Race Discourse In Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights

Purpose of article

Written by Turki S. Althubaiti, Race Discourse In Wuthering Heights, is a critical essay that is part of the European Scientific Journal - an online peer reviewed, open access journal, that is issued monthly and contains high quality research articles. The critical essay was written on March 15, 2015, and was produced in order to explore Emily Bronte’s use of racial discourse within her novel Wuthering Heights. The essay would appeal to those interested in humanities or more specifically, the way nineteenth-century race is explored in Wuthering Heights.

Summary

The essay begins by stating Emily Bronte’s novel Wuthering Heights ‘somehow embodies’ racial discourse (p201). Described as a well written, mysterious and racially explorative text, Wuthering Heights is a novel that is constructed in the essay to be a text that explores race in the nineteenth century. The essay, containing much critical analysis, suggests the novel and Heathcliff more specifically break away from the traditional nineteenth century thought and cultural understanding whilst highlighting the notion of white superiority to be

nothing more than a myth, that was overruled in the end by the once unprivileged, faceless and excluded Heathcliff. The essay, Race Discourse In Wuthering Heights also draws on Terry Eagleton’s exploration of Heathcliff and how he was portrayed in the novel. Heathcliff was constructed as ‘savage, lunatic, violent, subversive and uncouth-all stereotypical nineteenth-century Britain images of the Irish’(p205). Thus, further highlighting Wuthering Heights is an exploration of race in the nineteenth century as it clearly explores the notions and racial discourses of the time in which it was written. Althubaiti also makes reference to how Slavoj Sizek suggested nineteenth century race is highlighted through Heathcliff, particularly with Heathcliff’s treatment and how he is never accepted ‘as fully human and always deprived of his rights and equality’ (p209). This is a clear indication and depiction of the British attitudes of the time, whereby the white race was considered superior and any ‘other’ race therefore inferior.

Relevance/Evaluation

Turki Althubaiti’s study of Wuthering Heights is impressive and appreciable.

A well written and analytical inquiry, the essay is effective in highlighting the ways in which Wuthering Heights is an exploration of race in the nineteenth century. Turki Althubaiti uses many secondary sources in order to effectively consider how race and racial prejudice is reflected through the character Heathcliff. Althubaiti beautifully describes Emily Bronte’s authentic novel as an ‘imaginative art’ that ‘embodies the tensions and conflicts- racial, social, personal and spiritual - of nineteenth century capitalist society’ (p222). He also concludes Wuthering Heights proves to be a place where racial and societal norms were displaced and the dark skinned man with deep black eyes, is not a goblin or a ghoul, rather, ‘a human being, and free, like everyone else’

(p233).