling Catherine’s dream; in death, she is reuniting physically with the moors as she had dreamed. She and Heathcliff are eventually both buried at this spot, uniting them in their status as excommunicates who rest on unconsecrated ground.

By engaging with dreams, these characters come into contact with darker and uncivilised sides of themselves. Almost anticipating the arrival of psychoanalysis and dream interpretation towards the end of the 19th Century, dreams are part of the novel’s exploring of the shadowy side of passion. The natural world as it is presented is another way of coming into contact with primitive human nature. In the liminal and often frightening setting of Wuthering Heights, it is difficult to tell when dreams end and reality begins.

An Ironic and Unprofitable Education in “The Mill on the Floss”

In The Mill on the Floss‘ Second Book, Tom Tulliver is given an education to which he is intellectually and socially at odds with. The title of the Book, “School-Time”, shifts the narrative focus towards Tom: education in the early- to mid- 19^th Century was an entirely male-dominated world and was considered a crucial phase in the creation of a successful gentleman in an increasingly mercantile and materialistic society. However, this period will not be a time of growth, but one in which Tom will experience humiliation for his rural background and deportment, and frustration due to his incomprehension of the antediluvian teaching methods of his tutor, the reverend Mr. Stelling. George Eliot satirises Stelling’s incompetent teaching, using free indirect narrative to allow him to expose his own superficial attitude towards his religion and his self-interested approach to teaching, in which his pupils become tools for his social advancement and not their own. Through this Eliot also levels criticism against early 19^th Century education and its reliance on suffocating Classical systems.

While in Book First the narrative centred around Maggie, and her sufferings in a social world to whose gender norms she defies, Book Second’s narrative focus shifts to Tom, as it is his turn to be placed in an environment in which he will suffer. In the opening sentence, “Tom Tulliver’s sufferings (…) were rather severe”, the wording implies that, though Tom’s experience was exceptionally bad, education itself would still naturally make one suffer. This critique is given an added sharpness with the mock epic tone conveyed with the word “sufferings”; while the narrative voice retains its satirical tone, Eliot also begins to raise sympathy for Tom’s situation. Eliot also foreshadows the moments in which Tom feels emasculated – which are instances in which he suffers the most emotionally – by presenting a contrasting reminiscence of Tom’s older days at Mr. Jacobs’ academy, where he was surrounded by other boys and was taken to “fighting games”; the contrast with this previous masculine environment makes Mr. Stelling’s house seem even more castrating. Eliot further intensifies this sense with “he; but as substantial man, like his father, who used to go hunting (…) He meant to go hunting too,”: Tom’s strong masculine gender identity, rooted in his father’s professional legacy as a minor gentleman, contrasts strongly with the indoors, suffocatingly academic experience of King’s Lorton.

The fact that Tom aspires to be like his father when he “became a man” makes his emasculation later on the more painfully ironic. Added to this humiliation is the fact that it is “beyond Tom’s power” to detect that Mr. Stelling is a poor tutor. A sophisticated but ultimately self-interested clergyman and teacher, Mr. Stelling sees Tom from a fundamentally materialistic and snobbish point of view; at the same time, Tom’s naivety does not let him realise that Mr. Stelling is “not thoroughly genuine”. This suggests dark future experiences for Tom: due to his stark social and intellectual difference with his tutor, he will be at a greater disadvantage during his time of education.

Mr. Stelling’s description in the following paragraph develops both the sense of Mr. Stelling’s not being “thoroughly genuine” as well as his materialism and superficiality. Similarly to how she presents Mr. Riley in Chapter 3 of Book First, Eliot uses free indirect narrative here to incorporate Mr. Stelling’s point of view by using aspects of his voice, most notably his pompous language. Also recalling Mr. Riley, this mock self-portrait uses physical imagery: “a well-sized, broad-chested man (…) a sonorous bass voice”, which suggest through their flattering tone Mr. Stelling’s inflated self-view; his large size and loud voice seem to depict a swollen or egotistical personality. His belief that he was “often thought as quite as striking by his hearers” and was held as “little short of the miraculous in rural parishes” furthers the sense of his egotism; it also suggests, through the implicit juxtaposition of Mr. Stelling’s intellectual world with his rural congregation, the superior level to which Mr. Stelling holds himself up against his neighbours. With “He had a true British determination to push his way in the world”, aggressiveness is added to his egotism; it also suggests a wider social context behind such a character. In Britain’s increasingly mercantile early- to mid-19^th Century society, middle-class men such as Mr. Stelling would have their social prestige measured primarily by their success in their trade and by their good connections and reputation. For Mr. Stelling, education is a means of advancing not his pupils, but himself.

In this way, Mr. Stelling’s self-portrait lends also itself to a satire which exposes his superficial attitude to his clergyman’s career. Mr. Stelling seeks success “as a schoolmaster, in the first place; for there were capital masterships of schools to be had”; only afterwards does “but as a preacher also” follow. This juxtaposition has a comical effect and strongly implies a spiritual emptiness; it is also piercingly ironic, since he is in a career which implies religious depth, but remains uncompromisingly shallow of spirit. His approach to preaching is akin to this idea: Mr. Stelling had “chosen” his style of preaching, and and attributes his success to the “effectiveness” of his extemporaneous, dramatised readings of other preachers. This dispassionate, workman-like approach to a spiritual activity suggests that Mr. Stelling views his religion as a tool or as a stepping stone for his social climbing. Bringing all this together, Mr. Stelling is shown to have a complacent, unquestioning sense that all this is correct and that it will bring him success in life. Mr. Stelling has similar views regarding his tutorship of Tom, in which his pupil’s success will lead to his own “immediate step to future success”; through this metaphor of a stepping stone, Tom is depersonalised, suggesting that, much like with his religion, Mr. Stelling does not view his student as a person but as his tool.

However, Mr. Stelling is given dark undertones as well: to “become celebrated by shaking the consciences of his hearers” holds a more ominous note. It suggest that he is prepared to, as a preacher, manipulate his congregations’ beliefs and feelings of right and wrong, to further his own fame. As a key element in Christian discernment of good and bad actions, the fact that conscience is at the mercy of Mr. Stelling to manipulate for his own goals, ironically makes him seem less Christian. This will contrast strongly with Dr. Kenn, another clergyman who will appear much later in Book Seventh and whose support of Maggie Tulliver embodies the charitable Christian values which Mr. Stelling lacks. Similarly, Tom is subject to a negative backlash to his mind and spirit as a consequence of being tutored by Mr. Stelling. Eliot, using his voice, presents Mr. Stelling’s thoughts on his attitude with Tom: “Not that Mr. Stelling was a harsh or unkind man (…) he was jocose with Tom (…) and corrected his provincialisms and deportment in most playful manner”; returning to free indirect speech, Eliot allows Mr. Stelling to use the words “jocose” and “playful” to an ironic effect, as they are at odds with his condescending intellectual mockery of Tom. Interestingly, the final ironies to come from this are that Tom will not end up overly damaged by Mr. Stelling, and that whatever he has learned with him will ultimately be unfit to help him cope with his family’s financial crisis in the next Books.

Eliot is similarly ironic when addressing Mr. Stelling’s style of teaching: she employs a satirical comparison with natural science which likens him to a beaver and argues that teaching “came naturally” to Mr. Stelling. The idea of naturalness falls into irony: the implication is that, unlike the natural impulses and instincts of animals, Mr. Stelling’s teaching is artificial and forced. This is further emphasised by the almost oxymoronic juxtaposition of Mr. Stelling’s “unerring instinct (…) his natural method” with “instilling the Eton Grammar and Euclid into the mind of Tom Tulliver”; it may also be seen as an ironic attack on the wider issue of a Classically-based education during the 19^th Century. Mr. Stelling clings to the traditional methods of an 18^th Century gentleman’s intellectual upbringing by asserting that “This, he considered, was the only basis of solid instruction: all other means of education were mere charlatanism”; in contrast, Tom’s intelligence and responsiveness to aspects of the natural world, though as perceptive as Mr. Stelling’s Classical knowledge, are ignored by his tutor. Because of this, Tom’s school-time will never allow him to actually learn. Eliot’s critique of teachers such as Mr. Stelling also stems from this; to Romantic and post-Romantic writers, Eliot included, restrictively Classical education went against their ideal of learning from and with the natural world.

On Physical Gesture in “Wuthering Heights”

(For purposes of simplicity, this essay will refer to Catherine I as “Cathy”)

Wuthering Heights is a novel best known for its depiction of raw, almost uncivilised, passion and conflict. In particular, the characters Cathy and Heathcliff create and participate in most of the conflict in the plot. One of the most powerful techniques Emily Brontë uses to depict their impulsive character is gesture, which is often wordless and violent. Through it, the reader also has a clear insight into the characters’ psychology, such as how Heathcliff’s gnashing suggests his feral and quasi-insane anger and jealousy. However, it also provides a deeper awareness of Cathy and Heathcliff’s relationship and their emotional depth as characters.

In Chapter 7, Cathy pinches Ellen in a fit of rage:

“She, supposing Edgar could not see her, snatched the cloth from my hand, and pinched me, with a prolonged wrench, very spitefully on the arm.”

Though she is a young adult, Cathy’s gestures suggest a small child’s. The verbs of snatching and pinching recall the squabbles of children; the adjective “spitefully” emphasised the immaturity of this action. She also does this when she thinks her suitor is not looking at her, an image which suggests that their relationship resembles that of a father and a spoiled daughter. Cathy’s tantrums, where she is depicted stamping her foot, are also linked to her infantile outbursts of passion.

Her extreme emotions are associated with childish gestures due to her lack of control over them, reminding the reader of a child’s underdeveloped temperament; however, they are also given sinister overtones. Brontë depicts the pinching scene with frightening imagery: Cathy’s fingers are “tingling to repeat the act, and her ears red with rage. She never had the power to conceal her passion, it always set her whole complexion in a blaze,” and Ellen’s bruise is a “decided purple witness.” Cathy’s ferocity is emphasised by the sheer animalism with which she is described. The fact that she could never control such emotions intensifies this; and her fiery flush, given by her red ears and the “blaze” of her face, associate her with bloodthirstiness and anger. The quasi-demonic intensity of this strongly links her to Heathcliff, who is arguably the most physically brutal character in the novel. In particular, the bruise Cathy leaves on Ellen foreshadows the violence and passion of the final meeting between Cathy and Heathcliff, before Cathy’s death.

In that scene, violent gestures are associated more to physical passion than anger. Their vigour is both violent and erotic. In a gesture which recalls Cathy pinching Ellen, Heathcliff grabs Cathy’s arm and

“so inadequate was his stock of gentleness to the requirements of her condition, that on his letting go, I saw four distinct impressions left blue in the colourless skin.”

This aggression is juxtaposed with the fact that Cathy is ill and dying, making it seem the more shocking. It also gives shape to their transcendent passion, one which overcomes the physical barriers of illness, and ultimately, death.

The key paragraph in this scene contains no dialogue: it is pure gesture that is described. The effect is that of observing a pantomime or a film. Ellen, the narrator, is a frightened and passive observer, mimicking the reader’s own shocked response to the passage.

“In her eagerness she rose and supported herself on the arm of the chair. At that earnest appeal, he turned to her, looking absolutely desperate. His eyes wide and wet at last, flashed fiercely on her; his breast heaved convulsively. An instant they held asunder; and then how they met I hardly saw, but Catherine made a spring, and he caught her, and they were locked in an embrace from which I thought my mistress would never be released alive. In fact, to my eyes, she seemed directly insensible. He flung himself into the nearest seat, and on my approaching hurriedly to ascertain if she had fainted, he gnashed at me, and foamed like a mad dog, and gathered her to him with greedy jealousy. I did not feel as if I were in the company of a creature of my own species; it appeared that he would not understand, though I spoke to him; so I stood off, and held my tongue, in great perplexity.”

Language, – and with it, reason, dialogue and civilization – is abandoned entirely. The only thing that is left for the characters to express themselves with, in the wake of such passion, is through physical acts and gestures. Ellen’s remark that she is no longer among humans is in tune with the animalistic image group used in this passage. The gestures of Cathy and Heathcliff’s embrace, springing, catching, clutching each other almost to death, are aggressively erotic. Heathcliff’s flinging himself, in particular, suggests a recklessness regarding his well-being as well as Cathy’s. His animalism is highlighted by his frightening gestures at Ellen: gnashing, foaming and his comparisons to a mad dog. They are intensified by the poignant detail of his holding Cathy close, as if afraid to part with her.

In this passage, violence is also associated to extreme emotional pain. Cathy’s death, which occurs soon after this, is foreshadowed by how she seems “directly insensible”; and Heathcliff’s reaction, a series of extremely violent gestures, seems to foreshadow his torment at Cathy’s death. Interestingly, in the scene where he approaches Cathy’s corpse, his gestures are much more subdued. Perhaps it is a suggestion that he is keeping those emotions, which once exploded outwardly, repressed. In this way, the character’s body language provides a clue as to the psychological conflicts which exist in the subtext.

This insight into Heathcliff’s emotional turmoil allows the reader to further sympathise with a character that otherwise would be read as antagonistic and unsympathetic. Heathcliff takes Cathy’s locket, which contains strands of his rival Edgar’s hair, and “cast out its contents, replacing them by a black lock of his own.” This gesture subtly balances Heathcliff’s powerful jealousy with his emotional attachment: he is angry enough to cast away Edgar’s presence, yet is made tender from the prospect of giving Cathy’s corpse a lover’s keepsake.

Heathcliff’s most explosive emotional gesture is perhaps his bashing his head against a tree after hearing of Cathy’s death:

“He dashed his head against the knotted trunk; and, lifting up his eyes, howled, not like a man, but like a savage beast getting goaded to death with knives and spears.

I observed several splashes of blood about the bark of the tree, and his hand and forehead were both stained; probably the scene I witnessed was a repetition of others acted during the night.”

Outwardly, this description is made to shock, and Nelly is, like the reader, appalled at seeing this. However, the animalistic language here recalls his last meeting with Cathy, where in a similar state he is compared to a mad dog. The effect here is similar: there is extreme physical pain, given by the act of dashing his head and the abundance of bloodstains; yet Heathcliff’s howling, and his repeating the act, suggest a grief which is equally intense.

Heathcliff’s primitive and unrestrained passion is, like Cathy’s, suggestive of his psychological depth. They are complex characters which, in their provincial status, stretch the notions of uncanny and uncivilised behaviour, in contrast to their contemporary rule-bound high society. Their physical gestures allow them to represent primitive impulses which exist not only in the world of the novel but within the readers themselves.

The First Act of “Othello”

Act 1 of Othello introduces the conflicts surrounding Othello’s and Desdemona’s marriage. These first scenes establish, through Shakespeare’s dramatic use of figurative language and foreshadowing, Iago’s role as the play’s stock villain, giving the reasons for his “monstrous” plotting against the protagonist as stemming from Iago’s evilness and jealousy. They also present the character Othello in an ambiguous, multifaceted way, as the sense of his nobility is constantly juxtaposed with negative stereotypes regarding Moors as were present in Shakespeare’s contemporary society. In this way, Shakespeare prepares the audience for Othello’s progression as a tragic character in a plot fraught with deceit and tension.

The first Scene of Othello opens with an intimate conversation between Roderigo and Iago; in this way, Shakespeare immediately transports the audience into these character’s private worlds, outlining their motivations and the relationships they have with each other and with the rest of the characters. The register with which these two initially speak suggests their lower positioning within the Venetian military, as their dialogue is punctuated by popular figures of speech and mild curses (“Tush”, “S’blood”); in contrast, Othello’s speech is notably in a more patterned and formal style, at times developing into florid extended speeches which employ extensive figurative language – in essence outlining his higher military rank. Encountering such language allows the audience to perceive that these two characters have developed resentful feelings towards Othello, and that their roles in the play will centre around the antagonistic.

Shakespeare also suggests with this conversation that the world of these characters is one where individuals pursue only their own interests. Roderigo immediately asserts that Iago “hast had my purse / As if the strings were thine”: in order to help satisfy the former’s wish to marry Desdemona, Iago was paid a large sum of money to assist him, and failed; the fact that Roderigo tries to use his financial influence to achieve his personal goals, while Iago, despite having been paid, fails to assist Roderigo, outlines their reliance on corruption and duplicity as features of their character. This characteristic becomes more and more prominent in Iago as the scene develops. His speech describing relationship to Othello, his superior, highlights how superficially Iago renders this allegiance: “We cannot all be masters, nor all masters / Cannot be truly followed”. Speaking in a style and register almost akin to popular sayings, he allows the audience to perceive that the universe of the play is one where allegiances are superficial and forced and will only be tolerated to a certain point. It prepares the audience for the duplicity which will drive the plot of Othello’s downfall.

Perhaps more significantly still are Iago’s images of being “trimmed in forms and visages of beauty”. They illustrate the disparity of a dark interior being masked by a noble exterior which characterise Iago’s interactions with Othello in the development of the play. “Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago. / In following him I follow but myself (…) I am not what I am” are also fundamentally related to that idea; these lines, characterised by elliptical and antithetic patterns, illustrate both the complex, cryptic nature of Iago’s deceits, which are based on suggestion and manipulation, as well as the duality of light and dark of Iago’s character. This duality allows for interpretations related to a fellow stock figure of Elizabethan theatre, the Machiavel. A central characteristic of Machiavels is their dual faces, one which charms the exterior world while another, revealed as “the native act and figure of my [Iago’s] heart” only in intimate conversations or soliloquies, plots against everyone else ruthlessly. Iago alludes to this characteristic in the line “By Janus” in Scene 2’s dialogue with Othello, in reference to the two-faced Roman god of duality and deception. Shakespeare immediately fulfils in Iago the requirements for this stock figure, allowing for his contemporary Elizabethan audiences to understand exactly who Iago is and what his role in the play will be.

However, Iago’s and Roderigo’s speech may also be interpreted as foreshadowing some of the play’s wider themes. The overriding theme of their conversation is envy: Roderigo and Iago are envious of Othello’s marriage, while Iago is especially bitter about being refused the post of lieutenant in favour of Michael Cassio, a military theorist with no experience of the battlefield. Iago’s infuriated language provides insight into the corruption of his contemporary politics: “Christian and heathen, must be be-leed and calmed / By debitor and creditor. This counter-caster (…) must his lieutenant be / and I (…) his Moorship’s ancient!”. This may be superficially read as Iago’s sarcastic attack on Cassio, who is dismissively called a “counter caster” or accountant, as well as on Othello, whose superior position and Moorish origins incense Iago to the point of being referred to with a parody of honorific speech. However, the patterned use of antitheses in “Christian and heathen”, “debitor and creditor” suggest towards Iago’s use of stylised language for manipulative purposes, foreshadowing the string of deceiving acts he will perform from this Scene onwards. Jealousy and racial prejudice are his key motivations, and Shakespeare allows these emotions to become two overarching themes in Othello. They are in essence the foundation in which all the conflict in the play is built.

The conflictual episode which follows at Barbantio’s house is also a significant example of Shakespeare’s foreshadowing of the deceiving of Othello. The shocking loudness and suddenness of this conflict grabs the audience’s attention and alerts towards the key figurative language. Othello is repeatedly dehumanised in Act 1, and the names and adjectives with which he is referred to or described – “Moor”, “thicklips”, and most significantly here, “old black ram”, “lascivious”, “Barbary horse” and “devil”, allow and Roderigo to paint an increasingly unattractive picture of Othello as a lustful and predatory barbarian. As the audience has not seen Othello yet, Iago is arguably manipulating the spectators just as much as he is manipulating Barbantio. Here Iago’s actions are comparable to the Medieval Vice figure, a stock character that retained some level of influence in Shakespeare’s time. Iago incarnates the principles of this stage villain through his manipulation of other character’s feelings of fear and suspicion, as well as through his use of “profane” and bawdy language rich with animal imagery which borders on the obscene. The fact that Iago reveals his true purposes and motivations to the audience also suggests towards this particular stock character. Like the Vice, Iago is labelling noble characters with negative characteristics that he himself ironically possesses. The result is the conflict which follows in Scenes 2 and 3 in which Barbantio is consumed with suspicion and animosity towards Othello. Accusing him of witchcraft and sexual impropriety, Barbantio is revealed to possess similar racial prejudice as Iago and Roderigo. Othello’s foreignness, to these Venetians, is associated with the unknown and with the dark. Shakespeare here foreshadows the racism to which Othello will be subjected to.

In the light of this dehumanisation, Othello can be equally said to be a multifaceted character; his poetic register in his Scene 3 speeches contrasts strongly with the insults levelled at him, and the heroic qualities of bravery and masculinity which are revealed in his life’s description similarly contrast with the stereotypical depictions of Moors as fickle and jealous. However, to a Shakespearean audience Othello would have carried with him constantly the dark undertones of the negative stereotypes regarding Moors in Elizabethan times. Iago reminds the audience of this in “these Moors are changeable in their wills”, and Barbantio’s lines to Othello, “Look to her [Desdemona] if thou hast eyes to see: / She has deceived her father, and may thee”, plant in Othello’s and in the audience’s minds the suspicion of Desdemona being unfaithful to her marriage. Desdemona’s death by Othello’s hand in the climax of Othello is ultimately prepared henceforth.

All-Equalising Nature in “Anna Karenina”

When Levin delves into his countryside estate in Anna Karenina, the novel’s pace slows down. Working side to side with the peasant farmers on his land approximates him, for a brief episode, to the lives of common-folk. This spurs a sudden philosophic-political internal monologue which touches on contemporary philosophers’ assessment of Russia’s economic and class system, and develops Tolstoy’s spiritual idea that returning to nature and to humanity’s humble roots will purify Russians from a divisive and unfair modern society.

Observing himself and the peasants, Levin is assaulted by a notion:

“All had been drowned in the sea of their joyful common toil. God had given them the day and the strength, and both the day and the strength had been devoted to labour which had brought its own reward. For whom they had laboured and what the fruits of their labour would be was an extraneous and unimportant affair.”

The hard, compact sentences suggest a sweeping Scriptural gesture; the reference to God, the metaphorical allusion to the Flood in Genesis, and the viewing of labour as something which both unites people and submits them into an ant-like hierarchy enforces this. At the same time, the words “common toil”, and the joyful tone with which they resound, echo the spreading popularity of liberal Marxist politics in Russia in the late-19th to early-20th centuries. However, Tolstoy takes an ultimately different approach to social revolution. For Levin, it “depend(s) on himself to change his wearisome, idle, and artificial personal life for that pure, delightful life of common toil.” Though the apparent utopia is clearly opposed to capitalism and classism, Levin is not being forced into considering a peasant’s life; rather he comes into it on his own terms and through physical contact with nature.

Increasing detail in Tolstoy’s descriptive paragraphs contributes to a slowing down of the novel’s pace:

” “How beautiful!” he thought, looking up at a strange mother-of-pearl coloured shell formed of fleecy clouds, in the centre of the sky just over his head. “How lovely everything is, this lovely night! And how did this shell get formed so quickly? A little while ago when I looked at the sky all was clear, but for two white strips. My views of life have changed in just the same unnoticeable way.”

Describing the clouds as a shell associates them with protection, and also with separation. In this idyllic passage, Levin is in a dream-like state brought on by his physical exertion and by his lack of sleep; immediately after, he will consider leaving his life of privilege in favour of a peasant’s life. The pink colour of the clouds wryly suggests that Levin is probably looking at the world – and, implicitly, at his own life – through rose-tinted glasses. A similar play on words is present when Levin mentions that the sky had become more clouded: in parallel, his own vision is becoming clouded with unrealistic thoughts.

Though very brief, this episode where Levin reconsiders his life is strongly reminiscent of Anna Karenina’s abandonment of social status to pursue her passion with Vronsky. They are both alarming and seductive to the reader by the weight of their descriptive language, and by the passionate emotions portrayed.

When Levin suddenly shifts back into reality, the transition from the previous dream-like monologue to the next paragraph is abrupt.

“At the very moment when this vision was about to disappear, her candid eyes fell on him. She recognized him and joyful surprise lit up her face. He could not be mistaken. There were no other eyes in the world like them. In the whole world there was only one being able to unite in itself the universe and the meaning of life for him. It was Kitty. He guessed that she was on her way from the station to her sister’s house at Ergushevo. All that had so disturbed Levin during the sleepless night and all his resolutions vanished suddenly. He recalled with disgust his thoughts of marrying a peasant girl. There alone, inside that coach on the other side of the road, so rapidly receding from him, was the one possible solution of the riddle which had been weighing him so painfully as of late.”

The sentences become shorter as the reach a climactic point in the middle of the paragraph, the short sentence “It was Kitty.” The power of this revelation does not inhabit the same high poetic register as the contemplation of peasant life; the shortness of the sentences emphasise that this is something which deeply shocks Levin. As a result, his thoughts immediately shift after the climactic point.

The vigour of this climax also gives the reader an idea of how intense Levin’s attraction to Kitty is. The revelation of her name is immediately preceded by a powerful philosophically charged build-up, in tune with the metaphysical language used to describe Anna Karenina’s and Vronsky’s passion.

Psychic Failures: Inaction, Circularity and Paralysis in “Dubliners”

A sense of inaction is a recurring motif in James Joyce’s Dubliners. In the stories, characters may find themselves failing to act, when facing critical, climactic moments, or even living their whole lives under the shadow of monotony. Joyce uses the symbol of circularity to suggest inaction and the failure to act; he also develops its presence in the lives of Dublin citizens, who range from young children to adults. However, Joyce’s language when describing the characters’ experience of climactic moments suggests that a lot of action is indeed going on at an emotional level: the psychological conflicts that the characters experience when experiencing an epiphany about their lives are rendered in such intense ways that they seem to be almost physical – such as Eveline feeling a bell “clanging” inside her during such a moment.

Araby, the third story in the collection, poignantly describes a boy’s ultimately failed experience of infatuated love; he travels across Dublin to the Araby bazaar, to buy a gift for his beloved, but upon arriving finds himself unable to buy anything. After a rising sense of tension and wonder during his journey, he anticlimactically finds himself in an empty, silent and dark building. “Nearly all the stalls were closed and the greater part of the hall was in darkness. I recognised a silence like that which pervades a church after a service”: this imagery of darkness and silence evokes the boy’s bathetic, disappointed feeling; this is further intensified by the comparison to a church where the service, the main action, has gone away. The painfulness of this disappointment enhances a sense that he has somehow failed in his journey. With “jostled by drunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers, the shrill litanies of shop-boys (…) I imagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes”, the boy’s idealised language is disparate from the seediness of Dublin, shown by the contrast between the dark, diabolical aural imagery with the romantic image of him as a knight on a quest for his beloved. His ecstatic imagination is in conflict with reality, making his incoming failure the more devastating.

The imagery of darkness also enhances the idea of circularity. Araby begins by evoking the dark street in which the boy lives; Joyce echoes that image at the very end, to represent the circularity of the boy’s journey, and, from a wider perspective, the story itself. It visually represents inaction or the failure to act, as with circular motion no end is being achieved; it is also alluded to in the language of An Encounter, where an old man’s circular, sexually obsessive speech is compared by the narrator to a circle or orbit. The story’s plot is also bathetically circular, as the boys’ desire for a great adventure comes to a puzzling and anticlimactic end where they encounter the old pervert – their childish curiosity is met with a frightening reality. In both these stories, this symbolic representation of entrapment, as well as the use of bathos to suggest failure, suggest that these stories are dominated to some extent by inaction.

In Araby, however, the poignancy of the boy’s language, in its expressions of love and disappointment, also suggests that some very powerful action is occurring an an emotional level. Consumed with disillusion, the boy sees himself as “a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger”: here he uses powerful emotional language that conveys shame and bitterness; these emotions are further impelled by the harsh alliterative use of “d”, “v” and “a”. Similarly, he expresses his infatuation for his neighbour in passionate terms: “her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood”; the grandiose act of a summons, and the intense physical sensation that is suggested by blood have a hyperbolic effect which magnifies the intensity of his love. Like An Encounter, the narrator’s imaginative world is contrasted with the dark grittiness of reality; when these two meet, the protagonists will be left disillusioned and ashamed.

In Eveline, the heroine’s anticlimactic failure to elope from Dublin and from her abusive father is akin to the failed journey in Araby. Immediately before the climactic moment where Eveline, recalling Araby‘s narrator, becomes incapable of moving or speaking to her lover, she “prayed to God to direct her (…) her distress awoke a nausea in her body and she kept moving her lips in silent fervent prayer”: Eveline’s constantly repeated prayer echoes the circular speech in An Encounter. Even though she tries to use it to resolve her indecision, she fails to decide and act; effectively, she is trapped in her circle. The prayer also recalls The Sisters, as in that story the narrator, another young boy, encounters the rites and language of the Catholic Church and is unable to truly grasp their meaning, paralysing him when he encounters death. In a critical moment, Eveline’s connection to Catholicism also ends up paralysing her; this connection to The Sisters enforces this feeling. Because of this, the repeated prayer may be seen as an ominous foreshadowing of her failure: already the reader can see that Eveline’s journey will end in failure, like Araby.

However, Eveline, like the narrator of Araby, is given language that suggests a powerful emotional turmoil. The aforementioned prayer is described in harsh terms, where “distress” and “fervent” suggest a psychological suffering; “nausea” suggests a physical effect of this distress. Such language is also present as the story is on the verge of the climax: “A bell clanged upon her heart. She felt him seize her hand”. These verbs indicate a violent action: the clanging and the seizing are intense, even brutal; the sound in particular is heard physically, and so intensifies the sense of a physical turmoil. It also suggests tension and urgency, as it recalls an alarm; the sense of dread towards Eveline’s looming indecision is dramatically magnified. As Eveline will be consumed by fear in the story’s conclusion, the sound of the bell becomes a representation of her panic.

The character Maria also undergoes a journey in Clay; while it is essentially banal and monotonous, to Maria her experiences are riveting. She focuses on the mundane details of her clean kitchens and listing all her shopping for her daily trip to the shops. However, this monotony is magnified by Maria; when realising that she has lost her, she “coloured with shame and vexation and disappointment”: for such a mundane incident as that, her reaction of three intense emotional nouns is hyperbolic to an almost comical effect. This harsh language recalls the disillusioned feeling of Eveline and the young boy in Araby; but its application here to an everyday problem suggests that this story is circular in the sense that its main character is trapped in an empty and monotonous routine: these deadening details are her life’s interests. In the light of this, Maria can be seen as an older counterpart to the younger preceding narrators; while Eveline and Araby’s young boy have their aspirations defeated in their stories’ conclusions, Maria is accommodated to her trapped existence. Her sense of emptiness suggests that hope has gone for middle-aged Dubliners.

However, this emotional language. While in the tram, she talks to a man whom she thinks is a “colonel-looking gentleman” and believes him to be more polite than younger men. Her attribution of a title which suggests nobility and gallantry, is at odds, ironically, with the man’s “red face”, which suggests that he is a drunk. This irony in turn suggests that Maria is being delusional to some extent at being flattered by this man’s attentions. However, Maria later acknowledges the man’s drunkenness, and seeing as she is an unattractive spinster her excitement becomes more pathetic in effect. Similarly, Maria finds self-satisfaction in mundane accomplishments: the first page is punctuated with statements told using Maria’s voice, “Maria had cut them herself. (…) Everyone was so fond of Maria.”. Beyond the banal events, Maria’s genuine self-satisfaction suggests a complete psychological emptiness. In her perspective, these short moments of excitement are powerful and momentous experiences as they seem to be the few things that distract from her monotony.

Although the characters in Dubliners are trapped in paralysed, decaying existences, Joyce presents these stories from a perspective that ties to each protagonist’s inner world to the extent that the reader can see both the naturalistic details of the Dubliners’ impoverished lives as well as the psychological conflicts that come from living such lives. Joyce critiques Dublin’s stagnation by focusing on the characters’ need to escape, from either the boys’ dull routines, or, like Eveline, to abroad. In conclusion, these stories present different forms of both action and inaction; the resulting collective portrait is one of emotion and sympathy.