In Need of Insights

"This secret truth would be something formulable as a univocal principle of plantation which would account for everything in the novel. The secret truth about Wuthering Heights, rather, is that there is no secret truth which criticism might formulate in this way. No hidden identifiable ordering principle which will account for everything stands at the head of the chain or at the back of the back. Any formulation of such a principle is visibly reductive. It leaves something important still unaccounted for."
Wuthering Heights: Repetition and the "Uncanny" by J. Hillis Miller

"What is it that, with this novel, the logical mind so conspicuously fails? What does this have to do with the gage or promissory note that both holds off death and risks death, puts one's death on the line, as a kind of mortgage insurance? Why is it that an interpretative origin, logos in the sense of ground, measure, chief word, or accounting reason, cannot be identified for Wuthering Heights? If such an origin could be found, all obscurity could be cleared up. Everything could be brought out in the open where it might be clearly seen, added up, paid off, and evened out. What forbids this accounting?"
Ibid

A teacher told me that in HIS OPINION - as if it were ONLY his - all the problems of the novel could be solved by interpreting Old Earnshaw's words "A gift from god" as a confession that Heathcliff is his illegitemate son, and since that would make him a half-brother to Catherine their union cannot be completed according to certain religious or evolutionary rules which the whole novel then would go to prove and to show the consequences of their transgression. (These are not his exact words, rather, their implication).

What questions does this interpretation leave unanswered? I thought about it over and over and found nothing that would be "reduced" or left out by adopting this as the secret truth, the same Miller said is non-existent.
This point could not have escaped the attention of a critic like Miller, and if he was so strongly advocating the absence of an all-inclusive justifying core, he would have deemed this point unable of achieving such a position. BUT WHY?

If anything comes to mind as being left out by this interpretation please help.
My torment has been that Miller presented his point with such a good show of reason, and that teacher with such an ego-centric confidence stole an opinion and made it his own, and that his easily-stolen opinion could with the same ease refute Miller's "good show of reason", for me at least, because I can't think of what this interpretation would leave out.

Anything would be helpful.
Thanks in Advance.

Oh I wish I could help you. It's been a while since I read this wonderful novel. I'm not sure I've heard that Heathcliff was an illegitemate son. I thought he was adopted from the middle east. But my memory may not be so good. I wish I could comment on Miller's comment. The book is too far from me for such a specific question, but if you want to support Miller's comment I would go with the argument that Heathcliff's and Catherine's relationship goes beyond any possible rationality, so even if there is some secret then it is irrelevant. I've always said that Wuthering Heights is the best English novel of the 19th century.

Thank you very much for replying to my question so quickly.
I was of the opinion that this is a form of bending the text too far for a certain purpose. If Heathcliff was Earnshaw's illegitimate son, why didn't he make sure that he would be well provided for after his death? Besides Bronte does not seem so passionate about the religious or evolutionary issues that such a view would envoke.
But this alone is not enough. Only by finding, even one instance, this view would leave unaccounted for, can my torment end.
Thanks Again.

I have already posted this in the Wuthering Heights sub-forum, and got only one response. I don't know if I'm breaking any forum rules by reposting it here.

"This secret truth would be something formulable as a univocal principle of plantation which would account for everything in the novel. The secret truth about Wuthering Heights, rather, is that there is no secret truth which criticism might formulate in this way. No hidden identifiable ordering principle which will account for everything stands at the head of the chain or at the back of the back. Any formulation of such a principle is visibly reductive. It leaves something important still unaccounted for."
Wuthering Heights: Repetition and the "Uncanny" by J. Hillis Miller

"What is it that, with this novel, the logical mind so conspicuously fails? What does this have to do with the gage or promissory note that both holds off death and risks death, puts one's death on the line, as a kind of mortgage insurance? Why is it that an interpretative origin, logos in the sense of ground, measure, chief word, or accounting reason, cannot be identified for Wuthering Heights? If such an origin could be found, all obscurity could be cleared up. Everything could be brought out in the open where it might be clearly seen, added up, paid off, and evened out. What forbids this accounting?"
Ibid

A teacher told me that in HIS OPINION - as if it were ONLY his - all the problems of the novel could be solved by interpreting Old Earnshaw's words "A gift from god" as a confession that Heathcliff is his illegitemate son, and since that would make him a half-brother to Catherine their union cannot be completed according to certain religious or evolutionary rules which the whole novel then would go to prove and to show the consequences of their transgression. (These are not his exact words, rather, their implication).

What questions does this interpretation leave unanswered? I thought about it over and over and found nothing that would be "reduced" or left out by adopting this as the secret truth, the same Miller said is non-existent.
This point could not have escaped the attention of a critic like Miller, and if he was so strongly advocating the absence of an all-inclusive justifying core, he would have deemed this point unable of achieving such a position. BUT WHY?

If anything comes to mind as being left out by this interpretation please help.
My torment has been that Miller presented his point with such a good show of reason, and that teacher with such an ego-centric confidence stole an opinion and made it his own, and that his easily-stolen opinion could with the same ease refute Miller's "good show of reason", for me at least, because I can't think of what this interpretation would leave out.

Anything would be helpful.
Thanks in Advance.

Would anyone care to help? Please :bawling:
Anything would be of use.

It's been awhile since I read this book.

As to Miller's assertion that the book can't be reduced to a formula, I'm in complete agreement.

By definition the underlying principle of any work of art is beyond the grasp of matter of fact explanations.

That is exactly what set my confusion about. If the book can't be reduced to a formula - which seems reasonable enough - how is it then, that Heathcliff's being the illegitimate child of Old Earnshaw appears to be that very same justification or formula?
My question, whose answer I need to assert this view, persists. What are the things that are left out by this "Formula"?

If this is true, and can be adequately advocated, it seems able to stand as a justification for the whole novel.
What do you think?

There is no proof? it is merely speculation. It is possible, and highly likely (given the cash that magically appears for Heathcliff) but not proven. It would seem likely, given the Byronic nature of Bronte literature, but still, there is no real substantial proof.

The affair seems unlikely to me however, because of the descriptions of Heathcliff. They seem to imply some sort of dark-skinned/Romani origins (he is referred to as a Gypsy in the book), and the dark supernatural elements surrounding him.

Either way, his legitimacy has/could have no affect on how events transpire, because he is never told of them, and neither is Catherine. The events seem class-oriented rather than religion-oriented.

Someone else just asked this question. If I can find the thread I'll cross link it here.

Edit: Here it is and it was asked by the same person: http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=34725

The parts of a story might be charted as conflict, complication, denouement and resolution. The formula as we've termed the conflict is a mere part of the story.

I thought posting the question differently might help with the answers.

I'm stuck defending something I don't really believe in, and without enough evidence for not doing so.

Heathcliff's gypsy inheritance could have come to him through his mother.
This view could disregard the mutual unawareness simply by saying that Brontë advocated the part religion or evolution played in life even if it happened behind the scenes, and even in the absence of knowledge as a kind of test or proof of impossibility, that such proximity is practically inconceivable. In the same manner that you and I might say that Brontë's orientation was towards the implications of classes.
There is some similarity, I think, to Oedipus's unawareness.


This formula, our formula, Miller's non-existent formula is what brings the whole book into light, so that nothing is left in the dark, and everything makes sense. This concept of formula is instinctively repulsive to me, the only problem is, that If Heathcliff's being Catherine's half brother is this formula, it seems all too possible, and all too accounting for the novel than it not being so or than the absence of the formula. As you refer to the formula as being only a part of the book, what other parts are left in the dark by its application?

The question remains, what is left out?

Without a conflict, whether it be the protagonist versus antagonist or the author against an overused cliched formula, there is no story to speak of.

Still it's only a starting point, the conflict. Take the title WUTHERING HEIGHTS. It means to hurl, to bluster, a derivative of whither. One might easily argue that living in such a manner, as represented by Heathcliff, is the formula of the book, that its a paean to wildness & savageness and that amid such bluster and ferocity the sensitive civilized world of Catherine as contrived by Old Earnshaw is doomed.

Catherine's civility was rather "imposed" on her by "the" Thrushcross Grange, mark the way Catherine was looking into the Grange from the outer windows with Heathcliff, the dogs' scene as told by Heathcliff and the change she exhibits after first coming back from there.

There is not an "overused cliched formula" in the book unless your talking about the supposed love story which, by no means, could stand as the "formula" "cliched" or not of the book.

Miller's view which exposes the inevitable flaws of any potential "formula" stands remarkably well establishing the impossibility of a governing principle for the novel; as such that would leave nothing out, that won't be partial and that would be what always seems "missing" from the novel.

My application of the term "formula" was exactly what Miller termed "the secret truth". And only a formula in that sense, or rather it's absence and governing the entire work, could be held and questioned with the possibility of Heathcliff's being Catherine's half-brother as an "underminer".

Why should the formula extend only to the conflict? If that's what you understand by it.

The question is still here, What is left out?

Any new insights?

I can't say I altogether understand what Miller is going on about in his highflown style, but as my old tutor used to say, throwing the book across his desk, 'Show it to me in the text! Go on! Show it to me in the text! If it isn't in the text, it isn't in the story, it's something you're grafting on to it.' And I feel drawing this implication of consanguinity between Catherine and Heathcliff, based on this one remark by Mr Earnshaw, is tenuous in the extreme.

As for a formula, the book is formulaic in all its aspects - Heathcliff is the architypal Byronic hero; he is a Force of Nature; there is an implication of demonic forces; the setting is isolated, the characters are in their own microcosm, unaffected by the standards of the outside world; when ordinary life in the form of Thrushcross Grange impinges on them, their world collapses, tragedy ensues. But having said that, it is what Emily Bronte does with the formula that makes the book unique - she takes it to the extreme of the Byronic, Gothic melodrama, lifting it beyond the sensationalism of its predecessors to the higher plane of tragedy. (Remember the old definition of Tragedy - Pity and Terror: as readers we are drawn towards the characters because they embody and surrender themselves to all the passion we would like to feel, the pity, and the same time we are appalled by their self-destruction and draw back in terror of such violent emotion. The characters are in the grip of this whirlwind of emotion, they can no more save themselves by rational objectivity than fly - therein lies the tragedy.) No author following her can do more with the basic raw materials of Byronic passion, no other author has ever seriously tried. The book is a dead-end in the genre. For comparison, consider Hamlet - it's a Revenge Tragedy but it's a revenge tragedy like no other, way above those that came before it in the realisation of the implications of the genre. And afterwards, the genre quietly faded away because there was nowhere else for it to go.

Didn't you have a certain expectation of something coming up along the way while reading the novel, a sort of a destination that all the symbols had lead you to, and didn't you feel that something was missing after finishing it? This is what Miller is talking about, only he is talking about its absence, its impossibility; because "Any formulation of such a principle is visibly reductive. It leaves something important still unaccounted for."

The possibility of the "consanguinity" (thanks for finding another way of putting it) between Catherine and Heathcliff doesn't seem to me to be "reductive" in any way; it seems well-enough able to stand as the "principle" Miller shows the absence of. It also seems able to challenge textual boundaries.

What I wanted to find was something "reduced", something left out, something that could not be accounted for by saying that Heathcliff is indeed Catherine's half-brother.
Well I couldn't, and this was frightening both because such a far-fetched assumption could so easily derange a well constructed realization of many realizations of the novel (Miller's) and that I was unable to defend it, even by something from within the textual boundaries. At times I think that I might have not understood Miller correctly but the word 'reductive' keeps coming to me.

I submitted this post in hope that someone might have catched, or might be able to catch what I had missed.

I'm sorry for all the confusion we created with our use of the word 'formula', I for one only meant what Miller termed 'the secret truth' or the apparently absent governing principle of the novel, I didn't intend to use it as meaning 'structure'. But yes the novel yields to the structures of Victorian realism but with a 'twist' as Miller says.

I don't think that the Aristotelian definition of Tragedy is applicable to Wuthering Heights, especially the catharsis; I don't feel after reading the novel that I am 'calm of mind, all the passion spent'.
Are you saying that the characters are placed just to obey the form and that they cannot escape only because it would disfigure it?

As for Hamlet, I can't help loving the play but I also can't help but admitting that it is an artistic failure.

P.S. I envy your ability of using punctuation marks.

I think maybe what Miller cannot account for is Emily Bronte herself - think of the circumstances in which the book was written: physical, intellectual and emotional isolation. It is the outpouring of a very lonely individual whose imagination was fed by the books available to her, mostly the current fashion for the Gothic and bizarre, with no means of measuring her concepts against the minds of contemporary society. (I've been to Haworth only in summer and it was bleak enough then - in winter it must be daunting, to say the least.) If he is looking for a reason to suspend disbelief (ie to enter someone else's imaginary world) I think it isn't there; Emily didn't feel she had to justify her characters, to her they existed and that was justification enough.

As for catharsis, don't you feel emotionally drained at the end of it? All that storm and passion is exhausting! At one time of my life I longed for such grand passions but upon mature reflection I think I am glad it passed me by.

The circumstances you are talking about are best illustrated by Charlotte Brontë in her Preface to the 1850 edition of Wuthering Heights which started the critical stance for the novel in all the subsequent essays and books. Miller addresses this issue at length and I'm sorry that I cannot cite the entire essay.

Suppose that Heathcliff and Catherine turned suddenly merry, after Heathcliff had come back from his mysterious trip, that Catherine had left Edgar, and that she and Heathcliff got married, had children, began a felicitous life and had a happily-ever-after. How queer would that have been, incompatible to say the least?
Also consider the social boundaries all the characters operate under; how Catherine (IN THE TEXT and before her famous "I am Heathcliff" speech) said that it would degrade her to marry Heathcliff.
She - Emily - was inevitably "measuring her concepts against the minds of contemporary society" in one way or another.

The enigma of Wuthering Heights is the issue of destination or origin whichever terming you prefer; where do all the signs in the novel lead us to, and what do they signify? The novel is like an endless onion, a coreless onion. This sets the reader to finding a governing principle that would bring an end, a core to the onion. And the consanguinity between Heathcliff and Catherine serves this purpose. But does it leave anything out? (I wish it did, but I couldn't find anything).

I feel lost at the end, was Heathcliff victorious, was he defeated, was he both? What about Catherine? What about the grave stones???
I don't feel that my emotions have been channeled to exhaustion, rather enraged by confusion.

Do you think maybe it is too 21st century to be looking for a resolution in this way? Was Emily Bronte thinking of these characters as somehow elemental?They exist, like the winds that wuther round the heights, they do not live life governed by the rules that control us lesser mortals. It's perhaps not insignificant that the title is Wuthering Heights.

You seem to be going with Charlotte's Preface

"The writer who possesses the creative gift owns something of which he is not always master - something that at times strangely wills and works for itself."

Granted, but also observe that Charlotte offered another three different readings of Wuthering Heights. And Charlotte is as immediate as we can get to Emily.
The way of thought that you portray as too modern is - I think - universal; i.e the cause-result relation; What is the function of all the signs, or even more directly, what do they signify?
Are they there merely to confuse the reader? Put and jotted just to add unjustified mystery to the text, or where they there bare of any allegorical sense?
To think socially, Catherine's admission that it would degrade her to marry Heathcliff, or before that when she gave out the dreams of a girl of that time; to be married to a man who is well-situated socially and financially… etc
How would you explain her acting as a 'lesser human' by marrying Edgar?

My question remains unanswered much as Heathcliff stands at the end "unredeemed".

I'm new to this forum, but this discussion has fascinated me, and I hope you don't mind me joining in.

I do see how Heathcliff being an illegitimate son could fit, but did not find it necessary to explain some of the things you mention - because I've always felt the "trick" to understanding the book is to take literally several things most people seem not to.

For example, Catherine's explanation to Nelly of why she must marry Linton is usually taken as rationalization for her selfishness and materialism. Now, I'm not saying she's neither of those things, but I do think she truly believes a marriage to Heathcliff would result in Hindley turning them out to go begging - not only degrading Catherine, but Heathcliff's hopes as well. I also think she's right about that. Her poorly thought-out alternate plan befuddles both Nelly and the reader at first: she seems to think she can have a physical marriage with Linton while maintaining her spiritual marriage with Heathcliff, and somehow they will all get along. But she's a teenaged girl who's grown up with the reality of always being a man's property: women were literally defined in law as the property of their husbands, incapable of having rights or needs that could not be served by serving the husband's needs. Who wouldn't be terrified of becoming the legal property of a man who has no means to support himself? Who would want to be the reason for that man losing what little security he has, if she truly loved him? By ceasing to be Hindley's property and becoming Edgar's, Catherine believes somehow she will have it in her power to help Heathcliff. She is actually trying to accrue what power a woman in her world can, and save her soulmate - a fact that escapes every character in the novel, because the idea of a woman attempting (however feebly) to rescue a man doesn't even occur to them.

I believe one of the most prominent themes in this book is "how male rivalries spoil what could be a really lovely existence, and how women suffer for it." In the end, it's the ghost of "Catherine Linton" Heathcliff must accept, not Catherine Earnshaw. He must accept the Linton part of her and stop expecting to have his Cathy all to himself. This suggests it was Heathcliff Bronte saw as needing to overcome selfishness. Sometimes it seems to me she almost forgives his other misdeeds - after all, he's only what Hindley made him. It's his unwillingness to share "Catherine Linton" that needs to be resolved for the story to make sense.

Just some thoughts, based solely on my reading of the book and what little criticism I've read of it over the years. :)