Otherness and Representation

A couple of Brontë-related essays appearing on the latest issue of Otherness: Essays & Studies:

Adele Hannon also argues for a reconsideration of those othered by contemporary society, though shifting from media representations of twentieth-century America to literary representations in early Victorian England. In “Othering the Outsider”, Hannon argues that while intererpretations of Emily Brontë’s iconic novel, Wuthering Heights, often present Heathcliff as monstrous, and settles him in a framework of alterity, her analysis challenges this notion by looking at the figure of the monster. She argues that the consideration of the monster, seen through a postmodern lens, is destabilized and undermined in its  otherness, which challenges conventional readings of Heathcliff, who is then best read as an antihero as opposed to a prototypical Gothic villain. She argues that affiliations between the unknown and undefinable Heathcliff map more appropriately onto the reader’s own anxieties, and thus reconsideration of the representation of the cultural other needs to be taken.
Likewise, Rachel Willis, in “‘A Man is Nothing without the Spice of the Devil in Him’”, urges looking at an iconic Victorian anti-hero in a new light. Here she uses considerations of Rochester’s masculinity in interpreting the elder Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Willis argues that associations of Rochester with an imperialist and colonialist frame is part of the literary representation, rather than references to contemporary historical representation, and that within the novel reading Jane and Rochester’s respective gendered presentations is key to understanding the structural message of the novel. (Matthias Stephan)

Otherness: Essays & Studies
Issue 6.2: Otherness and Representation
November/December
2018

Othering the Outsider: Monstering Abject Bodies in Wuthering Heights
Adele Hannon, Mary Immaculate College

The gothic villain functions as a reminder of social groups that exist on the margins of society, whom, to many observers, are viewed as the ‘graphic smear’ or the ‘Other’, a distortion that interrupts the normative progression of the homogenous space. Its position as the literary antihero instructs its audience on how societal and cultural norms force a deprecated identity, whether it be the ethnic, gendered or foreign Other, to be seen only as an ambiguous disturbance to the status quo. A universal preoccupation with labelling the Other as monster has engendered a plethora of inconsistent meanings of the term. The monster can be seen to act as a metaphor for those who transcend the limits of acceptable behaviour, and subsequently become identified as ‘abnormal’, victimised by inflexible expectations and intolerant stereotypes. Essentially, this essay will contribute to existing studies of Heathcliff as the Unheimlich monster, but it will also investigate his role as the human monster, and probe what that meant for the development of the Gothic genre. Building on an analysis of Brontë’s well-established Gothic villain, this analysis will also deconstruct traditional monstrous identities, and reconstruct new interpretations of what we consider evil or ‘Other’. Through use of the anamorphic lens, or as Lyle Massey calls it ‘distorted perspective’, Heathcliff is no longer excluded to the margins but is transformed within the contemporary literary sphere. Anamorphosis reveals the need for dual perspectives, highlighting previously ignored insights concerning distorted identities. Its value stems from its ability to deconstruct the error of the first depicted image, and shows the need for multi-perspectival approaches as the Gothic genre develops. For Heathcliff, this allows him to be reborn and to balance on the binary of villain and victim.

“A Man is Nothing without the Spice of the Devil in Him”: Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester Navigate an Imperially-Inscribed Masculinity
Rachel Willis, University of Lynchburg

In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Edward Rochester’s imperially-inscribed masculinity, anchored in Victorian patriarchal ideals, requires Jane to negotiate and eventually resist his attempts to dominate her. Recent readings of the novel by scholars like Joyce Zonana and Ralph Austen acknowledge its heavy reliance on colonial discourse, arguing that this discourse allows Brontë to critique the Western patriarchal values that Jane grapples with by displacing them onto the colonial “other.” The Victorian patriarchal society Jane lives in marginalizes her in several ways, and the novel uses colonial themes to portray this marginalization. However, these themes also offer her ways of resistance, especially in relation to Rochester. Rochester’s masculinity, which is both marginalized according to British class standards and hegemonic according to his social position and wealth, is also figured both in colonial terms as Jane’s colonizer and in terms that mark his otherness. For example, Jane associates Rochester with the “oriental” whenever he tries to dominate her in ways that go against her Christian faith, positioning him as a “savage” and a “heathen”—a man who is powerful but still in need of the civilizing (and emasculating) Protestant religion. Thus, examining Jane’s navigation of Rochester’s imperially-inscribed masculinity offers insight into the novel’s negotiation of power and oppression.