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I.
-This begs the question of how language is manifested from the girls
perspective.
According to Homan, women possess both the figurative or symbolic
language, which they share with men, as well as the literal language, which
the son renounces.
-Homan argues that Emily Bronte uses the stories of Catherine Earnshaw and
of her daughter, Cathy Linton to portray her own perspective on this myth,
as well as how it influences the writing process.
-She begins by analyzing the various representations of nature which are
portrayed in the novel, in relationship to language: The narrator, Lockwood,
follows the Lacanian pattern and seeks a series of substitutions (looking for
one woman after another), while never directly representing nature because
of his fear of the literal. Whereas he favors language, especially figurative
language, the young Cathy as well as the old Catherine privilege nature.
-Similarly, Homan argues that young Cathy also deflects from nature, but not
because she feels threatened by it. Rather, she avoids naming nature out of
love for it, as she desires to protect or preserve it from the effects of
symbolization. Homan draws a valid comparison between Lockwood and
Cathy, claiming that, while they both eventually enter the symbolic order,
the first chooses language, whereas the latter opts for nature.
-Homan observes that young Cathy first meets Heathcliff when she is
accidentally locked outside of the park gates, without Nellys protection.
Because she is separated from her mother, she is thus forced to abide to the
Law of the Father. According to Homan, Heathcliff seduces Cathy into the
domain of his law, and, by the end of the novel, the daughter is fully
integrated within the patriarchal law, as a woman engaged and to be
married. In this respect, the daughter negotiates the passage from lawless
childhood to adulthood within the symbolic order far better than her mother
does, as she successfully shapes it to fit her needs.
+The story exposes, not natures destructiveness to human meaning, but
one human childs destructiveness towards nature. The episode in which
Heathcliff kills the birds reveals vividly that he was as sadistic in his relatively
happy childhood as he is as an adult.
+Cathys interdict in shooting extends only to lapwings, while, by
distinguishing shooting as the one form of killing of which she disapproves,
she half admits her attraction to the far more perverse technique Heathcliff
did use. She takes pleasure in the verification of her power over him. Symbol
making here both depends upon reproduces pain and loss, since loss is the
motive and since to use nature for a symbol is to kill it.
+The figure of Nelly, who is without doubt a mother figure in the novel, is
seen differently by the two Cathys.
Catherine sees her as an aged woman, right before her death she
hallucinates a restoration of the mother, wilfully converting Nelly from
servant to the patriarchy into a female outlaw like herself;
Cathy, seventeen years later, will fear the death of Nelly because her
own entry into the symbolic order is effectually doing away with Nellys
maternal presence.
-The difference between the two Cathies is that, while they both initially
privilege nature, the young Cathy becomes incorporated in the patriarchal
system, while her mother refuses to enter the Law of the Father, and thus
manages to preserve the literal and is a reflection of womens language
outside the law.
-The losing of the name is another topic tackled by Homan. According to her:
+Once the identity Catherine has shifted to the baby, the first Catherine losses
her name and becomes simply the mother, adjunct to the primary identity of the
heir, the new Catherine. If motherhood produces regression to childhood, then the
real child who causes her death and the childhood to which she suicidally yearns to
return are the same.