Wuthering Heights and Marxist criticism As it is well known the original Marxist was the 19 th century German philosopher Karl Marx author of the seminal work of the communist movement Das Kapital He was also the first Marxist literary critic and he considered aesthetic matters as being dependent upon politics economics and history Central to Marxism and Marxist literary criticism is the materialistic insight that consciousness without which such things as art cannot be produced is not the source of social forms and economic conditions but rather it is their most important product The communist society that was anticipated by Marx and Engels would produce new forms of consciousness and belief and therefore ultimately of art Nevertheless a Modern Marxist literary critic must not necessarily be a political revolutionary or to focus solely on literary works with a radical social vision He must however adopt a radical vision of the purpose and function of literary criticism Marxism does not attempt to discover hidden meanings in texts in contrast with more traditional forms of criticism that in the words of Pierre Macherey try to coax the text into giving up its true latent or hidden meaning If it results that such a meaning is revealed by Marxist criticism it happens only after seeing the text as a material product to be understood in broadly historical terms That is to say a literary work is first viewed as a product of work and hence of the realm of economics Secondly it is viewed as a work that also performs work of its own by enforcing and reinforcing an ideology Marxist criticism does not simply describe the obvious but it reveals the complexity of a text by taking into account the social and economical relationships that were prerequisite to the work s creation The Marxist critic Terry Eagleton states this type of criticism shows the text as it cannot know itself and manifests those conditions of its making inscribed in its very letter about which it is necessarily silent rather than seek to intermediate between the reader and the text I shall now go on to present Terry Eagleton s essay on Wuthering Heights Myths of Power which treats the novel in terms of its reference to history class and economics and also in comparison with Charlotte Bronte s novels The critic starts from the premise that if the function of an ideology is to provide a deceptive solving of contradictions then Charlotte s novels are ideological in the sense of myths Jane Eyre is a myth because opposing forces are brought together in a coherence of interests and the novel achieves a proper ideological closure Nonetheless the same term is applied to Wuthering Heights therefore a distinction must be made between ideology and what Lucien Goldmann called world view that is the true total and coherent understanding of social relations Pierre Macherey a French Marxist literary critic claimed that literary works do not only reflect ideology but they are also fictions aesthetic works incorporating a certain world view Wuthering Heights is then a different type of myth which transcends time and approaches a world view It is able to perceive and display the contradictions that exist within culture while maintaining a clear and consistent unified vision of the universe What distinguishes the writing of Charlotte and Emily Bronte is the manner of dealing with antagonizing forces the former subjects and integrates them in a resolution while the latter draws upon contradictions and constantly confronts them Catherine Earnshaw for example is the embodiment of the idea that the conflict between passion and society is not fundamentally reconcilable While Jane Eyre is the story of a governess who ends up rich without compromising either her love for Mr Rochester or her middle class morality Catherine must choose between authenticity and social convention that is between Heathcliff and Edgar Her attempt to compromise will give rise to conflicts that eventually lead both her and Heathcliff to death While discussing Heathcliff the critic s main focus lies on the contradictions he represents and also generates He has an unknown identity and no social relations and thus poses a threat to the Earnshaws being the outsider who challenges every member of the family and the limits of their self enclosed social structure Based on this social perspective Hindley s aggression is motivated on his feeling that his social role of inheritor is subverted by Heathcliff s intrusion Catherine s attachment on the other hand comes naturally as she had no expectance of inheritance Her association with Heathcliff takes her down in the class system and at the same time outside it as Heathcliff s gipsy status signifies lower social class but also classless human being However this type of freedom is eventually turned against him by being denied access to culture by Hindley and being reduced to the status of a farm worker The following instance of social criticism can be identified here if in a burgeois society there is no liberty within its limits neither is there more outside its borders where Heathcliff s ability of running wild is paid with the price of cultural impoverishment In the world of Wuthering Heights personal integrity is transformed by culture Heathcliff returns a changed man after his two years absence and he utilises the cultural capital he has acquired to take revenge upon the society that had cast him off He now has the role of the oppressor but this does not signify liberty by repeatedly tormenting others he imprisons himself In a way he is sustained by his victims pain but separation from Catherine leads to his destruction The course followed by him goes from being Hindley s victim to being the oppressor and eventually his own executioner He tries to subvert the social system from inside it but freedom cannot be achieved in this manner because his social self is a false one having been created only to enable his passion for Catherine and eventually being reduced to a repetitive ritual of punishment of others Eagleton also marks the complexity of Heathcliff s social relations with Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange During adulthood he is the representative of a capitalist property dealing who wants to destroy the yeoman settlement represented by Hareton However he does this by employing weapons such as arranged marriages and property dealings that were typical of the Linton world of the landed gentry There is a duality in