“Nelly, I Am Heathcliff ” in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights
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mong the great moments in life, looking at the list provided by Professor CDN, I found that Macaulay’s concept of the “imperishable empire” was not only worthy of discussion but also extremely relevant at this point of time.Macaulay occupies a singularly important place in the history of India, for it was he who clinched the debate in favour of the introduction of English education in India. It was again Macaulay who formulated the Indian Penal Code. Macaulay spoke of the imperishable empire in his address to the House of Commons when it was debating on the transfer of power from the East India Company to the Crown. I believe this address should be read along with his well-known Minute on Indian Education. The usual response to Macaulay is to valorize him as the man who gave us the Liberal English Education which paved the way for India’s independence. I need not to have labour the point as far as the positive influence of English educa-tion on India is concerned. I would like to, for a change, look at the other side of the coin since, in my considered opinion, it is time we did this. In his passionate plea for English education in India, what strikes the reader is the strategy adopted by Macaulay. As a distinguished historian, he offers many historical parallels to plead for the study of English in India since the fund was set apart for the “intellectual improvement of the people of this country.” He speaks of the inherent superiority of the European system of
knowledge and makes his now infamous remark that “a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.” There has perhaps never been a more glib and brazen dismissal of the orient by a Westerner. This reminds us of Salman Rushdie’s dismissal of Indian Literature in our regional languages vis-a-vis Indian Literature in English made in a special number of The New Yorker in 1997. And how can one even forget Macaulay’s strongly racist overtones in his plea for the creation of “a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.” Macaulay was indeed pleading for the creation of a class of Brown/Black Sahibs to act as intermediaries between the rulers and the ruled. But the overriding emphasis in the minute is on the backwardness of India and her people. Macaulay offers English education as the sole panacea for all the ills of this “uncivilized” country. For a more Eurocentric view of India, one cannot think of a better document than Macaulay’s minute.
In many ways, his address at the House of Commons anticipates his ideological position in the Minute. He remarks in a rather astounding fashion that he would “rather trade with free people than govern savages.” Let me quote his concluding remarks from his address at the House of Commons:
Are we to keep the people of India ignorant in order that we may keep tham submissive? Or do we think that we can give knowl-edge without awakening ambition’? Or do we mean to awaken ambition and to provide it with no legitimate vent’? . . . It may be that the public mind of India may expand under our system until it has outgrown that system, that by good government we may educate our subjects into a capacity for better government, that having become instructed in European knowledge they may in some future age, demand European institutions. Whether such a day will ever come, I know not. Whenever it comes, it will be the proudest day in English History. . . . The sceptre may pass away from us. Victory may be inconstant to our arms. But there are tri-umphs which is followed by no reverse. There is an empire exempt from all natural cause of decay. These triumphs are the pacific triumphs of reason over barbarism that empire is the imperish-able empire of our arts and our morals, our literature and our laws.
(emphasis mine)
The imperishable empire he speaks of is of arts, of morals, of literature and of laws. One cannot overlook the fact that they are all theirs, that is of the English. No doubt we have gone beyond Macaulay’s original intentions in that we have now perhaps realised the value of our arts, of our morals, of
our literature and of our laws. But it is important to remember that the Indian Penal Code was essentially discriminatory in nature, in favour of the white man. It is indeed sad that the very same Penal Code still rules the roost in our courts of Law. We are only now waking up to the new realities and are in the process of bringing in several amendments to the Indian Penal Code.
The logic behind Macaulay’s imperishable empire is not easy to miss when he speaks of “the triumphs of reason over barbarism!” More than 50 years have elapsed since the collapse of the British Empire in India. But how does one describe the present day scenario? we live today in a world where Macaulay’s imperishable empire has taken not an altogether different form, where the buzzword is Globalisation. As a result what we now have is the alarming prospect of all of us thinking. living and behaving like citizens of the world. We have imbibed Western values in all spheres of our lives and tend to swear by them at every given opportunity. Whereas the need of the hour for us is to assert our identity more strongly than even before in order to prevent us from ending as faceless citizens of the world. We may think globally but we have got to act locally. My fear is that Macaulay’s deeprooted empire is indeed imperishable even though it has taken the form of American Imperialism with institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund dictating how we should live over lives. This is, in my view, far more dangerous and insidious than the 200 years of colonial rule.
As for my great moment in Literature is concerned, it is the portrayal of Catherine-Heathcliff relationship in Emily Bronte’s novel, Wuthering Heights. Man-Woman relationship has fascinated writers from Shakespeare to D. H. Lawrence. But most of these relationships are quite predictable in nature. It is Catherine-Heathcliff relationship which is unique in the annals of world literature, for it provides us with a disturbingly original and insightful interpretation of Man-Woman relationship. And Wuthering Heights as a novel is exceptional since it makes it difficult, if not impossible, to take a definite view of life. The novel demonstrates how life is inexplicable, uncertain and defies easy generalisation.
What is truly remarkable about Catherine-Heathcliff relationship is not just its passionate intensity but the fact that their love is elemental and enduring, always transcending the limits set by the social world. The extraordinary nature of their relationship is expressed in one of the most memorable passages in the novel:
. . . This is for the sake of one who comprehends in his person my feelings to Edgar and myself. I cannot express it: but surely you and everybody have an notion that there is, or should be, an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world
have been Heathcliff’s miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning. my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished. and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated. the universe would turn to a mighty stranger. I should not seem a part of it. My love for Lin-ton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it, I’m well aware, as winter changes; the trees. My love for Heathcliff resem-bles the eternal rocks beneath– a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff — he’s always, always in my mind — not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself — but as my own being — so don’t talk of our separation again — it is impracticable: and . . . . (Ch. Ix).
It is evident from this confession that for Catherine her relationship with Heathcliff is something more than love, passion, commitment; it is a craving, a need of a more fundamental kind. It has clear metaphysical overtones in the suggestion that a human being yearns for a vivifying contact with another in order to achieve a sense of completeness. There is this sense of kinship and identity between them and hence her remark, “Nelly, I am Heathcliff.”
In the light of this clear explication of the true nature of Catherine-Heathcliff relationship, it is not difficult to understand why Catherine chooses to marry Edgar. However, the general tendency among critics ranging from Arnold Kettle to Terry Eagleton is to offer social and economic factors as the major reasons for Catherine’s decision to marry Edgar in preference to Heathcliff. They fail to realise that what makes Catherine an exceptional woman is her profound conviction that her marriage with Edgar would in no way affect her unique relationship with Heathcliff. Even a sensitive critic like Q. D. Leavis, rather simplistically likens this to one who wants to have her cake and eat it too. And in recent years, the Feminist approach to Wuthering Heights has given us diverse readings of the novel. A representative illustration of such a reading is found in The Mad Woman in the Attic by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar. They regard the novel as a female version of the male bildungsroman and suggest that while “triumphant self-discovery” is the goal of the male hero, it is “anxious self-denial” which is the “ultimate product of female education.” They go on to remark that “what Catherine, or any girl, must learn is that she does not know her own name, and therefore cannot know either who she is or whom she is destined to be.” Such a sweepingly one-sided account of Catherine’s femininity is hard to accept since she is aware, even if partially, of what constitutes her true identity. It is important to remember that Wuthering Heights can also be read as a metaphysical romance with serious mystical overtones especially in relation to Catherine-Heathcliff relationship. And this should make it apparent that this relationship clearly
transcends societal barriers. What is truly fascinating in the novel is Emily Bronte’s questioning the very idea of individual identity as expressed in unequivocal terms in Catherine’s assertion that she is Heathcliff.
Note
1. Paper presented at the C. N. Sanjay Birth Anniversary Symposium on
“Great Moments in Life and Literature” at Dhvanyaloka on 8–9 November, 2001.
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Brontë Studies, Volume 28, Number 3 (November 2003): pp. 185–194. © The Brontë Society 2001.