Foreman Thesis

Foreman 0
DUKE UNIVERSITY
Durham, North Carolina

From Status to Contract: Domesticating
Modernity in Wuthering Heights, The Mill on the Floss and Dracula

Violeta Solonova Foreman
March, 2011

Undergraduate Critical Honors Thesis
Trinity College of Arts and Sciences
English Department

Foreman 1
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My deepest thanks to my thesis advisor, Professor Psomiades for her dedication, insight, positivity, encouragement, and inspiration. Also, thank you to loved ones for your constant support and love.

Foreman 2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements……………………………………………………...…………ii
Table of contents………………………………….…………………….………...iii
Dedication………………………..………………………………………………...v
Epigraph…………...………………………………………………………………vi
I.

Introduction………………………………………………………………..………1

II.

Chapter I: Wuthering Heights……………………………………...……………11
i.
ii.

Heathcliff; ―the disease of advancing civilization‖………………..………13

iii.

Kindred: A Flexible Categorization……………………………………….18

iv.

Capitalism: Ploy or Maxim………………………………………………..21

v.

Revenge……………………………………………………………...…….25

vi.

Heathcliff‘s Potestas…………………………………………………….…27

vii.

Patriarchy: Heathcliff vs. Edgar…………………………………………...30

viii.

The New Family………………………………………………………...…35

ix.
III.

Introduction………………………………………………………………..11

Conclusion………………………………………………………………....37

Chapter II: The Mill on the Floss…………………………………..……………39
i.
ii.

Mr. Tulliver‘s Cock-Flight and Tom‘s ―Eddication‖……………………...40

iii.

Mr. Deane and Tom: The Bootstrap Colloquy………………………...…..47

iv.

Family Property and the Rise of the Nuclear Family……………………...52

v.

Maggie……………………………………………………………………..63

vi.
IV.

Introduction………………………………………………………………..39

Conclusion……………………………………………..…………………..65

Chapter III: Dracula……………………………………………………………..66

Foreman 3
i.
ii.

Familial Unions: Vampires and Humans………………………………….68

iii.

Domesticity and Sociality: Dracula‘s Via Vitae……………………...……78

iv.

Dynasticism, Patriarchy and Nationality…………………………………..83

v.

The Family Corporation and Status……………………………………….87

vi.
V.

Introduction……………………………………………………………..…66

Conclusion…………………………………………………………………92

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………...94
Works Cited………………………………………………………………………96

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DEDICATION
To Those I Love: Marina, Ray, Sasha and Ralph

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“It is nineteenth century up-to-date with a vengeance. And yet, unless my senses deceive me, the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere „modernity‟ cannot kill” -

Dracula, Bram Stoker

“The work of nature in making generations is a patchwork — part resemblance, part contrast” -

Physics and Politics, Walter Bagehot

Foreman 6

From Status to Contract: Domesticating Modernity in
Wuthering Heights, The Mill on the Floss and Dracula
INTRODUCTION
In England, the nineteenth-century was a time of change.
The social developments instigated by the French Revolution in France were making way across the channel, intensified by the technological innovation generated by the Industrial Revolution. As social hierarchies were altered by the rise of the middle class, so too was political organization disturbed with the passage of the Great Reform act of 1832. The final transition to a constitutional monarchy at home, together with the fall of the ancient
Spanish, Chinese, Holy Roman, Portuguese and Mughal empires abroad, made the period a time of unprecedented and fundamental change. Modernity, with a unique concentration on the present rather than the glorification of the past found in classicism or romanticism, would become the measure of social life. While the principles that would define modernism were evolving, as Bram Stoker notes, ―the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere ‗modernity‘ cannot kill.‖1 The literature of the time reflected the transitional phase within the realism of the newly popular medium – the novel.
Exploring the role of self and society, the novel, with the genre of realism as its distinguishing feature, allowed for a theoretic space in which social change could be understood and mastered. With antecedents in autobiographic and epistolary works,2 the novel offered an intimate and ‗real‘ microcosm of the contemporary social landscape, contributing new, or

1

2

Stoker, Bram. Dracula: A Mystery Story. New York: W. R. Caldwell & Co., 37. Print.

Williams, Chris. A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Britain. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2004. 446447. Print.

Foreman 2 literally novel, case studies that reflect how individuals could, and did, come to terms with modernity. Literary critics often use twentieth-century theories of social or psychological development to explicate character motivations or plot progression in the nineteenthcentury. Yet, would not such analysis be more fruitful if the works were read in context of
Victorian theory that is able to offer a glimpse into how Victorians themselves understood their relation to history and their role in society? To capture this very notion I will turn to the Victorian comparative jurist and historian Sir Henry Maine and his book Ancient Law
(1861), which will provide the theoretical framework to my analysis. Henry Maine is pertinent to this study because his legal theories reveal how writers of the period theorized the emergence of modernity. The novels I have chosen precede, are concurrent with, and follow the publication of Maine‘s work, so that the impact and progression of social development can be perceived over the span of the century. It is known that George Eliot read Maine‘s work and thus his influence can be more directly surmised in The Mill on the
Floss. By the time Bram Stoker published Dracula in 1897, Maine‘s theories were ubiquitous and although it is unknown whether the author encountered Maine‘s work personally, the ideas put forth in Ancient Law would inevitably have influenced Stoker via popular culture. In the case of Emily Brontë, however, Wuthering Heights predates the insight offered by Maine, but in some ways it follows Maine‘s thesis. The work of both authors can be seen as a response to the issues of 1840s-1850s. The move from status to contract that Maine identified, was not isolated to the time of his publication, but was the impetus behind the French Revolution, and the ideals of liberté, égalité, fraternité that were expressed almost a century earlier. While Emily Brontë, unlike George Eliot, would not have read Maine‘s work, the social changes later identified by Maine could not have

Foreman 3 escaped her. Wuthering Heights explores concepts later solidified in Ancient Law and thus
Maine‘s theory is critical in explicating the novel.
The achievement of Henry Maine is perhaps best summarized by John Hartman
Morgan who introduced Ancient Law with the following lines:
Published in 1861, it immediately took rank as a classic, and its epoch-making influence may not unfitly be compared to that exercised by Darwin 's Origin of Species. The revolution effected by the latter in the study of biology was hardly more remarkable than that effected by Maine‘s brilliant treatise in the study of early institutions.3
Discussing the development of law in the nineteenth century A.W.B. Simpson went so far as to claim that Henry Maine ―wrote the only legal best seller of that, or perhaps any other century.‖4 Immensely well written, the book had a cross-generational appeal, as well as the propensity to reference multiple topics fashionable at the time.5 It participated in the contemporary debate about progress, as Maine sought ―constantly to assess whether or not certain practices encouraged or impeded the development of societies.‖6 Unlike previous, prominent jurists, such as Jeremy Bentham and John Austin, who perceived law as a wholly abstract entity ―independent of any particular place in which it functions,‖ Maine understood law as inextricable from social practices and historical events.7 Hailed as one
3

Maine, Henry S.. Ancient Law, Its Connection with the Early History of Society and Its Relation to Modern
Ideas. Ed. John H. Morgan. The University of California: J.M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., 1960. Print.
4

Simpson, A. W. B. "Contract: The Twitching Corpse." Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 1 (1981): 265-68.
Print.
5

Cocks, Raymond. Sir Henry Maine: A Study in Victorian Jurisprudence. Cambridge, New York, Port
Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town: Cambridge UP, 2004. Print.
6

Cocks, 2.

7

Ibid.

Foreman 4 of the forefathers of modern sociology of law, as well as anthropology, Maine‘s project was to trace the emergence and development of the modern concepts of contract and the
Individual.
By using Maine‘s work, we are able to understand the status quo and status quo ante as Victorians themselves did. It is important to note, however, that Ancient Law divulges the evolution of modern law from an earlier Roman prototype, rather than analyzing ancient jurisprudence in isolation. Indeed, Maine‘s objective is ―to indicate some of the earliest ideas of mankind, as they are reflected in Ancient Law, and to point out the relation of those ideas to modern thought (italics mine).‖8 The transformations his book takes into account can be said to project the metamorphosis of his own culture onto that of antiquity. The need to rationalize the breach between modes of association is evident in the work of Maine and the literary authors in question. While Brontë, Eliot, and Stoker address the changing social landscape in the private sphere, Maine does so in the public. Putting the texts into dialogue will reveal a more complete understanding of how the novelists rationalized the developments of the milieu. By extrapolating Maine‘s theories of social progression and applying them to Wuthering Heights, The Mill on the Floss, and Dracula, we are able to understand character motivations as products of complex historic transformations. In the pre-modern past, social and economic life was organized in terms of kin. The attainment of prestige and influence of certain independent, but consanguine groups, over time, led to the development of aristocracies. In history, membership in this privileged class offered status and power, but as Maine argues, its benefits were bestowed at the cost of individualization. At such a point in societal development, according to Maine, a
8

Maine, Henry S.. Ancient Law, Its Connection with the Early History of Society and Its Relation to Modern
Ideas. 4th ed. London: John Murray, Albemarle Street, 1870. vii. Print.

Foreman 5 person‘s ―individuality was swallowed up by his family,‖ never was he ―regarded as himself, as a distinct individual.‖9 Thus, a society like ancient Rome, ―[had] for its units, not individuals, but groups of men united by the reality or fiction of blood-relationship.‖10
Modernity, however, provided an opportunity for volte-face; it nurtured individualization.
In multi-national, multi-ethnic imperial societies, like Imperial Rome and Modern
Britain, kinship was no longer a viable way of social organization. In Britain, ―the decline of kinship solidarities was understood as a necessary consequence of the economic specialization and bureaucratic rationalism associated with modernity and industrial development.‖11 Status was no longer ―colored by, the powers and privileges anciently residing in the Family,‖ as was the case in ancient Rome and pre-industrial England, according to Maine.12 Instead, there appeared a ―gradual dissolution of family dependency,‖ replaced by ―the growth of individual obligation in its place.‖13 As Maine concisely stated, ―the movement of progressive societies has hitherto been a movement from Status to Contract.‖14 Contract refers to the ―tie between man and man which
[replaced] by degrees those forms of reciprocity in rights and duties which have their origin in the Family.‖15 The ―free agreement of Individuals‖16 superseded ties of affinity.
With the move towards a contract-based society came new forms of social association.

9

Maine, 183.

10

Ibid, 183.

11

Allan, Graham. "Kinship." Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. Ritzer, George (ed). Blackwell
Publishing, 2007. Blackwell Reference Online. 23 January 2010 .
12

Maine, 170.

13

Ibid, 168.

14

Ibid, 170.

15

Ibid, 169.

16

Ibid, 169.

Foreman 6
People were no longer grouped though blood, rather, they were organized via the places they shared. The move from consanguinity to contiguity was crucial to the individualization of modern society.
Maine defined the development of social categories that the novels explore in the microcosm of a fictional reality. In novels we are able to see Maine‘s ideas set in motion, affect characters as they would real people, and determine a range of outcomes depending on the characters‘ individual proclivities, prejudices, adaptive capacities and environment.
The genre of realism that gained prominence in the nineteenth-century‘s prevailing medium, the novel, allowed for ―new realities‖ that mirrored the non-fictional world, but which also attempted to solve or fathom change. This need for reflection is a search for something to ground reality in a world that was rapidly and fundamentally changing from old sensibilities of custom, family ties, nobility, and other sentiments of the old order, to the new rationale of independence in the public and private spheres. Maine‘s narrative is theoretic in nature and seeks to give meaning to the nineteenth-century developments that the novelists addressed within the private spheres of each narrative. The novel‘s relation to the social is unique, for it can be both descriptive and speculative, without being merely reflexive. It is able to go beyond mere representation by exploring novel scenarios in which new realities pose new challenges for the characters, and offer new ways of mastering social change. While Maine abstracted the development of the Individual in law, the novels depicted his relation to society.
In the chapter on Wuthering Heights, I identify Heathcliff as a product of both antiquity and modernity, which differs from the critical precedent that attempts to pigeonhole his identity. At the outset, I explore the implications of his absent surname, which I argue qualifies him as an individual who is independent from familial ties. I then

Foreman 7 explore the subject of kinship, particularly the ways in which the adoption of individuals into the family unit, discussed by Maine, is played out in narrative form of Wuthering
Heights. Additionally, I argue that there is no clear marker in the novel to identify which moment in history the Heights belongs to, for it could function as both a feudal and modern manifestation of an estate. In the third section, I look at Heathcliff‘s largely capitalistic maneuvering. By targeting the Linton and Earnshaw families Heathcliff is acting as an individual capitalist pivoted against the old symbol of social order – the family
– as identified by Maine. Next, I analyze Heathcliff‘s entanglement with revenge and patriarchy both of which cast him as an individual tied to ancient forms of social relations.
Finally, in the last section, I take on the subject of Hareton and Catherine, arguing that their union is characterized by the creation of a nuclear family, one that is independent from generational ties and its symbols in the form of heirlooms.
In the second chapter, I argue that Eliot‘s realism in The Mill on the Floss embarks on a demystification of ancient social paradigms, focusing on the evolution of power, function, and structure of the family. The ―givens‖17 of the past familial social structure are no longer viable, according to Eliot, so that the archetypes of Gemeinschaft 18– consanguinity and hereditary status – are undermined in the novel. In their place, Eliot introduces a new kind of ―objectivity,‖19 in which I suggest, identity is no longer colored

17

Jameson, Fredric. "Realism and Desire: Balzac and the Problem of the Subject." The Political
Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Routledge Classics). 2 ed. New York: Routledge, 2006.
138. Print.
From here on out, I will use givens, Gemeinschaft, old order, and status quo ante to refer to the same concept of kinship structure that is organized in terms of contiguity, hereditary status, and familial rather than individual social units.
18

Gesellschaft – an associational society marked by impersonal, limited and contractual relationships of individuals in an urban-industrial world. Gemeinschaft – community feeling found in kinship groups.
19

Jameson, 138.

Foreman 8 by family name, status is not derived from ancestry, education is removed from family dominion, and extended kinship alliances are supplanted by the nuclear family. In The Mill on the Floss this new ―objectivity‖20 is firstly exemplified by Mr. Tulliver‘s lawsuit and
Mr. Deane‘s rise to prominence, both of which signify the rise of contractual modes of association outside the bounds of status derived from heredity. Secondly, the new order is epitomized by Tom‘s remote education, which, I will argue, signifies the birth of the
Tulliver nuclear family. This differs from Joshua Esty‘s argument, which identifies the premature birth of the Tulliver nuclear family as the result of the bankruptcy. Thirdly, the new objectivity is represented by Mrs. Glegg‘s financial independence, a point contrary to critical precedent thus far, which places Mrs. Glegg in the ―givens‖21 of the past social structure. I will prove that Mrs. Glegg‘s financial autonomy is not only a foil to Mrs.
Tulliver‘s fiscal dependency, but Eliot‘s commentary on women‘s property rights. Finally,
I will discuss the Dodson family as an example of the status quo ante that is not entirely untouched by the new objectivity, as well as Maggie‘s ahistoric station as a consequence of insufficient discernment. Focusing the discussion on secondary characters, I hope to avoid the idiosyncratic tendency of many scholars who center their study exclusively on
Maggie. Invoking the theories of Eliot‘s contemporary, Henry Maine, I will show the ways in which the subjects of Eliot‘s social experiment22 grapple with individuation wrought by modernity and obligation to consanguinity imposed by kinship.

From here on out, I will use objectivity, new objectivity, Gesellschaft, new order, and status quo to refer to the concept of contractual relations in which individuals, rather than families, are the social units.
20

Jameson, 138.

21

Ibid.

22

George Eliot wrote in a letter to Dr. Joseph Frank Payne; ―My writing is simply a set of experiments in life.‖ Letter to Dr. Joseph Frank Payne, 25 January 1876, Selections from George Eliot‟s Letters, ed. Gordon
S. Maight (New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1985) 466.

Foreman 9
In the chapter on Dracula, I argue that the Count displays dualistic tendencies not unlike Maggie and Heathcliff. First, I analyze the relations of the human characters stressing the egalitarian nature of their union and identify Quincey Jr. as a foil to Dracula.
Secondly, I turn to the family structure of the un-dead, classifying their union in terms of
Maine‘s theory concerning the adoption of individuals into the family unit. I then explicate the familial roles arguing that not only does incest cast the coterie in an antiquated light, but that the type of incest committed can further tie the union to an older model of social relations, explored in Romanticism. In the section on Dracula‘s domesticity and sociality, I identify his opulent castle, as well as his commitment to hospitality and revenge, as antiquated penchants that reveal the Count‘s reliance on outmoded social obligations. In the following section, the discussion on patriarchy and nationality centers on Dracula‘s understanding of society, which reflects Maine‘s theories of consanguinity and contiguity.
The final section focuses on the juxtaposition of Dracula‘s embodiment of the family corporation, with the individuality he displays in his single-handed invasion of England.
Coming to terms with modernization and the resulting social evolutions are the subjects that Brontë, Stoker, and Eliot explore, whether consciously or unconsciously, in their respective novels. The temporal setting of both Wuthering Heights (1847) and The
Mill on the Floss (1860) is antecedent to the novels‘ publication, while Dracula‟s (1897) setting is conspicuously concurrent. If looking back is a form of coming to terms with the present, Brontë and Eliot had, perhaps, more reason to do so, for at the time of the novels‘ publication the gears of change were spinning arguably faster, fueled by its novelty, while at the fin-de-siècle, when Stoker penned Dracula, pervasive change was ubiquitous requiring less rationalization. Stoker, of course, is no exception, for he too turned to antiquity, and in particular, the medieval past in constructing the novel. Even Maine, as

Foreman 10 discussed previously, referred to the ancient Roman jurisprudence to draw comparison and contrast to modern law. Rationalizing modern developments by turning to the stability of antiquity is a pervasive theme in the nineteenth-century. As people grapple with modern advances in virtually every area of life, the past provides a safe haven to which habit or fear often reverts. Indeed, the main, and even some secondary, characters of the three novels repeatedly conflate antiquity and modernity. They, however, must pay with their lives for their muddled fluctuations, for regression cannot belong to a world of progress, and if survival of the fittest truly describes the human condition then in the case of these novels the fittest are the most adept at assuming change.

Foreman 11
CHAPTER I: WUTHERING HEIGHTS
I.

INTRODUCTION
The central action of Wuthering Heights occurs within the turbulent epoch of the

French Revolution, predating the novel‘s publication in 1847, by almost sixty years. At the outset, the new régime across the channel was met with approbation, yet, the initial attitude of disinterestedness and speculation wore off as it became increasingly evident that the phenomena in France would, indeed, be of direct concern to England.1 As early as 1791,
―no question in English politics received greater attention than did the French
Revolution,‖2 as the Whigs and Tories debated the implications which were now seen in a hostile light. Brontë, no doubt, was exposed to the polarizing arguments of Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine that divided the socio-political spectrum of the time, within the numerous editorials on the subject in the Blackwood‘s Magazine, which the Brontës are known to have ardently followed. Scholars have argued extensively about Emily‘s individual understanding of post-Revolutionary politics. Looking to her opus, Neville F.
Newman, attributes to Emily a Burke-inspired sentiment from which she is said to ―[argue] for a re-installment of social relations based on inherited wealth.‖3 David Wilson in his appropriately titled study: Emily Brontë: First of the Moderns, however, identifies
Wuthering Heights as a ―reflection of the world of social conflict coming into being.‖4
Regardless of which opinion reflects Brontë‘s sentiments most accurately, it is telling that

1

Laprade, William Thomas. England and the French Revolution 1789 - 1797. Repr. ed. New York: AMS
Press, 1970. 9. Print.
2

Laprade, 10.

3

Newman, Neville F.. "Workers, Gentlemen and Landowners: Identifying Social Class in The Professor and
Wuthering Heights.‖ Brontë Society Transactions; The Journal of Brontë Studies 26.1 (2001): 16. Print.
4

Wilson, David. "Emily Brontë: First of the Moderns." Modern Quarterly Miscellany 1 (1947): 94-115.
Print.

Foreman 12 scholars perceive a need to categorize her novel‘s political ideology. Wuthering Heights belongs to ―the collective story or master narrative of the revolutionary drama [which] was retold and refashioned throughout the nineteenth century, even in ostensibly nonpolitical works.‖5 Consequently, the novel ―needs to be understood…as part of the ongoing attempt to come to grips with class conflict of the nineteenth century.‖6
Within this historical context, Wuthering Heights is more than a novel ―about
England in 1847,‖7 as Arnold Kettle argues. It is rather a product of conflicting ideologies
– both traditional and modern – that begin to battle for power on an unprecedented scale in the nineteenth century. Perhaps the strongest indication that these philosophical underpinnings are grounded in the novel is the characterization of Heathcliff, to use Terry
Eagleton‘s words, as ―contradiction incarnate – both progressive and outdated.‖8 Eagleton categorizes Heathcliff‘s nature in such a way because in caricaturing and embodying the
―traditionalist protest against the agrarian forces of Thrushcross Grange,‖ Heathcliff‘s sole purpose is Catherine.9 In effect, his soul belongs to Catharine10 and thus Heathcliff aspires towards an outdated cause of ―absolute personal value.‖11 He behaves in this contradictory manner, Eagleton surmises, because he is protesting ―against the marriage-market values of both Grange and Heights at the same time as he callously imagines those values in

5

Kadish, Doris Y.. "Introduction." Politicizing Gender: Narrative Strategies in the Aftermath of the French
Revolution. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991. 1-14. Print.
6

Kadish, 5.

7

Kettle, Arnold. "Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights (1847). "An Introduction to the English Novel; Volume 1
Defoe to George Eliot. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1960. 139-155. Print.
8

Eagleton, Terry. "Wuthering Heights."
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 1988. 97-121. Print.
9

s. 2nd ed.

Eagleton, 113.

10

From here on out I will refer to Catherine Earnshaw as ―Catherine‖ and to her daughter as ―Cathy.‖

11

Eagleton, 113.

Foreman 13 caricatured form.‖12 Yet, I would argue, Heathcliff‘s contradictions are not necessary specific to his relation to Catherine or the estates, rather his duality manifests a conflation of modernity and antiquity, as it existed in the public sphere of the time. In the novel‘s own classification, ―time stagnates.‖13 It does so, not because, as Maja-Lisa Sneidern suggests, the setting harkens to the ―mythical Anglo-Saxon past‖14 and ―heroic Victorian
England,‖15 but rather because it is a calm before the storm of fundamental change in which new modes of association will come to replace aristocratic privilege.
Henry Maine‘s synthesis of social progression offers a ready foundation from which historic transformations within the novel can be understood and harnessed. His theories are a rationalizing force of the otherwise emotionally charged and physiologically complex plot developments and character relations. The development in social interaction that he conceptualized in his extra-literary text can be traced in Wuthering Heights, yet, while the novel offers a human element in which modernity can be investigated, Maine offers such insight on a theoretic plane. In dialogue, the two texts reveal a more complete picture of modernization its consequences and manipulations of individual lives.
II.

HEATHCLIFF; “the disease of advancing civilization”16

12

Eagleton, 113.

13

Brontë, Emily. Wuthering Heights. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1848. 25. Print.

14

Sneidern, Maja-Lisa. "Wuthering Heights and the Liverpool Slave Trade." The Johns Hopkins University
Press 62.1 (1995): 171-196. Print.
15

Sneidern, 175.

16

E. Esquirol, Mental Maladies. A Treatise on Insanity, tr. E. K. Hunt Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard,
1845. 200. Print.
Jean-Etienne-Dominique Esquirol (1772-1840) was one of the founders of modern psychiatry. He first coined the term ‗monomania‘ around 1810. For a complete explanation concerning Esquirol‘s invention, consult Goldstein, Jan. Console and Classify: the French Psychiatric Profession in the Nineteenth Century.
Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Print.

Foreman 14
It has long been said, that insanity is a disease of civilization; it would have been more correct to have said this respecting monomania. Monomania is indeed frequent in proportion to the advancement of civilization.17 184518
Monomania, as defined by E. Esquirol, is the ―disease of the rising bourgeoisie,
[which] with its determined quest for self-fulfillment…has some relevance to our image of
Heathcliff as a man who, through relentless effort, raises himself above his social limitations and achieves conspicuous material success.‖19 Graeme Tytler‘s focus on the
―authenticity‖20 of Heathcliff‘s psychiatric disorder, much in line with Esquirol‘s work, is insightful, but misses the historic context that on a metaphoric level is truly responsible for the malady. The novel‘s setting is reflective of the century when democratic principles began to germinate in the socio-political consciousness, which was still largely attached to the time-honored principles of status as derived from heredity. In many ways Heathcliff is modern, almost too modern to function properly in society, yet he often displays tendencies that are traditional and even ancient, making his social amalgamation even less likely. The dichotomy of conflicting ideologies that press against his character is responsible both for his extremism and monomania. He is certainly not the only maladjusted character in Victorian literature, as Maggie Tulliver and Dracula, among others, face a similar dilemma, and for the same reason. At once revolutionary and traditional, like Heathcliff, they are a product of their time, sick with the disease of the advancing civilization, because they attempt to conflate progression with custom.
17

Esquirol, 200.

19

Tytler, Graeme. "Heathcliff 's Monomania: an Anachronism in Wuthering Heights." Brontë Society
Transactions 20.6 (1992): 331-343. Print.
20

Tytler, 337.

Foreman 15
However, the violence with which Heathcliff responds to his environment can be understood as a consequence of his debut earlier in the century, when intensified by their novelty, the enlightened principles of inalienable rights clashed powerfully with hierarchy and hereditary privileges. We can see in Heathcliff a force of revolutionary change – uncivil and untamable he can at once represent a peasant revolutionary in France and a
Chartist protestor in England. Indeed, Susan Meyer and David Wilson consider Heathcliff a ―true representative of the working men of… [Brontë‘s] time,‖21 who were ―rising in rebellion against an oppressive society.‖22 However, within the same individual we can also find traces of antiquity. As Neville Newman aptly indicates, Heathcliff ―symbolizes land ownership … [a] prerequisite of a feudal society,‖ which undeniably ties him to the past.23 Rather than attempting to pigeonhole Heathcliff into a singular category – modernity or antiquity – I suggest a synthesis. Heathcliff represents both the rise of an individual in a modern capitalist economy, and a patriarch tied to the very principles his individuality abhors. Understanding Heathcliff in terms of his duality more accurately reflects his function as a character device through which novelists and readers alike could fathom change.
The concept of an individual at odds with social forms of organization, defined by heredity and privilege, is perhaps epitomized by Heathcliff. The fact that Heathcliff does not have a surname and hence no family name that could tie him through consanguinity to that pre-revolution societal glue of heredity, is evidence enough of his independent character. Heathcliff is free from family dominion, for to have a surname is to carry a name
21

Wilson, 94-115.

22

Meyer, Susan. ―‗Your Father Was Emperor of China, and Your Mother an Indian Queen‘: Reverse
Imperialism in Wuthering Heights."Imperialism at Home; Race and Victorian Women 's Fiction. Ithaca and
London: Cornell University Press, 1996. 96-125. Print.
23

Newman, 15.

Foreman 16 that is literally sur or above, and hence more important, than ones individual name. It is telling, moreover, that the name of ‗Heathcliff‘ was given him ―both for Christian and surname,‖24 and that it was the name of Mr. Earnshaw‘s son who died in childhood. This implies that initially Heathcliff had no name, or at least no known name, and hence existed not only outside the sphere of heredity, but also social organization; he was at once no one and anyone, at once real and fictitious. Mary Burgan and Dorothy Van Ghent observed that
Heathcliff is referred to in the beginning of the novel by the impersonal pronoun ―it,‖25 which they believe classifies him not ―as a human creature but as a supernatural force.‖26
In my opinion, however, the lack of the personal pronoun, places Heathcliff outside the ancestral field of influence.
Through christening, he was supposed to be tucked under the umbrella of the
Earnshaw family, but given his lack of family name, Heathcliff remains to the end an individual. Terry Eagleton, on a similar note, discerned that ―because his birth is unknown,
Heathcliff is a purely atomized individual, free of generational ties (italics mine),‖ ―his circumstances are so obscure [that] he is available to be accepted or rejected simply for himself, laying claim to no status other than a human one.‖27 While the occasion of his birth does grant Heathcliff certain freedoms, it is rather his inexistent surname that frees him from the former generational ties. Indeed, the move from status to contract that Maine ascribed to progressive societies involves the dissolution of family influence in favor of the

24

Brontë, 33.

25

Ghent, Dorothy Bendon. The English Novel: Form and Function. (1953: rpt. New York: Harper and Row,
1961), p. 54. Print.
26

Burgan, Mary. ―‗Some Fit Parentage‘: Identity and the Cycle of Generations in Wuthering
Heights."Philosophical Quarterly 61.4 (1982): 395-413. Print.
27

Eagleton, 102-103.

Foreman 17
―free agreement of Individuals.‖28 Heathcliff‘s singular name can be see seen as a literal obliteration of the ―rights and duties which have their origin in the Family.‖29 Free from the symbol of family dominion – the surname – he has not become heir to its history, and free from history he is a modern individual.
Although, his curious name echoes a surname, it cannot function in a traditional fashion, for while the progenitor existed at one point, the name has no known, deep ancestral ties. As Susan Meyer suggests, ―Heathcliff‘s missing surname marks his unknown ancestry: deprived of his history by British imperialism, he is simultaneously deprived of the authority and the claim to ancestral ownership of …land.‖30 This freedom from defining or functional ties allows Heathcliff to establish his own lineage or to remain an individual, unconnected to genealogy or its historic implications. In fact, under English law, due to his bastardly status, Heathcliff‘s only collateral kindred could be his offspring.
Since Heathcliff does not receive the Earnshaw family name, he is outside the social privilege or respect associated with it. A surname was the staple of the old order, for it epitomized ancestry, as well as, hereditary privilege, and while the family functioned like a perpetual corporation, the last name, by extension, was its trademarked logotype.
The curious exclusion of Heathcliff, the favored son, from the Earnshaw genealogy has a legal basis. Had Heathcliff assumed the family name he would have the social standing, if not the legal rights, of an Earnshaw, and would have been treated in accordance with the respect his name carries. Nevertheless, perceived as an illegitimate appendage by the family, perhaps to the exclusion of Mr. Earnshaw, he is distinguished as

28

Maine, 169.

29

Ibid.

30

Meyer, 108.

Foreman 18 doubly so by the neighborhood, which accordingly does not even have to offer pretense of respect. We see this clearly in the episode with the Lintons, when Catherine was admitted while ―the strange acquisition…[Mr. Edgar] made in his journey to Liverpool‖31 was turned out. Having only one name to stand for both the first and last is a glaring stamp of illegitimacy, one that is blatantly obvious to anyone who makes Heathcliff‘s acquaintance.
If Heathcliff had any last name, even his mothers, one would have to know his history to perceive his dubious status, but as it stands, his name could not be more socially debilitating. While the Earnshaw surname does not guarantee the beneficiary status of a successor, the premeditated barring of Heathcliff from the family appellation upon adoption, is a strong indication that the family does not recognize him as a legal heir, or indeed, an extension of the family. A ―gipsy brat,‖32 Heathcliff would be a social strain to the Earnshaw pedigree. He remains in fact a bastard and one can only conjecture about his relation to Mr. Earnshaw. Heathcliff could in fact be an illegitimate son of Mr. Earnshaw and thus as a bastard under the English law have ―no inheritable blood,‖ which renders to him incapable of being heir under law.33 Having no collateral kindred, no statues of law that would oversee his legal adoption34 and no legal advantage even as a half-blood brother or worse an alien, Heathcliff is excluded from inheritance by law.
III.

KINDRED: A FLEXIBLE CATEGORIZATION
In theory, regardless of Heathcliff‘s true origin, there has been an extension of the

family boundaries and the adoptive relatives, according to Maine, become kindred. In fact,
31
32

Brontë, 44.
Ibid, 32.

33

Blackstone, William, and Robert M. Kerr. Commentaries on the Laws of England, Vol. II. London: John
Murray, Albemarle Street, 1857. p. 239. Print.
34

According to Blackstone‘s Commentaries on the Laws of England, in the majority of states, no statues on adoption, existed before 1850.

Foreman 19 the ancient conception of adoption of individuals into a family must be regarded, according to Maine, ―as so closely simulating the reality of kinship that neither law nor opinion makes the slightest difference between a real and adoptive connection.‖35 United by common obedience to the eldest ascendant, Heathcliff as a brother and a favorite son, threatens Hindley‘s primogenital status socially, if not legally. In fact, for a good portion of the novel the reader is left to wonder whether Heathcliff could indeed usurp the status of a primogenitor. The legality of the situation is perhaps irrelevant as compared to the psychological and interpersonal conflict that arises from Heathcliff‘s amalgamation into the family. Hindley perceives Heathcliff as a ―beggarly interloper‖ who wants to ―wheedle
[his] father out of all he has,‖ he even describes him as a ―usurper of his [Hindley‘s] parent‘s affections, and his privileges.‖36 Clearly threatened by Heathcliff, Hindley
―swears he will reduce him to his right place.‖37 While Hindley perceives and treats
Heathcliff as no more than a vagabond, he, nevertheless, is acutely aware of the power
Heathcliff holds over Mr. Earnshaw, to his deficit. The affront, of course, is multiplied by the fact that the preference is bestowed upon an individual of a lower class. Status was still very much ingrained into the social fabric, and while the acknowledgement of the individual began to take root, it was not until well into the nineteenth century that it truly transpired on an unprecedented scale.
Heathcliff disturbs the Heights not, as Terry Eagleton purports, ―because he is simply superfluous:…[and] has no defined place within its biological and economic system,‖38 but rather because he is an adoptive extension. The aforementioned disruption,
35

Maine, 133.

36

Brontë, 34.

37

Ibid, 20.

38

Eagleton, 106.

Foreman 20 depends on our reading of the Heights as modern, for no disturbance can occur if the
Heights is part of the ancient world which Maine describes to appropriate individuals into the family. The novel certainly does not make it clear to which moment in history the
Heights belongs. In fact, scholars disagree on an appropriate classification. Margaret
Lenta, for instance, suggests that the Earnshaw ―household is of the eighteenth-century style where servants are part of the family.‖39 Neville Newman, in contrast argues that the servants at Wuthering Heights ―have no identity beyond that which accrues by virtue of their being kept on as retainers‖ and hence ―it is an essentially feudal economy that Emily
Brontë describes.‖40 Indeed, Lockwood‘s inability to distinguish Hareton‘s social position can be perceived as a sign of modern egalitarianism, or, on the contrary, as a marker of ancient familial appropriation that Maine defined. Terry Eagleton‘s assessment of the
―traditional world‖ of the Heights as ―naturalizing property relations and socializing bloodties‖ with its imperative work environment overlooks its modern qualities of servant relations suggested by Margaret Lenta and the fact that Heathcliff who is often associated with the Heights is also often compared to capitalism.41 Yet, interpretations are many and
Daniela Garofalo, in line with Newman, advises that the Heights is ―a place of nostalgia where the urban sophisticate [such as Lockwood] can reconnect with what he imagines he has lost‖…―what he thinks he has had to give up in order to become modern.‖42 It has even been suggested by Donna Reed that the Earnshaws are tied to the past for they represent

39

Lenta, Margaret. "Capitalism or Patriarchy and Immortal Love: A Study of Wuthering Heights."
Theoria 62 (1984): 63-76. Print.
40

Newman, 16.

41

Eagleton, 105.

42

Garofalo, Daniela. "Impossible Love and Commodity Culture in Emily Brontë‘s Wuthering
Heights." ELH 75.4 (2008): 821. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 14 Dec. 2010.

Foreman 21 the savage and therefore, primitive civilization.43 The manifold interpretations presented in scholarly discourse on the subject are true each in their own light, yet perhaps it is a fallacy to try to categorize the Heights. Like Heathcliff it belongs to both the modern and the ancient, because it exists in a historical interim where new modes of conduct have begun to replace the old, but neither was absolute in authority.
IV.

CAPITALISM: PLOY OR MAXIM
Having no name to recommend himself, no kind soul to turn to after Mr.

Earnshaw‘s demise, no inheritance and no education, Heathcliff has to make his own way in the world. He deserted the hearth of Wuthering Heights only to return successful and literate within three years time. Heathcliff‘s individual effort is not only impressive, but further distinguishes him as an individual, who unlike the other characters does not rely on heredity for advancement. He represents the rising working class that by the virtue of individual effort could ascend the social hierarchy. Indeed, critics almost unanimously proclaim Heathcliff a staunch capitalist. Daniela Garolfo, Terry Eagleton, and T.K. Meier associate Heathcliff with capitalist enterprise – ―brutal, hardheaded and miserly, addicted to the accumulation of property both in the form of people and land.‖44 As such, Heathcliff is the personification of the aristocratic nightmare, for not only does he rise above his savage ignorance, he infiltrates and uproots the upper-class Lintons and Earnshaws. His marriage to Isabella represents a union between the lower class and upper class social spheres, characterized by a subversion of the house angel motif. In this context T.K. Meier assessment is telling, Heathcliff does appear as a ―capitalist villain,‖ yet it seems that he

43

Reed, Donna K.. "The Discontents of Civilization in Wuthering Heights and Buddenbrooks." Comparative
Literature 41.3 (1989): 209. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 14 Dec. 2010.
44

Garofalo, 828.

Foreman 22 wants to precisely destroy the existing social system and not ―merely to dominate it.‖45 The destruction of the old modes of conduct and organization symbolized by this union would strongly resonate with the upper-class readers. The marriage, of course, is only a triviality in Heathcliff‘s revenge plan. His goal is to destroy the two families by depriving them on their estates – the physical testament of their inherited status. Yet, in his capitalist ventures, he is not necessarily ―aligned with the world of the Grange,‖ as Terry Eagleton suggests.46
The Grange is largely a symbol of gentility in the novel and the ―Linton…weapons‖ that
Heathcliff employs, such as arranged marriages, are part of the old world order.47 If he is, truly, the ―aggressive industrial bourgeoisie of Emily Brontë‘s own time,‖48 then he must also be an outsider within the eighteenth-century setting of the novel. Nevertheless,
Heathcliff‘s ―domination of the old order… is never complete,‖ not as T.K. Meier stresses, because there is a ―final triumph of tradition in [Cathy] and Hareton,‖ (in fact, as will be discussed further there is no such triumph), but because despite Heathcliff‘s modern tendencies he is part of the antiquated system.49
Heathcliff‘s objective – the acquisition of the Heights and the Grange – is interpreted by Neville Newman as a ―far cry from that of the capitalist whose aim is to amass capital – money or the means of production of more money – by the successful employment of capital itself.‖50 Heathcliff, in her opinion, ―symbolizes land ownership

45

Meier, T.K.. ―‗Wuthering Heights‘ and Violation of Class.‖ Brontë Society Transactions 15.3 (1968): 233236. Print.
46

Eagleton, 112.

47

Ibid.

48

Ibid, 116.

49

Meier, 235.

50

Newman, 15.

Foreman 23 which is the prerequisite of a feudal society.‖51 Yet, I would argue that the philosophy of capitalism is not necessarily the acquisition of capital in purely monetary terms, but rather the purpose is to amass assets, both liquid and real. It is not inaccurate, however, to perceive Heathcliff‘s dealing as antiquated, for he certainly uses contracts as status. It seems that the codification of contractual agreements, which would allow for a contract based, rather than status based, society that Maine describes, has not occurred on a level that would allow Heathcliff to be a true capitalist. Heathcliff goes about the destruction of individual family members by targeting the family aggregate. According to Henry Maine,
―society in primitive times was not what it is assumed to be at present, a collection of individuals. In fact, and in the view of the men who composed it, it was an aggregation of families.‖52 Hence, the only way to destroy an individual was to obliterate the family, since de facto the former did not exist. It is Heathcliff‘s singlehanded battle, and perhaps even victory, over the Earnshaw and Linton families that pivots him as an individual capitalist who as Terry Eagleton described reflects ―the behavior of a contemporary bourgeoisie class increasingly successful in its penetration of landed property.‖53
The penetrative task proved to be quite simple in the case of the Earnshaws.
Hindley, the heir-in-law of the estate, either in fee-simple or mortgage form, has the estate mortgaged to the hilt as a result of his gambling with Heathcliff.54 In effect, Heathcliff became the sole mortgagee, and for all practical purposes the owner of the Heights. As with Thrushcross Grange, the matter is more complicated. Upon Edgar Linton‘s death,

51

Newman, 15.

52

Maine, 126.

53

Eagleton, 115.

54

Sanger, C.P.. "Legal aspects of Wuthering Heights." The Reader 's Guide to Emily Brontë 's Wuthering
Heights. Web. 14 Oct. 2010. .

Foreman 24
Heathcliff‘s son Linton, for the time he survived his uncle, became a tenant-in-tale in possession of the estate, this of course meant that Heathcliff had authority over the property, his son being a minor and of little concern to him. When Linton died however,
Heathcliff wrongfully claimed the estate by the right of his wife and son, for Heathcliff would not have had any right as a spouse to the Grange for life, since Isabella was never in full possession of the place, even if she has had an estate-in-tail or fee-simple. Moreover, even if Linton had the Grange fee-simple, Heathcliff would only be able to be his son‘s heir after the Inheritance Act of 1833.55 Moreover, as far as money is concerned, Cathy would have inherited her father‘s money had Edgar altered his will so as to settle Cathy as a primary and her husband as a secondary beneficiary, yet he was unable to do so for
Heathcliff detained the attorney. Consequently, when Linton inherited Edgar‘s money, by way of his marriage to Cathy, he was forced by Heathcliff to make a will of personalty bequeathing everything to Heathcliff.56 Nelly Dean rightfully points out in the novel that
Cathy Linton ―destitute of cash and friends, cannot disturb his [Heathcliff‘s] possession‖57 regardless of the law. Naturally, the entire operation is unlawful given that Cathy and
Linton did not marry out of free will. The outcome, however, demonstrates how singlehandedly Heathcliff is able to wheedle the two families out of property and money.
Heathcliff‘s contractual, capitalistic maneuvering is more effective than class hierarchy; in fact Heathcliff breaks through the latter by means of the former. He uses contracts to usurp the property and subsequently the power of the Earnshaws and Lintons. To refine Arnold
Kettle‘s and Terry Eagleton‘s classification, the ―weapons‖58 Heathcliff employs to
55

Sanger, 1.

56

Ibid.

57

Brontë, 253.

58

Eagleton, 112. Kettle, 150.

Foreman 25 achieve his goal, such as arranged acquisitive marriages, inherence, expropriation of property, and wills, largely belong to the old order. Although he does achieve his purpose and does so as an individual, his use of antiquated tactics leave a philosophical enigma not unlike Hamlet‘s – how long can one act out a role before one becomes what one is trying to portray?
V.

REVENGE
Neville Newman, as discussed earlier, assigns Heathcliff‘s machinations to a feudal

economy because of his focus on land acquisition, in my opinion however, a stronger link to the past is his obsession with the revenge code. Revenge, as Daniel Hack aptly describes, is usually understood ―as belonging to the past, both structurally and historically.‖59 The keystone of Western civilization has been largely the substitution of revenge for an ―impersonal system of law-based justice.‖60 Indeed, Victorians identified revenge as a custom, duty or mission to be obsolete. Pall Mall Gazette in 1880 proclaimed that ―no one (in civilized society) cares much for revenge,‖61 while The Examiner in 1871 credited the ideological shift to the Victorian Society; ―with us,‖ the paper contests,
―civilization has brought the high moral truth that it is no part of a son‘s duty to avenge the wrongs of his father.‖62 Yet despite no longer functioning as the ―chief end of men,‖63 The
Pall Mall Gazette claims the ancient tradition survived within fiction. Novelists, according to the paper ―still keep vindictive baronets and revengeful earls among… [the] characters; but the earls and the baronets of the novelist are the noble savages of fictitious society.
59

Hack, Daniel. "Revenge Stories of Modern Life." Victorian Studies 48.2 (2006): 277. Print.

60

Hack, 277.

61

―The Decay of Revenge.‖ Pall Mall Gazette. 3 June 1880: 11. Print.

62

―The Natural History of Hatred.‖ The Examiner 19 Aug. 1871: 826-27. Print.

63

Pall Mall Gazette.

Foreman 26
They have learned nothing, and forgotten nothing.‖64 Undeniably, the entire project of
Wuthering Heights is concerned with revenge. It is arguable however, whether Heathcliff has learned anything in his obsession, for he certainly has forgotten nothing, and yet stopped short of complete revenge, if we are to judge totality by how close reality parallels premeditated goals.
Despite the conclusion, Heathcliff‘s adherence to the revenge code sheds a new light on Donna Reed‘s discussion of the ―savage‖65 Heights. If the Heights is truly tottering on the brink of barbarism, it is only after Mr. Earnshaw makes the ―strange acquisition‖66 on the streets of Liverpool, and consequently it is Heathcliff who is responsible for introducing the primitive into the novel. David Wilson could not be more correct when he described Heathcliff as ―pagan.‖67 ―Neither Heaven nor Hell matters to him, but only living ties,‖ and this strict concern for the past, I must add, manifests itself within the pursuit of revenge.68 Modern society is oriented towards the future, and to some extent to the present, but not to the past.69 As Heathcliff‘s revenge is a concern of the past, he cannot be, and indeed is not, a modern in the fullest sense.
According to Daniel Hack in a number of nineteenth century novels such as
Wuthering Heights and The Mill on the Floss, ―the very characters specifically identified with such signal features of modernity as geographical and social mobility, self-making, breaking with the past, and technological innovation become instead…agents of

64

Pall Mall Gazette.

65

Reed, 212.

66

Brontë, 44.

67

Wilson, 111.

68

Ibid.

69

Hack, 278.

Foreman 27 revenge.‖70 Why this occurs, Hack leaves unanswered. We could take Pall Mall Gazette‘s
―fictitious society‖ in which characters have learnt nothing, as a ready explanation, but perhaps historic context is a better source of inquiry. 71 With the drastic socio-political and cultural changes of the nineteenth century, it seems only natural that fictional characters, like their human counterparts, while pursuing modern notions would have some antiquated sentiments. Reverting to custom in a time of change is finding safety in habit, which is then psychologically justified through rationalization rather than reasoning. As Walter
Bagehot explains in Physics and Politics:
Experience shows how incredibly difficult it is to get men really to encourage the principle of originality. They will admit it in theory, but in practice the old error — the error which arrested a hundred civilizations — returns again. Men are too fond of their own life, too credulous of the completeness of their own ideas, too angry at the pain of new thoughts, to be able to bear easily with a changing existence….72 Thus, individuals often retain certain customary principles within their psyche, while at the same time transcending tradition. Heathcliff, Tom Tulliver, and even Dracula are such individuals and within their fictitious reality, revenge might no longer be a duty, but neither is it an obsolete principle.
VI.

HEATHCLIFF’S POTESTAS

70

Hack, 280.

71

Pall Mall Gazette.

72

Bagehot, 35.

Foreman 28
Few critics have addressed Heathcliff‘s association with antiquity, for many see him as a representative of modern convictions. The exceptions include Eagleton‘s categorization of Heathliff as ―culturally outdated,‖73 Reed‘s assignment of the former to the savage civilization, and Newman‘s rejection of Heathcliff as ―the potential for class mobility.‖74 Despite Heathcliff‘s independence of character, he is not impervious to the ways of the old order. In fact, he represents and exercises the primitive power of Potestas over Linton. According to Henry Maine, in ancient societies, the father had the power of jus vitae necisque (power of life and death) and ―à fortiori of uncontrolled corporal chastisement‖ over his children.75 While the former is evident in Heathcliff threatening to kill Linton if he thwarts his plans by forgoing the marriage to Cathy, the latter is apparent in his harassment of Linton. He becomes a ruthless patriarch of the Heights, acting in accordance with the despotic penchant of an archaic Potestas. His power of Potestas is further manifested not only in his giving a wife to Linton, but also in his authority to exercise the right to his son‘s property, even after nuptials. As Maine notes, ancient
―jurisprudence suggests that the father‘s rights over the son‘s property were always exercised without scruple to the full extent to which they were sanctioned by law.‖76
Heathcliff‘s use of patriarchic laws, however, is not an act of ―feminist rebellion,‖77 as
Andrew Abraham contests, but rather a weapon in achievement of revenge.

73

Eagleton, 115.

74

Newman, 15.

75

Maine, 138.

76

Maine, 141.

77

Abraham, Andrew. "Emily Brontë 's Gendered Response to Law and Patriarchy." Brontë Studies: The
Journal of the Brontë Society 29.2 (2004): 93-103. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 16 Dec.
2010.

Foreman 29
Although Heathcliff‘s implementation of the Potestas powers can be perceived as yet another manipulative tool of the old order which he subverts for his own purpose, this scenario is unlikely for he seems to act out of character rather than necessity. Yet, assuming that the root of Heathcliff‘s Potestas is personality is in itself problematic, for while such inclinations are expected from his foil, Edgar, who is a symbol of
Gemeinschaft, they contradict Heathcliff‘s individualistic tendencies. The inconsistency fosters psychological tension that Heathcliff dismisses as apathy, but which in reality is a conflict of principle. As in individual he yearns to annihilate the proprietary domain of the
Earnshaw and Linton families, yet the ties of association constrict him. Given that
Catherine and Heathcliff are not solely kindred souls, but are in fact siblings by adoption, his resolution to leave the estates unscathed is an aberrant, and yet intelligible, preservation of this affiliation. He cannot destroy that which is representative of Catherine: ―I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped on the flags,‖78 nor can he destroy the livelihood of Hareton, which is tied to the estate. In fact, the ―thousand forms of past associations, and ideas [that Hareton] awakens, or embodies‖79 imply not only a figurative personification, as Heathcliff acknowledges, but also a filial connection he refuses to perceive. The novel strives to underscore the irony in Hareton‘s physical and circumstantial resemblance to Heathcliff as compared to the latter‘s biological son, Linton.
Moreover, the triad of analogous names – Hindley, Hareton, and Heathcliff - seems to suggest affiliation, and while many implications are inferable, it is certain that they are of an affiliate nature. The similarity of Heathcliff‘s and Hareton‘s unusual names not only further correlates the individuals, but also distinguishes them from the other characters

78

Brontë, 277.

79

Ibid, 276.

Foreman 30 who bear standard names with royal associations.80 Perhaps Heathcliff is devoid of the
―fine trait of magnanimity,‖81 but he is not altogether bereft of interpersonal connections as he sees a kinsman in Hareton. The affinity Heathcliff holds for Hareton is distinct and independent from the old system when blood dictated relation. In fact, it follows Maine‘s idea of social progression from consanguinity to contiguity. Consequently, while
Heathcliff‘s headway towards individuality is ahead of his time he is not free from the old modes of association.
VII.

PATRIARCHY: HEATHCLIFF VS. EDGAR

In the novel, Edgar represents the epitome of status quo ante; he is genteel by both birth and character, and consequently a perfect foil to Heathcliff‘s rugged and mongrel nature. Yet, despite his antithetic purpose he exercises his powers of Potestas much like
Heathcliff and it is perhaps this factor that makes us questions Heathcliff‘s intentions as
Patre familias. Stipulating that Edgar is truly Heathcliff‘s foil it is likely that Heathcliff was simply using the power of Potestas without succumbing to its ideology. However, it is also possible, and perhaps more likely, that Heathcliff is affected by, and operates within the confines of status and consanguinity, much like Edgar, for it seems that he is compelled by his personality rather than status. Nevertheless, Edgar‘s reliance on patriarchy and its laws is significant. Gilbert, Gubar and Meyer proposed that Edgar‘s power as a patriarch
―begins with words,‖ they contest that ―Edgar does not need a strong, conventionally masculine body, because his mastery is contained in books, wills, testaments, leases…languages, all the paraphernalia by which patriarchal culture is transmitted from
80

Catherine‘s name in particular bears a lengthy royal history with bearers such as Catherine de Medici,
Katherine of Aragon, and Catherine the Great. Edgar‘s name is no exception, and bearers including Edgar the
Peaceful, Edgar King of Scotland, and Edgar King of Northumbria. Even ―Nelly,‖ a diminutive of Ellanor, has royal bearers like Eleanor of Aquitaine, Eleanor of Castile, and Eleanor of Provence.
81

Brontë, 276.

Foreman 31 one generation to the next.‖82 Beyond words, however, Edgar‘s power rests in the traditional household structure with Patre familias at the head. After Mr. Linton‘s demise,
Edgar gains the power of Potestas over the Linton household, and is soon thereafter, compelled to use it in against Isabella. Isabella‘s elopement with Heathcliff presented a threat to Edgar‘s power as Pater familias and her subsequent excommunication by her beloved brother was a necessary consequence of his newly acquired position.
Heathcliff could not have conceived a more poignant impingement on Edgar‘s powers, as Potestas represents the most primitive function of consanguinity. As Henry
Maine explains: the patriarchal authority of a chieftain is as necessary an ingredient to the notion of the family group as the fact (or assumed fact) of its having sprung from his loins; and hence we must understand that if there be any persons who, however truly inclined in the brotherhood by virtue of their blood-relationship, have nevertheless de facto withdrawn themselves from the empire of its ruler, they are always, in the beginnings of law, considered as lost to the family.83
Consequently, subsequent her elopement, Isabella must be forever lost to Edgar and his family domain. ―We are eternally divided,‖ is Edgar‘s response to Nelly‘s inquiry on behalf of Isabella; ―I am not angry, but I‘m sorry to have lost her.‖84 Edgar‘s response is quite telling especially in comparison to Tom Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss, who is
82

Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. "Looking Oppositely: Emily Brontë 's Bible of Hell." The
Madwoman in The Attic: The Woman Writer and The Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. 2nd ed. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. 281. Print.
83

Maine, 133.

84

Brontë, 128.

Foreman 32 faced with similar circumstances. In response to his sister‘s digression Tom finds it necessary to at least support Maggie financially, Edgar, however, does not consider even writing or receiving a note from Isabella. The disparity of responses can perhaps be explained by the relative time-periods; in fact, little less than a century divides the two episodes. Edgar, who is on the earlier end of the time line, would have a stronger commitment to the traditional role and powers of Potestas. Tom, conversely, would be more attune to the modern principles of familial responsibility, his sense of consanguinity and status diluted albeit present.
As a quintessence of the old order, Edgar largely fails to answer the needs of the changing social landscape. His civilized virtues are a point of derision, while his social refinement is coupled with his weakness and impotence. After Catherine‘s death, Edgar remains largely within the confines of his estate, as if this testament to his status could shield him and Cathy from Heathcliff. A perfect gentleman, he is unable to confront
Heathcliff, instead turning to servants to accomplish what he himself is unable to do. The reliance on servants is in itself an act that further associates Edgar with the upper class. In effect, the encounter between Heathcliff and Edgar evokes class tension. The dichotomy between the incompetent and anxious Edgar, and the unsure while menacing Heathcliff, is an embodiment of the contemporary society. Heathcliff, in this context is a representative of the middle class, unsure of how to exploit the newly acquired and growing power; he threatens and grumbles, but without issue. Only with the passage of the Reform Act of
1832, does the possibility of social change in which the middle class could acquire some semblance of power and with it aptitude for action, becomes feasible. In contrast, Edgar – a representative of the upper class – is weak in his authority, failing to offer a viable solution to the concerns of his class. At one point in the novel, Nelly offers an insightful

Foreman 33 comparison of the two men. Heathcliff, she says, is like a ―bleak, hilly coal-country‖ and
Edgar ―a beautiful, fertile valley.‖85 Not only is Edgar tied to the past because he is a
―symbol of patriarchal law,‖86 but also because the novel seems to suggest his connection with the pastoral. Aside from Nelly‘s prejudiced opinion, the contrast she chooses to evoke carries certain implications. The coal-country that Heathcliff represents is a symbol of the industrial revolution where Heathcliff does indeed function as the proletarian, unlike
Neville Newman surmises. Emily Brontë‘s use of Heathcliff does not ―(mis)-represent the working class,‖87 for although he might seem a poor representative at times, it is because, as I have previously delineated, he represents both the proletariat and with it the rising individual, as well as, the ancient concepts of consanguinity and patriarchy. Brontë‘s refusal to ―employ the mining community as a metonym‖ does not ―eliminate‖ the working class from the novel, for in fact, the very narrator of the saga belongs to the working class.88 In this context, the ―fertile valley‖89 that Edgar represents is a reference to the preindustrial landscape, and as such, pre-industrial notions of social organization. Before the
―bleak…coal-country‖90 of the industrial England, the dependence on agriculture manifested itself in literature as the genre of Pastoral, where the open valleys, and later the enclosed pastures, were celebrated. Perhaps unknowingly Nelly, in one phrase, has encapsulated the motifs that define the two men throughout the novel.

85

Brontë, 61.

86

Abraham, 97.

87

Newman, 16.

88

Ibid.

89

Brontë, 61.

90

Ibid.

Foreman 34
Despite Edgar‘s limitations, his upper class status earns him social respectability and Catherine‘s regard. Eighteenth century England was still subject to aristocratic privileges and kinship alliances - associations that would begin to dissipate in the next era.
Consequently, it was enticing to have a husband like Edgar for ―he will be rich,‖ as
Catherine notes, and ―I shall like to be the greatest woman of the neighborhood, and …
[will] be proud of having such a husband.‖91 Though expressing pan-historic parasitism of a gold-digger, Catherine‘s reasoning is particularly telling in this situation, for it expresses the social implications of not only status and wealth, but also education. She argues that ―it would degrade …[her] to marry Heathcliff‖;92 his lack of education prevailing as the primary concern. Moreover, when Edgar inherits Thrushcross Grange, as Gilbert and
Gubar aptly point out, Edgar practically ―rules his house from his library as if to parody that male education on in Latin and Greek, privilege and prerogative.‖93 The role of education, and specifically genteel education, is immense in the novel, in fact, it is more powerful than status and kinship, for as we see in Heathcliff‘s unlikely experiment with
Hareton and Linton, education makes the difference between a churlish brute and an knowledgeable, albeit peevish ―cobweb.‖94 As Heathcliff rightly notes, Hareton is gold put to the use of paving stones; and … [Linton] is tin polished to ape a service of silver--- Mine [Linton] has nothing valuable about it; yet I shall have the merit, of making it go as far as such poor stuff can go. His [Hareton]

91

Brontë, 69.

92

Ibid, 71.

93

Gilbert and Gubar, 281.

94

Brontë, 246.

Foreman 35 had first-rate qualities, and they are lost---rendered worse than unavailing.95
The difference between the two men was the result of education. Cathy, though no measure of wisdom, picks Linton‘s company over Hareton‘s partly because the former is articulate and literate, despite also displaying characteristics of a selfish and petulant pessimist. Education in this context, however, is limited to the concept of a gentleman‘s education; the particular notion that only a century later would present no functional value to Tom Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss. Contemporary to the novel‘s setting was a period in which education was the invisible boundary between nobility and the masses. While general schooling that provided little less than literacy existed, it was the study of Greek and Roman classics available only to the highest echelons that was a mark of a cultivated mind. In this context, Heathcliff‘s discourse on the difference between Linton Heathcliff and Hareton can be perceived as an exposé on the privileges afforded to the often undeserving nobility, as compared to the working class. Inadequate though Linton
Heathcliff is, he is given all the comforts that his class implies, yet ironically and much to
Heathcliff‘s pleasure, education is a means to an end, but not vice versa. Manipulating the tools of the upper classes – the instruments of which he himself was a victim – Heathcliff is able to turn their own contrivances against them. The unjust denial of the means for intellectual improvement in the novel is an allegory of the working class struggle against the assumed privileges of the nobility.
VIII. THE NEW FAMILY
With the opening pages, Wuthering Heights expresses a preoccupation with class and descent. Amongst the first descriptions of the estate is a curious date inscribed above
95

Brontë, 190.

Foreman 36 the doorway – the year 1500 spells the completion of house, and we later learn ―Hareton
Heathcliff‖ is also inscribed above the egress. Not only does the date connect the Heights with the Renaissance when the social landscape was largely based on heredity and status, it serves as a necessary validation of the narrative, given that the story is told by working class narrator.96 The credibility of the story could be questioned, as in The Turn of the
Screw, for the narrator‘s class can discredit the story‘s authenticity or import. The connection of the Heights to the Renaissance becomes a sort of justification of the reader‘s interest in a working class tale. Readers might not care about Nelly, but they very well would care about the world of the Heights and Thrushcross grange in which, as signaled by the inscription, property and heredity are as paramount as they were in the Renaissance. If the ―disintegration of the class system‖97 occurs within the novel as T.K. Meier suggests, then the primary manifestation of this change is Nelly‘s narration. Whether we perceive
Nelly‘s station within the household as part of the feudal or the modern social construct, her class is undeniably below the Earnshaw‘s and Linton‘s. It is significant that not only does she lead the novel‘s narration, but that at the end she and the bourgeois Lockwood are the sole bearers of the Earnshaw-Linton combined family history(s). As the upper echelons of society work hard to preserve testaments of their power in form of contrivances such heirlooms, written histories, art etc. having only a middle class businessman and a working class servant as the only bearers of the story gives them the power that historically resides within the family – that is the power over the entire family history. It is a dangerous prospect indeed, as now the lower class is in a unique position, with a power to subvert the honor and prestige the family endeavored to maintain throughout generations.
96

In this description I am not referring to the industrial working class, but to the concept of a feudal dependent or household retainer.
97

Meier, 235.

Foreman 37
The sole progenitors of the family, Cathy and Hareton, do not know their own history. They cannot partake in the ―chivalric associations‖ contained by heirlooms, to be sure, they cannot, as Anthony Trollope descried in The Eustace Diamonds (1871), ―enjoy the satisfaction which is derived from saying, My father or my grandfather or my ancestor sat in that chair, or looked as he now looks in that picture.‖98 The estates they inherit cannot function as heirlooms or any semblance of family history, for in order for them to do so the history itself must be known. The estates function as inheritance solely in a legal sense with no hereditary associations. To be exact, the historical heritage that the Heights and the Grange contain cannot offer any meaning or satisfaction, as described by Trollope, for Cathy or Hareton, and if there is no meaning the entire function of heirlooms is deleted.
The marriage of Cathy and Hareton can then be perceived as a union free from familial ties, which are epitomized by heirlooms.
IX.

CONCLUSION
Critics differ in their interpretation of the engagement at the end of the novel.

Margaret Lenta insists that a ―hybrid variant‖99 of both Earnshaw and Linton lifestyles
―survives‖100 with the marriage of Cathy and Hareton, while Susan Meyer proposes that the marriage ―brings an end to class inequality, as Hareton, the former servant, marries the once pampered and wealthy young [Cathy].‖101 Andrew Abraham believes that ―patriarchy gradually regains a stronghold towards the end‖102 primarily because Cathy ―develops into

98

Trollope, Anthony. The Eustace Diamonds: Volume 1. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1908. 339.
Print.
99

Lenta, 66.

100

Ibid.

101

Meyer, 121.

102

Abraham, 101.

Foreman 38 the ideal Victorian angel in the house, a patriarchal – legal construct symptomatic of the law,‖103 Terry Eagleton, however, contests that the marriage allows for a future containing a ―fusion rather than a confrontation of interests between gentry and bourgeoisie.‖104 I suggest that the novel introduces modern domesticity with the union of Hareton and Cathy, who effectively become a nuclear family, cut off, as they are from generational ties. The novel begins with old ideals of domesticity, complete with patriarchs at the head of the families and a self-consciousness towards lineage as exemplified by the inscription above the doorway. The novel ends, however, with a modern construct of a nuclear family and while the ghosts of Catherine and Heathcliff still haunt the landscape, neither they, nor the members of the family(s) long gone, cant affect their peace.

103

Ibid.

104

Eagleton, 117.

Foreman 39
CHAPTER II: THE MILL ON THE FLOSS
I.

INTRODUCTION
We live in an age of visible transition – an age of disquietude and doubt – of the removal of time-worn landmarks, and the breaking up of the hereditary elements of society – old opinions, feelings – ancestral customs and institutions are crumbling away, and both the spiritual and temporal worlds are darkened by the shadow of change. Bulwer Lytton,
18331
The Second Industrial Revolution was at its prime during the publication of The

Mill on the Floss in 1860. Technological innovation in core industries had radically changed the standard of living and quality of life, while the increase in population and the unprecedented growth of the middle class had forever altered the social structure. In the wake of these changes, the landed classes of nobility and gentry lost ground to the industrialists and businessmen of the middle class. What resulted was a major shift in social organization. The crumbling of centuries-old doctrine of hereditary status, combined with drastic changes in almost every aspect of life, produced, as Bulwer Lytton succinctly stated in England and the English (1833), ―an age of disquietude and doubt.‖2 Unlike other milieux, Bulwer insisted, the nineteenth-century was an age of visible transition, and the self-conscious Victorians understood the necessity of recuperative history, in which they could redefine their place.

1

Bulwer Lytton, Baron Edward. England and the English. 1833. Reprint. Paris: Baudry 's European Library,
1836. 237. Print.
2

Bulwer, 237.

Foreman 40
Nineteenth-century literature endeavored to absorb the shock of rapid modernization, to make modernity intelligible. In the face of drastic socio-economic change, novels could rationalize the transformations by exploring causalities. It is within this convention of domesticating modernity that George Eliot‘s The Mill on the Floss is situated. The novel has been identified by Barbara Hardy as ―one of the most successful studies ever written of human beings in a social medium.‖3 Set in the 1830s,4 The Mill on the Floss captures the breach between two social orders with competing value systems – the Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft.5 Writing about a recent past in which modernization and the old order were more acutely juxtaposed allowed Eliot to rationalize the developments that continued to transform her contemporary landscape. Eliot‘s rationalization can be perceived as the creation of a new status quo, one that I will argue differs from status quo ante in the structure of the family.
II.

MR. TULLIVER’S COCK-FIGHT AND TOM’S “EDDICATION”
Placing The Mill on the Floss within the context of these social changes allows us

to perceive the plot as a manifestation of these transformations on a microcosmic level. Mr.
Tulliver‘s lawsuit is the epitome of the triumph of social contract over status derived from kinship. The patrimony bequeathed to Mr. Tulliver is a legal testament of his relation to the devisers of property, as well as a semblance of his identity as a genteel, landed proprietor.
The use of land as a symbol of status has its roots in the ancient past; estate, a piece of

3

Barbara Hardy, The Novels of George Eliot (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), 235. Print.

4

The setting of The Mill on the Floss is from 1829-1839.

5

Ferdinand Tönnies‘ theory of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft was briefly applied to The Mill On the Floss by John Killham in "The Idea of Community in the English Novel." Nineteenth-Century Fiction 31.4 (1977):
379-396. MLA International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 5 Apr. 2010.

Foreman 41 landed property, comes from Latin word status meaning ―rank, standing, [or] condition.‖6
Not only are status and landed property inextricably linked, both function as repositories of kinship. In losing the Mill in a lawsuit, Mr. Tulliver did not simply lose land; he lost his status and failed the claims of the past.
Mr. Tulliver‘s defeat in a lawsuit is significant, for there is no better example of social contract, or the ―free agreement of Individuals‖ that Henry Maine was referring to in
Ancient Law.7 A lawsuit represents the coming together of two individuals, equal before law. Status, conversely, is not distinctive, nor is it equal. As Maine contends, status draws its authority from ―powers and privileges anciently residing in the Family,‖8 in which the individualization of members is nonexistent. As society has moved from status to contract,
Mr. Tulliver‘s status as an ―honest man,‖9 of landed gentry, could no longer sustain his case. No invocation of family honesty and respectability could win against the case of action in which a fair contract between individuals is formed.
This shift is not solely theoretical, for with the passage of the Great Reform Act10 of 1832, the individual became recognized on a national scale. The Act created ―a fracture line down the center of the structure of political power. It recognized that … Parliamentary power was based on individual rights [and] not on the privilege and wealth of …‗Old

6

"Online Etymology Dictionary." Online Etymology Dictionary. N.p., Web. 24 Jan. 2010.
.
7

Maine, 169.

8

Ibid, 170.

9

By ―honor‖ I am not only implying a character trait, but also using it as a signifier of the ―code of honor‖ of a gentleman, who is defined as a man of good family, breeding, or social position. Eliot, George. Mill on the
Floss. Edinburgh and London.: William Blackwood and Sons, 670. 2000. Print.
10

The Reform Act of 1832 enfranchised the majority of the middle class, expanding the electorate by about
50% (estimates vary, 50% is a conservative approximation considering the generally held estimation of 80% increase). According to Eric J. Evans, the electorate increased from about one in eight adult males to just short of one in five.

Foreman 42
Corruption.‘‖11 Indeed, the dependence on kinship alliances could be viewed as nurturing social fragmentation, a feat contrary to the needs of an industrial nation that demanded the mobilization of masses of workers. Maine takes note of this shift in Ancient Law, discerning that ―the history of political ideas begins …with the assumption that kinship in blood is the sole possible ground of community in political functions,‖ but that in modern
England ―local contiguity -- establishes itself … as the basis of common political action.‖12
In Eliot‘s social experiment, we see the workings of inclinations introduced by this shift towards social organization via contiguity, rather than consanguinity, on private citizens.
Mr. Tulliver does not act upon the societal shift at hand, and insists upon using his status – a component of Old Corruption – as weight in the proceedings. He believes he should have won because he is an honest man: ―there 's no Tulliver but what 's honest,‖ while Wakem is a ―raskill.‖13 According to Mr. Tulliver, if the Tullivers are honorable, and hence, occupy a higher status than the Wakems, the matter must be decided in favor of the former.
Refusing to adapt to the fundamental changes proves costly in Eliot‘s microcosm; not only does Mr. Tulliver lose the Mill, he gradually loses himself to fits of rage that culminate in a stroke. Considering these developments, Judith Lowder Newton‘s categorization of Mr. Tulliver as a man in transition, ―attempting an uneasy conflation of old and new,‖14 is arguable, for this would imply that Mr. Tulliver is himself adapting to the new ways. Even though Mr. Tulliver understands that such an adjustment is needed, as
Newton points out, he responds to the changes of industrialization by sending Tom to
11

James, Louis. The Victorian Novel (Blackwell Guides to Literature). Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2007.
13. Print.
12

Maine, 129.

13

Eliot, 269, 270.

14

Newton, Judith Lowder. "The Mill on the Floss." Women, Power, and Subversion: Social Strategies in
British Fiction, 1778-1860. Georgia: University Of Georgia Press, 1981. 128. Print.

Foreman 43 school, he himself, nevertheless, chooses to abide by old notions that do not puzzle him quite so much as the rest of this ―puzzling world.‖15 Mr. Tulliver‘s turning to law is not the same as understanding legal processes, or making good use of them. He did not turn to law as an individual, but as a person who has the honor of the Tulliver kin to back him up.
Although he is treated in the court of law as an individual, he would rather have the court see him as belonging to the Tulliver lineage. Mr. Tulliver is not a man in transition, but a man of old customs, who turns to modern tools of justice that ignore status and consanguinity. Throughout the novel he remains entirely clueless of the process of law. As
Eliot describes, Mr. Tulliver perceives the suit as a cockfight: ―law was a sort of cockfight, in which it was the business of injured honesty to get a game bird with the best pluck and the strongest spurs.‖ For Mr. Tulliver, the court of justice is not a place where individuals can sort their differences, but instead, a place where one can assert or defend one‘s honor, as in a duel, and fall back on status derived from family ties.
Mr. Tulliver, though conscious of the societal changes and the need to prepare
Tom, is himself unable to adapt. The Mill is too much a part of his identity, as it signifies both his honorable status as a landed proprietor, and serves as a manifestation of his
Tulliver lineage. Losing the Mill connotes losing his status and the symbol of his kinship, both of which are tokens of the old social order. Since Mr. Tulliver cannot adjust after losing the Mill in a legal battle, nor can he successfully operate under old conventions in the new system, he becomes increasingly emotionally unstable. Those who can adapt, like
Mr. Deane and Mr. Wakem, are able to strive and even obtain the old symbols of status, such as land, but they do not partake in the assimilation of prestige these objects hold.
Indeed, at various points in the novel both Mr. Deane and Mr. Wakem purchase the Mill.
15

Eliot, 88.

Foreman 44
They do so, however, for reasons other than status. Mr. Deane purchases it on behalf of
Guest & Co. to re-sell it back to Tom, and Mr. Wakem to provide a ―suitable position‖16 for his son, Phillip, as well as to humiliate Mr. Tulliver. In modern society, the purchase of the Mill does not add degrees to Mr. Wakem‘s status, but instead it functions solely as a transfer of property under the terms of a contract. Though the latter enriches, it does not exalt. In fact, Mr. Wakem is able to use the old symbol of status,17 to humiliate Mr.
Tulliver by allowing him to work the land he once owned and that served as a symbol of his status.
Mr. Tulliver does not understand the workings of business outside the field of agriculture. He does respect people of the white-collar profession, such as his friend Mr.
Riley and Mr. Deane, but is distinctly aware of his unfortunate lack of knowledge of their occupations. To remedy the situation he becomes adamant in ensuring that Tom has an
―eddication as he 'll be even wi ' the lawyers and folks.‖18 Mr. Tulliver wants
Tom to be such a sort o ' man as Riley, …as can talk pretty nigh as well as if it was all wrote out for him, and knows a good lot o ' words as don 't mean much, so as you can 't lay hold of 'em i ' law; and a good solid knowledge o ' business too.19 His awareness of the insufficiency of a rustic education for Tom is testament of his attentiveness to the shift towards an increased importance of the contract. He even regrets that Maggie was not ―the lad‖ as ―she 'd ha ' been a match for the lawyers, she would. It 's
16

Eliot, 258.

17

The Dorlcote Mill

18

Eliot, 89.

19

Ibid, 29.

Foreman 45 the wonderful 'st thing.‖20 A good name was no longer enough to succeed in the new system, one had to understand contracts; and if Mr. Tulliver is unable to do so himself, he wants to ensure that Tom could. James Kilroy makes an important point of Mr. Tulliver‘s consulting Mr. Riley, a man of business, for the proper course of action concerning Tom‘s education, despite Mrs. Tulliver‘s suggestion to confer with kin. He contends that the fact that Mr. Tulliver recognized the importance of an opinion of a businessman, who operates in a world of contracts, is evidence that ―commercial interests have invaded the domestic sphere.‖21 However, I must add, this decision does not imply that Mr. Tulliver is himself adapted, it simply reveals that he recognizes the need to adapt certain practices to suit a favorable outcome; Tom‘s success in life. Expanding on Kilroy‘s premise, the very idea of providing an education to ensure survival in a world of contracts, instead of relying on the family business, symbolizes the invasion of commerce on a grander scale than that envisioned by the critic.
Industrial societies, according to sociologists Talcott Parson and William J. Goode, require high levels of specialization, which, as a result, may entail the employed constituents of consanguine groups to have vastly different professions. Occupations could differ not only in the nature of the task performed, but also in the status and remuneration they bestowed, as well as in the education they required for their attainment and successful performance. Education, therefore, is one of three key factors that can separate progeny from the socioeconomic stratum of the family. This potential fracture, although fundamentally antithetical to the structure of kinship alliances, is plausible for a nuclear
20
21

Eliot, 39.

Kilroy, James F. "The Threat of Evolution: The Mill on the Floss and The Daisy Chain." The Nineteenth
Century English Novel: Family Ideology and Narrative Form. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 119
152. 129. Print.

Foreman 46 family (to be discussed at length in the next section). Tom‘s education and by implication his future profession as a man of letters allows generational mobility, but severs the tie to extended family. Consequently, Mr. Tulliver‘s determination to provide an education for
Tom so that ―he [Tom] may make a nest for himself‖ is a push toward a nuclear family. By cutting off future generations, embodied by Tom, the Tulliver family becomes ahistoric – it no longer functions as a family united by blood-based relations, nor can it operate as a nuclear family, for it remains bound by ancient ties of kinship. This state of intermediacy is, however, of short duration and should be perceived as a move towards the nuclear family. Critics such as Joshua Esty ascribe the ―premature birth‖22 of the Tulliver nuclear family to the sale of the Mill. However, while I recognize the sale as part of the formation of the Tulliver nuclear family, I identify the origin of this development in Tom‘s education. The focus on education outside the family further reveals the dissolution of the traditional family responsibility in the socialization of maturing children. Fostering qualities of initiative and independence that prepared students to be active members of a contractual society, the schooling system contributed to the move towards individualism that Maine identified. Tom‘s studies, far from the reach of his immediate family, first at the King‘s Lorton Academy and later at Mr. Jacobs‘s Academy, allowed him to develop the qualities that he was later able to call upon to rescue his family from debt. Ironically,
Tom received a gentleman‘s education which he quickly learned was outdated. The education he needs and the education Mr. Tulliver meant for him to have, is one that cultivates – enterprise and independence, a point missed in James Kilroy‘s discussion of
22

Esty, Joshua D. "Nationhood, Adulthood, and the Ruptures of Bildung: Arresting Development in The Mill on the Floss." The Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner. 101-121. New York, NY: Palgrave, 2002. MLA
International Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 21 Mar. 152. 2010.

Foreman 47 education in The Mill on the Floss. Indeed, James Kilroy is more concerned with demands for evolution and adaptation that this shift in schooling strategy presents, rather than the causalities it introduces into the novel. He sees Tom, as ―provided an education suitable to his role in a society perceived as far different from that of the past,‖23 a point I suggest is questionable, considering the classical education Tom receives. Moreover, while discussing the shifts in the education system, Kilroy does not mention the effect of this change on Tom‘s abilities. What allowed Tom to rescue his family from debt was not his education as such, but the remoteness from his family‘s influence, which was made possible by education received outside the confines of the household. This episode speaks to the fear of contemporaries that education will alienate students from guardians, as both academics and the typically parental responsibilities of moral and religious training are no longer delegated to the household, but instead to the schools. The dissolution of family influence and with it the importance of family name was well under way and with The Mill on the Floss, and we can see this change not only permeating the usually stable countryside, but also effecting outcomes of individual lives.
III.

MR. DEANE AND TOM: THE BOOTSTRAP COLLOQUY
As the mechanisms of social organization have changed, so did the repositories of

value. Previously, money could not elevate a person to a higher social stratum. Nobility indicated wealth, but wealth did not necessarily designate nobility. With the rise of the middle class, money began to replace titles as the divide between classes. The move from titles to wealth as symbols of power and prestige is a transformative process that began to materialize in the nineteenth-century. Historically, this alteration refers to the development of the ―cash nexus,‖ more commonly referred to as capitalism, which eliminated the ―old
23

Kilroy, 128-129.

Foreman 48 relations between masters and men.‖24 The Limited Liability Act (1855) and The Joint
Stock Companies Act (1856) transformed English corporate law from a conception of partnership to that of limited liability, thereby recognizing the individual, which according to Maine is the unit of modern society. Under the new legislation the concept of acquaintance and shared responsibility amongst partners became irrelevant as capital became ―blind‖ and ―anonymous.‖25 Thus, we see the gradual dissolution of Gemeinschaft on an economic level, and the rise of independent, and equal economic actors. The importance of finance to the plot of The Mill on the Floss is immense; after all, its culminating point is the Tullivers‘ financial crisis. Financial plots provided a basis for the new genre of realism, allowing novels to explore causational action.26 Their rise to prominence, according to Mary Poovey, was both a response to, and a result of, the development of the investment culture propelled by capitalism. In addendum to Poovey‘s observation, the need to write about the emerging financial situation is the need to make sense of the new social order, where nobodies like Mr. Deane and Tom can come to consequence by the virtue of their own individual effort. As the nineteenth-century novel is often considered a middle-class phenomenon, the infusion of the financial plot into fiction serves as a form of self-validation for the middle class that comes to status by virtue of financial enterprises.
We see the effects of the move towards capitalism in The Mill on the Floss in the experiences of Mr. Deane and Tom. Speculation on business ventures was not an unusual

24

Toynbee, Arnold, and Benjamin Jowett. Lectures on the Industrial Revolution of the 18th Century in
England. London, New York, Bombay: Longmans, Green & Co., 1902. 93. Print.
25

W. H. B. Court. A Concise Economic History of Britain From 1750 to Recent Times. Cambridge:
University Press, 1962. 175. Print.
26

Poovey, Mary. "Writing about Finance in Victorian England: Disclosure and Secrecy in the Culture of
Investment." Victorian Studies 45.1 (2002): 17-41. Jstor. Web. 2 February 2010.

Foreman 49 way of earning a living during the industrial era, in fact this ―game played by all classes‖27 constituted the rise to success of both men. The opportunity for this advancement was afforded by the booming industries of the Industrial Revolution. Fittingly, Eliot‘s opening words set the scene of the novel in the midst of the commercial expansion: ―the black ships---laden with the fresh-scented fir-planks, with rounded sacks of oil-bearing seed, or with the dark glitter of coal---are borne along to the town of St Ogg‘s.‖28 In the very foundation of the novel, Eliot introduces the encroachment of modernization, symbolized by the industrial materials, onto the agrarian setting of St. Ogg‘s. Throughout the novel, we see the effects of this introduction as some characters choose to draw on the change, while others resist its imminent arrival beyond the shipping docks. Mr. Deane is of the former kind, he takes advantage of the momentum of industrialization, and is able to rise from poverty and make ―himself so valuable to Guest & Co. that they were glad enough to offer him a share in the business.‖29 Indeed, in time, no man was thought more highly of in St Ogg 's than Mr.
Deane, and …Miss Susan Dodson, who was held to have made the worst match of all the Dodson sisters, might one day ride in a better carriage, and live in a better house, even than her sister Pullet.30
Mr. Deane‘s rise in status was only possible in the wake of these social changes, and in particular, after the decrease in the prominence of the family that Maine noted. Had he

27

Russell, Norman. The Novelist and Mammon: Literary Response to the World of Commerce in the
Nineteenth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. 19. Print.
28

Eliot, 1.

29

Ibid, 231.

30

Ibid, 81.

Foreman 50 succeeded financially before the Industrial Revolution, his efforts would have only brought wealth, not status, and his achievement would have been attributed to the family. Now, however, the mobility between classes, and consequently Mr. Deane‘s success, is all that is necessary for advancement in the social hierarchy. The fact that the once-poor nonentity
Mr. Deane ―[was] advancing in the world as rapidly as‖ the stately ―Mr. Tulliver [was] going down in it‖31 demonstrates the decreasing weight of titles and status in modern affairs. One could earn a solid living and be respected by virtue of hard work, rather than heredity. The decreased role of consanguinity is evident in Mr. Deane‘s handling of Tom.
Rather than giving Tom, his kinsman, a high position in his business, a practice common to blood-based forms of association, he gave him humbling, but promising advice. Tom‘s status as a direct relation to the respectable Tulliver family was no longer advantageous; he had to earn his position in the factory as any lowly churl would. Tom‘s savoir-faire, rather than his class, is the only hope for advancement. In this arrangement, it is the individual who has the responsibility of self-help; a family name could no longer provide the means for social mobility. Individualization, as Maine asserted, has become the staple of modern society in the place of family and class reliance.
Once a self-made man, Tom is able to clear his family name, which was tarnished by debt. In a world where money is the medium of social mobility, insufficient funds can cause any reputation to plummet; peerage, however, cannot be diluted by a lack of funds.
Despite the rite of passage being actuated in the ways of the new order, Tom was still very much tied to the ways of the past. Eliot explains this retention of past principles by invoking emotional bonds: ―younger generations…have risen above the mental level of the
31

Ibid, 213.

Foreman 51 generation before them,‖ but have been ―nevertheless tied [to it] by the strongest fibers of their hearts.‖32 Tom is raised to think better of himself by virtue of belonging to the
Dodsons/Tullivers bloodline, as well as to recognize the Mill as a symbol of social consequence. ―I am an honest man‘s son, and your father‘s a rogue,‖ was Tom‘s condescending retort to Phillip in a quarrel at school. This reprisal echoes supremacy derived from heredity, for by appealing to his father‘s honesty he was invoking his father‘s honor as a gentleman - a man of good family, breeding, or social position.
The intensity of this perception surfaces when Tom repurchases the Mill, an act that according to Esty restores the respectability of his family, and I argue completes his childhood dream of ―following in his father‘s business, which he had always thought extremely pleasant, for it was nothing but riding about, giving orders, and going to market.‖33 Tom‘s wish to be a ―substantial man,‖ who goes hunting and rides high on a
―capital black mare,‖ is a yearning to exercise status derived from family, for he wishes to follow distinctly in his father‘s footsteps.34 This desire is exemplified by Mr. Poulter‘s sword episode, which foreshadows Tom‘s position as the head of the family. During one of
Maggie‘s visits his school, Tom ―wound a red handkerchief round his cloth cap to give it the air of a turban, and his red comforter across his breast as a scarf,‖ grasping the sword he borrowed from Mr. Poulter, with a tremendous horse-shoe frown on his brow he displayed his ―fierce and bloodthirsty disposition to Maggie.‖35 In this child pretence, Tom is playing out the primitive masculine role of the Paterfamilias of the family, which he will be able to appropriate after his father‘s death. The power over dependents will be vested in
32

Eliot, 274.

33

Ibid, 146.

34

Ibid, 146.

35

Ibid, 190.

Foreman 52 his future power of patria Potestas, embodied in this theatric episode by the sword. When
Tom points the sword at Maggie proclaiming, ―I am the Duke of Wellington! March!‖ he is acting out the masculine power of Potestas, which he will subsequently conjure when he turns Maggie from the Mill after her elopement with Stephen. By identifying with the
Duke of Wellington, he adopts the role of the defender of England against Maggie qua
Napoleon Bonaparte,36 thereby protecting traditional values of Paterfamilias against the new ideology symbolized by Maggie.37 Moreover, his portrayal of the Duke of Wellington speaks to his admiration of, and the desire to partake of the power and prestige derived from hereditary status. By repurchasing the Mill, Tom is able to assume this position of power, which was unattainable while the Mill belonged to Mr. Wakem, for the Mill is the domain of Potestas. By owning the Mill he is able fulfill his childhood fantasy where he, like his father, can be ―master of everything, and do just as he liked.‖38 Although Tom operates in a world of contracts, he is still very much concerned with the status derived from family. The Potestas of Paterfamilias, according to Maine, is a rudimentary association of mankind, one with strong binds of consanguinity. By repurchasing the Mill,
Tom sets his family in the ancient tradition of family organization, the power of which he is later able to exercise on Maggie.
IV.

FAMILY PROPERTY AND THE RISE OF THE NUCLEAR FAMILY
Mrs. Tulliver is another character in the novel who perceives the world though the

lens of status. During the liquidation process she is primarily concerned with
36

Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo (1815) by the combined armies of the Seventh
Coalition, composed of an Anglo-Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington and the
Prussian army under the command of Gebhard von Blücher.
37

Maggie threatens the power of Potestas on several occasions. Her friendship and romance with Phillip against the wish of her father and brother, as well as her elopement with Stephen undermine the authority of the Paterfamilias.
38

Eliot, 146.

Foreman 53 monogrammed objects, claiming that she would have handled the situation better if only she ―could ha 'kept the things wi ' [her] name on 'em."39 The importance of these objects to the previous social structure is immense. These articles are in fact heirlooms for Tom and
Maggie, and serve as physical embodiments of the family‘s status and power. The word heirloom originally meant ayre lome or ―implement, tool.‖40 This definition is central to our analysis, for it posits these objects as tools in the arsenal of a family to remind future generations of the importance of family allegiance, as well as to serve as a public indication of the family‘s long-standing status. Heirlooms are the credentials of the old order; they function much as legal contracts do in the new order, except that they bind family and not individuals.
The inscription of family monograms on many of the items further complicates the selling of these heirlooms. Once auctioned off, these symbols of family status will be identifiable as those belonging to a particular defiled family. Mrs. Tulliver fittingly expresses her frustration at the loss: "my teapot as I bought when I was married, and to think o ' its being scratched, and set before the travelers and folks, and my letters on it---see here, E. D. --- and everybody to see ‗em.‖41 In the hands of strangers, these articles become emblems of the failed old order, but for the family their proliferation to strangers is a dissolution of status. The dispersion of these items was not solely a concern of Mrs.
Tulliver‘s, for her sisters understand that the sale of these items is a stab at their family honor; ―it 's very bad---to think o ' the family initials going about everywhere---it niver was so before.‖ With the sale of the heirlooms, the Tullivers lose the tools that signify their

39

Ibid, 212.

40

Online Etymology Dictionary

41

Eliot, 220.

Foreman 54 status. Moreover, the loss of these items to contractual agreements such as: failed mortgage payments and legal debts, further emphasizes the progression of society into the new social structure, one where Maine asserts, the family, and I suggest by extension, family ―tools‖ are no longer important.
Heirlooms embody multifarious and enduring set of relations between the family and its members. The discussion of heirlooms in Anthony Trollope‘s The Eustace
Diamonds (1871) posits these instruments as symbols of the family rather than individual family members:
Because families as historical entities do not fully exist at any one moment, they cannot be embodied by any one person. Heirlooms, by contrast, endure across generations, and can be in this way more adequate representations of a family than any member. As a result, a particular member of the family may possess an heirloom but does not have all the legal rights of property over it – most importantly, she or, more usually, he cannot alienate it by sale or gift.42
If heirlooms can manifest a family better than an individual family member, their loss in
The Mill on the Floss, signifies a deperdition of the Tulliver family as a unit defined by past generations. Independence from this tie to extended systems of kinship symbolized by heirlooms in particular, as well as the Mill in general, as argued by Esty, constitutes an artificial and ―‗premature birth‘ of the nuclear family (italics mine).‖43

42

Miller, Andrew. "Owning Up: Possessive Individualism in Trollope 's Autobiography and The Eustace
Diamonds." Novels behind Glass: Commodity Culture and Victorian Narrative (Literature, Culture, Theory).
1 ed. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 166. Print.
43

Esty, 152.

Foreman 55
According to sociologists Talcott Parsons and William Goode, the nuclear family was functionally more compatible with the economic demands of the industrial society as it allowed for greater mobility both hierarchically and geographically. The nuclear family is a social unit composed of parents and dependent children whose primary obligation is to one another rather than extended kin. Cut off from the influence and obligation to extended relations, the members of the nuclear family are able to easily navigate the labor market, and pursue occupational advancement. Thus, in amendment to Henry Maine‘s argument, when the focus of social association shifts from the family to the individual, the family must restructure in order to meet the needs of both the newly recognized individual and of society. The nuclear family allowed for individual autonomy as it did not impose preconceived notions and confining obligations, and yet was able to preserve some of its powers by offering the traditional qualities of protection and support. It is the nuclear family that Michael Wolff speaks of, but does not identify, when discussing its position as
―both a defense against and a support for the obligatory anarchy of laissez-faire and individualism.‖44 Maggie‘s choice to abide by the ties of the past is consequently more complicated than Wolf suggests. It is her refusal to recognize her family and herself as part of this new social construction that posits her choice to be one between family and freedom. With the loss of the Mill and heirlooms, the Tulliver family becomes an economically vulnerable, but socially autonomous unit. The fatality of the situation for the
Tullivers lies not in the premature birth as a nuclear family, as Esty contests, but rather in their refusal to accept their new condition.
The selling-out episode also reveals Eliot‘s subtle commentary on the fundamental problems with property transference upon marriage in the nineteenth-century. The failed
44

Wolff, Michael. "Heroines Adrift: George Eliot and the Victorian Ideology of Family." Dickens and Other
Victorians: Essays in Honor of Philip Collins. 205. New York: St. Martin 's, 1988. MLA International
Bibliography. EBSCO. Web. 19 Feb. 2010.

Foreman 56
Brougham‘s 1857 Bill,45 was close in time to the publication of The Mill on the Floss and must have influenced George Eliot‘s writing, for property, real or otherwise, is of much consequence in the novel. Mrs. Tulliver‘s continual insistence on the unfairness of her losing her own paraphernalia,46 and in particular that acquired prior to marriage, to the hands of Mr. Tulliver‘s legal victors would strike a sensitive chord with contemporary readers. Under the concurrent laws of coverture a ―husband and wife…[were] one person in law, so that the very being and existence of the woman [was] suspended … entirely merged or incorporated in that of the husband.‖47 The reform of property laws affecting married women was the first priority and ―the most fundamental of all feminist legal and social reforms in the nineteenth-century.‖48 It was understood that the enfranchisement of women could never succeed under contemporaneous property laws, ―the subsequent successful campaigns to improve women‘s education and opportunities for employment, and later the right to vote and participate in public life, were all based on this primary imperative to overturn the common law as it affected married women.‖49 Eliot‘s delicate reference to this struggle, via Mrs. Tulliver, would have been immediately apparent to the readers of The Mill on the Floss. In Eliot‘s social experiment, Mrs. Tulliver symbolizes the lot of many women who were excluded from their husbands‘ worldly affairs in which the latter disposed of the former‘s property as they saw fit.

45

The Brougham‘s 1857 Bill attempted suspending the laws of coverture, thereby giving the same property rights to married as to single women.
46

Legally paraphernalia is personal property not real property, apart from dower, reserved by law to a married woman.
47

Blackstone, Sir William. Commentaries on the Laws of England, Vol. 1. New York: Gryphon Editions,
2003. Print.
48

Dolin, Tim. Mistress of the House: Women of Property in the Victorian Novel (Nineteenth Century
(Ashgate)). Hampshire, England: Ashgate Publishing, 1998. 4. Print.
49

Dolin, 4.

Foreman 57
The complete legal surrender of property to the husband upon marriage was legal practice heavily stained with ancient custom. So much so, that Maine identified slavery and matrimonial law, as it concerned women‘s property, as distinctive remnants of the old forms of association in modern society. Whereas ancient law ―subordinates women to her blood-relations … [the] prime phenomenon of modern jurisprudence has been her subordination to her husband.‖50 In ancient law, the authority traditionally residing in the patria Potestas51 was simply transferred to the husband, so that by Confarreation,
Coemption, and Usus,52 the Husband acquired a number of rights over the person and property of his wife … But in what capacity did he acquire them? Not as Husband, but as Father. … the woman passed in manum viri, that is, in law she became the Daughter of her husband. She was included in his Patria Potestas.53
Although modern law was not as excessive in subjugation of women‘s property and person to Patria Potestas, newly embodied by the husband, such practice nevertheless existed, and according to Maine, could not be more vividly exemplified than by the modern English
Common Law.54 We see a clear example of this in The Mill on the Floss when Mr.
50

Maine, 154.

51

The absolute legal authority of the male head of a Roman family or household over its members; the authority of a Roman Paterfamilias.
52

Confarreation: The highest and most solemn form of marriage among the ancient Romans, made in the presence of the Pontifex Maximus or the Flamen Dialis and ten witnesses, and marked by the offering of a cake made of spelt. Coemption: A form of civil marriage consisting in a mutual fictitious sale of the two parties. Usus: marriage simply by mutual consent with evidence of extended cohabitation.
53
54

Maine, 155.

In Maine‘s own words, ―I do not know how the operation and nature of the ancient Patria Potestas can be brought so vividly before the mind as by reflecting on the prerogatives attached to the husband by the pure
English Common Law, and by recalling the rigorous consistency with which the view of a complete legal subjection on the part of the wife is carried by it.‖

Foreman 58
Wakem retorts to Philip‘s claim that Maggie ―has never entered into the family quarrels,‖ implying of course the lawsuit, by reminding him that ―we don‘t ask what a woman does – we ask whom she belongs to (italics mine).‖55 Following Maine‘s theory, the woman first belongs to the Paterfamilias of the father and then of the husband. Traded as property in family transactions, never is she an individual, for she adopts the sins or praises of the
Paterfamilias she completes. Indeed, women were still subject to the old system where, according to Maine, ―the moral elevation and moral debasement of the individual appear to be confounded with, or postponed to, the merits and offences of the group [e.g. the family] to which the individual belongs.‖56 Individualization acquired by the members of the nuclear family did not extend to women. Cut off from the greater influence of kin, the nuclear family was still tainted by the influence of blood relations through the adopted status of patria Potestas by the husband. The dissolution of kinship could only fully occur with the suspension of patriarchy; as Maine concisely stated, ―where the Potestas ends,
Kinship ends.‖57 The rise of individuation as it concerned women was consequently, an entirely separate, complex and prolonged phenomenon, as compared to that of the opposite sex. By addressing first and foremost the right of property, feminist of the century were able to strike at the very core of patriarchy and by proxy kinship.
If Mrs. Tulliver can be said to represent the femme covert, then Mrs. Glegg foils her sister by prefiguring the modern woman. There exists a line of criticism that posits Mrs.
Glegg as part of the old order. Joshua Esty, and N. N. Feltes, among others, contest that
Mrs. Glegg‘s upkeep and enforcement of family traditions necessarily, and absolutely,

55

Eliot, 414.

56

Maine, 127.

57

Ibid, 149.

Foreman 59 place her in the old social structure. While I agree that Mrs. Glegg‘s dealings with family reverberates the custom, her financial transactions are that of a modern woman. She has complete control of her capital, which she is able to spend, lend, invest, or save as she wills. I disagree with Kathleen Blake‘s and Judith Lowder Newton‘s ascription of Mrs.
Glegg‘s financial independence merely to the generosity of her husband. It is inescapable that under the laws of the time he would have to consent to her financial independence legally, but the novel makes clear that such consent was mutually understood and unquestioned, save for jocular purposes.58 Based on the portrayal of Mrs. Glegg in the novel, it is very unlikely that her dominant and obtrusive personality would harmonize with any that tried to govern her actions, and indeed, Mr. Glegg never attempts to do so. In effect, Mrs. Glegg‘s independence prefigures The Married Women‘s Property Rights Acts of 1870,59 and 1882,60 which abolished the practice of coverture. Mrs. Glegg does not act in accordance to gender norm of her milieu; she controls her property, acting independently as a true capitalist – saving and investing to accumulate capital. Through
Mrs. Glegg, Eliot attempts to expose the prototype of the modern woman, who is able to operate in the patriarchic society successfully.

58

Mrs. Glegg teases Mr. Glegg for attempting to give her financial advice, asking him whether it was a gift he pretended to leave at her disposal.
59

Although these acts were passed 10 and 22 years after the publication of The Mill on the Floss respectively, the impetus behind the acts was long in duration. In fact, the Brougham‘s Act of 1857 touched on the same legislative subject, and was defeated in parliament 3 years before the publication of the novel.
Legislation of such consequence and transformative faculty usually marinades a while in the public sphere before it becomes actuated in law.
60

The Married Women‘s Property Act of 1882 made it possible for women to ―[acquire], [hold], and
[dispose] of any property as their separate property, of contracting, with respect to it, and of suing and being sued as if they were sole(e).‖ Quotation from: Thicknesse, Ralph. The Married Women 's Property Act, 1882:
Together with the Acts of 1870 and 1874, and an Introduction on the Law of Married Women 's Property. with Appe. Toronto: Nabu Press, 2010. Print.

Foreman 60
Critical precedent61 often attributes Mrs. Glegg‘s independence to the eighteenthcentury provincial conventions that offered women greater autonomy in family, as in business. This hypothesis would imply that Mrs.Glegg‘s socio-economically equal sisters enjoy the same powers, a supposition that is textually false. Mrs. Glegg is the only Dodson sister who possesses economic autonomy, the only one who is even concerned with such a freedom. Subsequently, I argue that Mrs. Glegg‘s autonomy is not a consequence of the eighteenth-century, but a token of the nineteenth-century modern woman. Her independent financing is the budding of the modern woman, who by the late nineteenth-century ―began to claim independence and autonomy in every aspect of her life – personally, politically and economically.‖62 Judith Lowder Newton‘s assertion that what industrial capitalism meant for middle-class women was the decline in of both easier access to status and power, is questionable.63 The tenets of capitalism were the very impetus behind the property acts, for capitalistic doctrine made it impractical for half of the population to be unable to invest.
The Acts in turn granted women power they had not enjoyed for centuries.
The development of individualism that Maine identified and that capitalism supported, only bettered the lot of women, for it introduced the ideals that paved the way towards gradual enfranchisement. Moreover, capitalism and status are largely oxymoronic; the rise of the former by degrees first diminished the prominence, and later the existence, of hereditary status, and as a consequence could not have made access to ―status‖ either more difficult or simple. True, despite the legislature and capitalistic culture, the

61

See Esty‘s Nationhood, Adulthood, and Rupture of “Bildung”: Arresting Development in The Mill on the
Floss.
62

Rutterford, Janette, and Josephine Maltby. "Women and Wealth in Fiction in the Long Nineteenth Century
1800-1914." Women and Their Money, 1700-1950: Essays on Women and Finance. 1 ed. New York:
Routledge, 2008. 158. Print.
63

Newton, 126.

Foreman 61 nineteenth-century was no utopia for women, but the seed of change had been planted, and it was the very industrial capitalism that Newton invokes, which made its growth possible.
The influence of consanguinity on individuals in the old order is best illustrated by the Dodson family. This family was ruled by peculiar principals that governed every aspect of life, from making cowslip wine to proper pallbearer attire. In the Dodson family, ―there was … a peculiar tradition as to what was the right thing in household management and social demeanor.‖64 What is problematic about these idiosyncratic customs, however, is not their existence, but rather their intensity. Within these bounds, individuality does not have a place. Indeed, Eliot notes that in this family ―personal qualities were subordinate to the great fundamental fact of blood,‖ a point in line with Maine‘s hypothesis.65 Family convictions became an internal psychological understanding of self for every Dodson, and this influence can be particularly evidenced in Mrs. Tulliver. Although the ―feeblest member of [the] family,‖ and consequently, the ―merest epitome of the family habits and traditions,‖ Mrs. Tulliver was nevertheless ―a thorough Dodson, though a mild one.‖66
Growing up ―under the yoke of her elder sisters,‖ she managed to become an absolute
Dodson despite having a disposition contrary, and inhospitable to the Dodson customs.67
The alteration of Mrs. Tulliver‘s character by the imposition of family traditions is a testament to the power of consanguinity, noted by Maine, in the past social structure.
The Dodson mold is a repository of status. Not only does it set the Dodsons apart from other families, but according to the Dodsons, it also elevates them to a higher social standing. If family status depends on the upkeep of certain traditions, even if this
64

Eliot, 63.

65

Ibid, 144.

66

Ibid, 63.

67

Ibid, 63.

Foreman 62 conviction is artificially construed, when a family member does not partake in even a single Dodson tradition, he or she will be labeled as unDodson. A label not uncommonly brought up by Mrs. Glegg in discourses with her sisters. Considering that family identity was the sole path to status, and the only source of identity, being unDodson, in the old regime, meant being insignificant, lacking status, and therefore being no one.
Alternatively, in the new order, as Maine observes, if one does not wish to be identified with his/her family, that person can simply be an individual, a prospect entirely impossible in a society where consanguinity was identity.
Since individualization and capitalism are mutually supportive, in order for the economic model to succeed, the old blood-based forms of association had to be amended in favor of the free association of individuals. James Kilroy notes of this progression in
The Mill on the Floss, where the ―sacred bonds of mutual support do not operate when it comes to facing… financial problems.‖68 Indeed, the Dodsons do not go beyond the very essential in helping their kin during the bankruptcy proceedings. Yet, whereas Kilroy saw this duality as possibly disrupting the prodigal son resolution to Maggie‘s elopement, which would require standing by your kin, I perceive it as evidence of the development of the nuclear family. The reluctance to help reveals that the Dodsons perceive their kin as either the newly formed nuclear family, which puts the Tullivers outside the bounds of family obligation, or that they are themselves showing signs of progression. Moreover, amongst the many maxims that this family espouses ―industry‖ and the ―production of first-rate commodities for the market‖ clearly stand out as capitalistic traits. Consequently, both the Dodson dictum, and Mrs. Glegg‘s financing, is evidence of the new order infiltrating the lives of even the usually custom abiding citizens. The case of the Dodsons
68

Kilroy, 128.

Foreman 63 and Mrs. Glegg cannot be diluted to mere opposites – modernity or custom – as has been the case of literary criticism on the subject thus far. They display modern inclinations, and thus should not be absolutely assigned to either category, but instead perceived in their medium as a microcosm of the comprehensive social changes.
V.

MAGGIE
The effects of consanguinity can be further witnessed in Maggie Tulliver. The

―oppressive narrowness‖69 of Maggie‘s family, combined with the individual and spirited nature of her character, is the foundation of her doubleness. ―Full of …opposites,‖70
Maggie struggles to reconcile the wishes of her family with her own desires. Enduring constant reproach from her aunts and mother who thought her ―beyond everything for boldness and unthankfulness,‖ ―she only wanted people to think her a clever little girl, and not to find fault with her.‖71 These contradicting notions of what was proper, and what she desired, created ―volcanic upheavings of imprisoned passions‖ within her psyche.72 It should come as no surprise therefore, that later in life, when she had a choice of either eloping with her lover, or forever abandoning the idea of a life with him, that she chose the isolation because of ―other ties.‖73 The ties she is referring to are the very binds of family, the duty to consanguinity above inclinations of individuality that the old order demands.
Maggie‘s elopement with Stephen, as Joshua Esty suggests, can also be perceived as a push towards a more modern experience that threatened to erode the power of the kinship systems. A marriage between the two lovers would produce a nuclear family – a
69

Eliot, 273.

70

Ibid, 398.

71

Ibid, 222, 82.

72

Ibid, 293.

73

Ibid, 434.

Foreman 64 purely modern social construction – thus replacing the significance of blood-based associations. While marriage between Lucy and Tom would represent the continuation of centuries old kinship alliances,74 the marriage between Stephen and Maggie would symbolize the rise of modernization. Either outcome, according to Esty, runs counter to the novel‘s emphasis on ―ruptures rather than the continuities of national history.‖75
Consequently, a compromise in from of a marriage between Lucy – the epitome of custom
– and Stephen – the embodiment of modernity – must occur. My argument holds, however, that marriage between Maggie and Stephen cannot occur, not because it would provide an allegorical basis for ―the yeoman community to ‗mature‘ smoothly‖ into modernity, but because of Maggie‘s reluctance to accurately perceive her position. Maggie is neither accepted by the Gemeinschaft community of St. Oggs, to which she clings, nor is she receptive of her own freedom, afforded to her by modernity. As Maggie does not perceive her own modernization, or the premature modernization of her family, she is grounded in an ahistoric vacuum, unable to partake in a future with Stephen. According to Eliot‘s review of Riehl, advancement can occur only through consentaneous development of the organism and its medium,76 but Maggie cannot give consent because she cannot find her place in history, clinging to the past she wishes to belong to the modern present, and yet refuses to transition into modernity via a marriage with Stephen. In Maggie, contemporaries see the forces of past and present, and through her experience try to make sense of the radical social transformations at hand. It is not the isolated development of

74

A marriage between cousins (Lucy and Tom) is a typical union in Gemeinschaft.

75

Esty, 152.

76

Eliot, George. "The Natural History of German Life: Riehl. ―The Writings of George Eliot: Essays and
Leaves from a Note-Book. 1883. Reprint. Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1884. 229289. Print

Foreman 65
Maggie that Eliot is exploring in what seems to be a Bildungsroman, but rather Maggie‘s development as affected by the changes that the industrial revolution has wrought.
VI.

CONCLUSION
In The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot abstracts the developments of Gesellschaft –

contracts and contiguity – to the domestic sphere, where she is then able to supplant the givens of Gemeinschaft – consanguinity and status. In an age of visible and rapid transition, Eliot is able to harness change by divulging its progression in The Mill on the
Floss. Creating the new objectivity within the novel, she answers the demands of the realist genre, offering a solution to the rapid transformations by creating a controlled environment where change is actuated successfully. The Mill on the Floss is then able to, at once, provide a rationalization of the change, and a channel through which further change can transpire. The development in the novel is not seamless however, as both Tom and
Maggie lose their life to the ―huge mass‖77 of machinery carried by the flood – a symbol of modernization. Change is eminent, and ―Nature repairs her ravages,‖ but as Eliot concedes, ―to the eyes that have dwelt on the past, there is no thorough repair.‖78

77

Eliot, 500.

78

Ibid, 501.

Foreman 66
CHAPTER III: DRACULA
I.

INTRODUCTION
Dracula contains the uneasy conflation of old and new, not unlike Maggie Tulliver

and Heathcliff. No better proof of this claim is the greatly divergent criticism that often categorically identifies Dracula as uniquely modern or aberrantly primitive. According to
Nina Auerback, ―Dracula is the twentieth century he still haunts,‖ he is a ―harbinger of a world to come, a world that is our own.‖1 Franco Moretti, however, understands Dracula as an allegory of the 1897 capitalism, and in particular monopolism; it is the other characters
―who are the relics of the dark ages,‖ in his estimation.2 To Terry Eagleton3 and Seamus
Deane,4 Dracula is an allegory of the terminal decline of the Irish Ascendency, and to
Raphael Ingelbein,5 he is a nostalgic aristocrat. Richard Coe understands Dracula to evoke
―medieval disorder‖6 that threatens bourgeois rationalism, while David Sander simply delegates Dracula to the ―irrational past.‖7 Indeed, these are but a few classifications of
Dracula, whose liminal character has confounded scholarly discourse. While critics agree that the inner world of the novel is ―obsessively modern,‖8 the novel‘s overall temporal
1

Auerbach, Nina. "Dracula: A Vampire of Our Own; Dracula 's New Order." Our Vampires, Ourselves.
Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1995. 61-98. Print.
2

Moretti, Franco. "Dialectic of Fear; Towards a Sociology of Modern Monster." Signs Taken for Wonders:
On the Sociology of Literary Forms. London: Verso, 2005. 83-98. Print.
3

Eagleton, Terry. "Form and Ideology in the Anglo-Irish Novel." Heathcliff and the Great Hunger: Studies in Irish Culture. London: Verso, 1995. 145-226. Print.
4

Deane, Seamus. "Land & Soil: A Territorial Rhetoric." History Ireland 2.1 (1994): 31-34. Print.

5

Ingelbein, Ralphael. ―Gothic Genealogies: ‗Dracula,‘ ‗Bowen 's Court,‘ and Anglo-Irish Psychology.‖ ELH
70.4 (2003): 1089-1105. Print.
6

Coe, Richard M.. "It Takes Capital to Defeat Dracula: A New Rhetorical Essay." College English 48.3
(1986): 231-242. Print.
7

Sandner, David. "Up-to-Date with a Vengeance; Modern Monsters in Bram Stoker 's Dracula and Margaret
Oliphant 's ‗The Secret Chamber‘." Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 8 (1997): 294-309. Print.
8

McWhir, Anne. "Pollution and Redemption in ‗Dracula‘." Modern Language Studies 17.3 (1987): 31-40.
Print.

Foreman 67 characterization is a general point of disagreement. The novel, it seems, is a confusion of categories between ―modern and primitive, civilized and savage, science and myth,‖9 as
Ann McWhir beautifully summarizes. Franco Moretti is the sole scholar in my research who comes close to offering an integrated, but still somewhat limited, reading of Dracula as ―at once the final product of the bourgeois century and its negation.‖10 His hybrid view of Dracula, however, is colored by a concentration on the Count‘s relation to a market monopoly. As a true monopolist, Moretti argues, Dracula is the feudal embodiment of the market system that cancels competition, and hence individual liberty. Yet, at the same time, ―competition itself can generate monopoly in new forms,‖11 and consequently, is not necessarily the past of competition, but instead its present, modern form. Indeed, Dracula fits perfectly within Karl Marx‘s classification of modern monopoly as ―the true synthesis…the negation of feudal monopoly insofar as it implies the system of competition and the negation of competition insofar as it is monopoly.‖12 Moretti‘s reading concludes, however, that in Stoker‘s novel Dracula appears only as the ―negative and destructive‖13 product of bourgeois society, and thus in his criticism, Dracula‘s characterization remains restricted to only one side of his bi-polar whole. In this work I suggest that Dracula, much like Heathcliff, defies the pigeonhole of the novel‘s criticism, instead, offering a complicated synthesis of terms and ideology, one that is both modern and obsolete. He is, like the main figures of the preceding chapters, ―nineteenth century up-to-date with a

9

McWhir, 31.

10

Moretti, 93.

11

Ibid.

12

Marx, Karl. "The Property of Philosophy." Collected Works. Vol. 6. London, 1976. 195. Print.

13

Moretti, 93.

Foreman 68 vengeance,‖ but since, ―the old centuries had, and have, powers of their own which mere
‗modernity‘ cannot kill,‖ he is a multifarious product of the evolving world.14
II.

FAMILIAL UNIONS: VAMPIRES AND HUMANS
You…are now to me, flesh of my flesh; blood of my blood; kin of my kin15
Critics often identify Dracula as a novel concerned with female domesticity:

vampires figure the dangers of the modern woman‘s sexuality, and Mina the old ideal of the angel in the house. This feminist categorization is undoubtedly present in the novel, but is only a piece in Stoker‘s subversion of the family. The novel‘s approach towards the family aggregate is quite singular. At first glance, Dracula is unconcerned with family, as most characters within the novel appear motherless and/or fatherless. Mina is in fact an orphan, and Harker‘s, Sewart‘s, Quincey‘s and even Van Helsing‘s families are never mentioned. The only characters that do have family relations, Lucy and Godalming, lose their parents early in the novel. In omitting much of what is associated with familial ties,
Stoker allows the characters to act independently. This gives the novel a modern tone, for as Henry Maine elucidated, ―society in primitive times was not what it is assumed to be at present, a collection of individuals. In fact, and in the view of the men who composed it, it was an aggregation of families.‖16 Having no extended families, the characters are able to enter the egalitarian field of contractual relations. United by a pact to ―protect‖17 Mina, they are in effect, united by a contract, the creation of which underlies Maine‘s thesis of a move ―from Status to Contract.‖18
14

Dracula, 37.

15

Dracula, 288.

16

Maine, 126.

17

Stoker, Bram. Dracula: A Mystery Story. New York: W. R. Caldwell & Co., 170. Print.

18

Maine, 170.

Foreman 69
By omitting the traditional family construct, the novel does not necessary eschew the topic, instead it actively explores it from a different, modern, angle. Godalming, it seems, must first loose his father, in order to be on an equal plain of independence with the other characters. The loss is particularly important for he is the only one who can stand to represent nobility, and as the upper class places much value on kinship ties, it would act as a restrictive force. Free from obligations and ties of family relations, Godalming can join the other characters in a struggle against Dracula – a force of antiquity in many respects.
As the unit of modern society is the Individual rather than the Family, the characters‘ union represents the replacement of kinship in blood, as a force of social organization, with the principle of ―contiguity‖19 articulated by Maine. The characters are united via the places they live, at least for the interim of the novel, and despite their varied occupations and social statures, they are equal.
The equality amongst the human characters is reiterated by Van Helsing‘s perceptive commentary. The gentlemen of the group, he highlights, ―by nationality… heredity, or by the possession of natural gifts, are fitted to hold … [their] respective place in the moving world.‖20 Van Helsing‘s statement seems to imply that Quincey, Godalming, and Dr. Sewart are respectable due to nationality, heredity, and talent, respectfully. Within the three categories, ―natural gifts,‖ along with ―nationality,‖ hold an equivalent place with heredity – an ancient factor of social distinction – thereby signaling a progression away from kinship as the de facto measure of men.21 This mix of old and new characterizations of success is particularly evident in the occupations of the characters, the majority of which

19

Maine, 129.

20

Dracula, 244.

21

Ibid.

Foreman 70 have earned, rather than inherited, their place in society. Van Helsing, Harker, Quincey, and Dr. Sewart, at least from what is evident within the novel, have ascended the social ladder either by virtue of their intellect or business expertise. Quincey Morris is a rich, young American who carries a Bowie knife at all times, and sometimes speaks slang. In his own characterization he is, ―only a rough fellow, who hasn‘t, perhaps, lived as a man should to win such a distinction,‖22 referring to engagement with Lucy. We know that he has been to Panama in South America and can only conjecture that he has acquired his wealth in some mercantile venture(s). To think that this ruffian businessman could be on a level with Godalming is impossible unless modern society has come to measure itself by the merit of individual achievement. Van Helsing and Dr. Sewart fall within this category of accomplishment, for both are medical men, who, as far as we can tell, have to rely on their talent for a livelihood. Harker, in turn, progresses within the story line from a solicitor to a partner and finally a ―master of his [Mr. Hawkings‘] business.‖23
That is not to say that status is absent from the inter-character relations. Godalming is able to use his status on various occasions to influence or expedite results: ―Lord
Godalming went to the Vice-Consul as his rank might serve as an immediate guarantee of some sort to the official (italics mine).‖24 It is also worth noting that Lucy picks
Godalming rather than the other two suitors, Quincey and Dr. Sewart. True, she does insist that she loves him best, but it is nevertheless curious that he is the only one who can boast of status derived from heredity. Similarly, Stephen Arata in his argument on re-racination of Lucy, calls attention to the fact that not only is Godalming‘s blood ―more good than‖25
22

Dracula, 331.

23

Ibid, 171.

24

Ibid, 347.

25

Ibid, 123.

Foreman 71 the bourgeois sang of Dr. Seward, but that the blood of the female servants is somehow unsafe as Van Helsing rejects them as donors.26 Money, however, also plays a role in the novel. ―It made me think of the wonderful power of money!‖27 exclaims Mina regarding
Godalming‘s and Quincey‘s free use of capital. It seems that despite occupying different social strata, the vastness of their funds, comes close to equating their status, and yet, not entirely so, for it is Godalming‘s rank that is even more influential than money in some affairs. This, in fact, reinforces the progression from titles to wealth in modern society, as discussed in the chapter on The Mill on the Floss. Wealth, has by degrees replaced titles as the divide between men, and what we see in Dracula is a prototype of this change.
Interestingly, Dracula is cast as an ―impoverished‖28 aristocrat who, while signaling the decline of the Ascendancy with his financial quandary, as Raphael Ingelbein contests, also, and perhaps more pertinently, must work for money. He cannot, in Michael Moses‘ terms, ―rely on the wealth of his landed estate for his financial sustenance.‖29 In the critics‘ interpretation, this lost advantage is suggestive of the doomed fate of the ―‗Big House‘ of the Anglo-Irish historical novel,‖30 and for the purposes of this work is indicative of his divided ideological loyalties. Dracula earns his money by marking the places where the mystical blue flames burn and which on a certain night of the year illuminate a hidden treasure. The various currencies Harker finds while exploring the Count‘s castle are the very treasures, hidden, as Dracula describes, in ―the ground fought over for centuries by
26

Arata, Stephen D.. "The Occidental Tourist: "Dracula" and the Anxiety of Reverse
Colonization." Victorian Studies 33.4 (1990): 621-645. Print.
27

Dracula, 356.

28

Ingelbein, 1095.

29

Moses, Michael V.. "The Irish Vampire; Dracula, Parnell, and the Troubled Dreams of Nationhood."
Journal X 2.1 (1997): 79. Print.
30

Moses, 79.

Foreman 72 the Wallachian, the Saxon, and the Turk…[for] when the invader was triumphant he found but little, for whatever there was had been sheltered in the friendly soil.‖31 Though liquid assets are much at play in the Count‘s financing, he has no need to ―transfer his wealth into liquid assets,‖32 for the hidden treasure that serves as his income is multinational currency.
Ironically enough, while Dracula‘s income does not originate from his estate, both metaphorically and physically, it is nevertheless located in the soil – an entity from which ancient aristocracies gleaned their sustenance and in which construct the peasant was
Dracula‘s proverbial ―coward and…fool.‖33 Even so, despite the metaphoric connections to agrarian based aristocracy, the occupation of digging up cash is hardly an aristocrat‘s business. If Dracula had servants do the grunt work, this occupation would simply be a reinforcement of master-servant relations, but single-handed, as the Count is, he is a modern laborer, albeit a supernatural one. In this light, Franco Moretti‘s suggestion that what makes a man noble are the servants, is evocative.34 After all, could it be that it took
Dracula centuries to descend upon London not because he has a ―child brain,‖35 but simply for the lack of funds? Stipulating that Dracula is an ―entrepreneur who invests gold to expand his domain,‖36 and in particular the gold, which he himself ―earns,‖ should not then
Moretti‘s classification of him as capital be amended to represent a capitalist – an active rather than recessive force? As a capitalist Dracula is an independent financier and certainly a modern force in the newly emergent stock market of the nineteenth-century. As

31

Dracula, 22.

32

Moses, 81.

33

Dracula, 22.

34

Moretti, 90.

35

Dracula, 341.

36

Moretti, 84.

Foreman 73 capital, however, he would be a sort of ahistoric formation, possibly ancient and possibly modern, though not as modern as if he were independently participating in financial endeavors as a capitalist. Given that the novel places much stress on Dracula‘s independent action, as Van Helsing expounds on his singlehanded accomplishments, the characterization of Dracula as capitalist, and thus an independent actor, is more fitting in this instance.
The human characters, in their union against Dracula, form a unique association, one that is independent form familial ties and is cross-hierarchic in nature. Mina‘s and
Harker‘s child with his ―bundle of names‖ that ―links… [the] little band of men together‖ is at once the foundation and offspring of this unusual union.37 The novel leaves Quincey
Jr.‘s ―names‖38 an ambiguity, however, for we do not know whether it is multiple first or last names that he bears, and the difference carries important implications. If the collection of names includes surnames, then the formulation would suggest an outmoded family construct that places a certain unequivocal emphasis on the family name. The connection to antiquity and old modes of conduct that the prominence of family name implies would be magnified and underscored by their quantity. If, however, the amassed names are forenames then a more individual and personal meaning ensues, one in line with more modern sensibilities. Indeed, there is also a possibility of last-names given by the characters functioning as first names for the child, or vice versa. While in the former case, there would be a subversion of the family name, its individualization and to an extent trivialization, in the latter case there would be an increased import given to the first name and with it individuality.

37

Dracula, 378.

38

Ibid.

Foreman 74
With five names, the family dynamic within which Mina‘s child thrives can be understood as either a hyper-ancient or eccentrically-modern. If a family name is understood as a characterization of distinction in blood, then with the collective nomenclature the child is a lexical mirror to Dracula‘s collective sanguinity. Dracula contains within himself the aggregate blood of his race and his victims (who become his kin), correspondingly the child, is the metaphoric composite of blood, that is, the difference in sanguinity that the ―family‖ name so diligently distinguishes. Both share, in this interpretation, a concern for the primitive – the interplay of blood and lineage, the preservation of kinship. In Stephen Arata‘s estimation, ―Harker‘s ability to secure an heir – an heir whose racial credentials are seemingly impeccable – is the surest indication that the vampire‘s threat has been mastered.‖39 Yet, not only is the impeccability questionable, as within the child we have a mix of social strata and the possibility of Dracula‘s infectious blood being preserved and pro-generated through Mina, but the menace is circumvented only if we understand the child to metaphorically represent an antithesis to Dracula.
Dracula however, is a liminal character, largely ancient in his habits and demeanor, but also surprisingly modern. While Quincey Jr. is, indeed, a foil to the Count, it is questionable whether he foils his ancient or modern tendencies.
The ―un-dead‖40 of the novel, and in particular the family structure of the vampires, must be studied separately from the human characters, as they form a family in their own right. The entire vampire breed, it seems, is based on kinship, for it depends on adoption of individuals into the clan by a blood transfusion. The vampires‘ amalgamation into the original brotherhood becomes simple and even natural, for after the initial blood

39

Arata, 632.

40

Dracula, 203.

Foreman 75 assimilation they carry matching blood, as siblings do. They are, quite literally, united by blood – or rather the need thereof. In fact, the female vampires refer to Mina as, ―sister‖41 after Dracula has begun the conversion, thereby establishing a consanguine relationship.
The reliance on the adoption of individuals is a perfect illustration of how consanguinity functioned in ancient society. As Maine described, in early commonwealths, ―we discover traces of passages in their history when men of alien descent were admitted to, and amalgamated with, the original brotherhood…[thus] the Family, was being constantly adulterated by the practice of adoption.‖42 The ―Fiction of Adoption‖ was necessary, for communities allowed for individuals to exercise political rights out of local propinquity rather than topographic proximity.43 As all ―ancient societies regarded themselves as having proceeded from one original stock,‖ and ―their citizens considered all the groups in which they claimed membership to the founded on common lineage‖ the fiction of adoption permitted the family tie to be artificially created.44
The vampiric family structure exactly follows this ancient, necessary fiction. Once a human is converted into a vampire, it is assimilated into the vampire lineage, where the basis for affiliation becomes stronger than that of any human, artificially constructed, and often amended genealogy, for the union is branded with blood. Indeed, upon Mina‘s contamination, or rather initiation into the vampire breed, Dracula pronounces her ―flesh of my flesh; blood of my blood; kin of my kin; my bountiful wine-press for a while; and shall later on be my companion and my helper.‖45 Although it is unambiguous that Mina
41

Dracula, 367.

42

Maine, 130.

43

Ibid, 130-131.

44

Ibid, 128-129.

45

Dracula, 288.

Foreman 76 becomes kin to Dracula, it is unclear whether her stance in this family unit is that of a sister or a wife. Dracula‘s commencement speech is in line with Adam‘s introduction of Eve in the Bible as ―bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man (italics mine),‖46 but to what extent does this reference denote a carnal connection is debatable.
The familial roles seem blurred as much with Mina as with the ―weird sisters.‖47 In fact, two of the sisters were dark and ―had high aquiline noses, like the Count,‖48 which suggests that they might have been his daughters, and therefore casts vampirism in an incestuous light. Moreover, the blond vampire is singled out as the ―first,‖ whether wife or daughter it is unclear, but hers is the ―right to begin‖ the kiss of death on Harker, and it is her tomb that is ―high‖ and ―great.‖49 It is curious that when the fair vampire rebukes
Dracula for failing to love, he replies ―yes, I too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past. Is it not so?,‖50 which suggests that he has had carnal relationships with the sisters. Yet, one must consider that all the tombs are located in the same castle. Could it be that the vampires were related in their human form and buried in the mausoleum of their ancestors, as their appearance and sisterly bond suggests? Or alternatively, has Dracula had the tombs built? If the female vampires are indeed sisters, as Harker proposes, and have other than sibling relations with Dracula, incest is indisputable. The hypothesis, however, is built on predicates and no certainty can be derived from the information given. What is

46

Campbell, Gordon, ed. King James Bible 400th Anniversary Edition. 400th ed. Oxford, New York: Oxford
University Press, 2010. 33. Print.
47

Dracula, 49.

48

Ibid, 38.

49

Ibid, 370.

50

Ibid, 40.

Foreman 77 clear is that the relations are either of a polygamous or incestuous type and thus primeval in nature.
Vampire relations are not unique in the subversion of the domestic hierarchy, for within familial microcosms of The Mill on the Floss and Wuthering Heights there is ground to adduce incest within the relationships of Maggie and Tom, as well as, Heathcliff and Catherine. Critics often point to the incestuous nature of Maggie‘s and Tom‘s embrace at the end of the novel, and Catherine‘s and Heathcliff‘s sibling-like upbringing which blossoms into passion. The inra-sibling incest that these novels suggest is historically linked to the Enlightenment where Rousseau‘s understanding of the ―state of nature‖ included a prehistoric model in which ―it was quite necessary that the first men married their sisters.‖51 Marquis de Sade went so far as to claim that the most primitive institutions smiled upon incest; it is found in society‘s origins: it was consecrated in every religion, every law encountered. If we traverse the world we will find incest everywhere established.52
Brother-sister incest is a recurring theme in the Enlightenment, appearing in such literary works as Defoe‘s Mall Flanders, Fielding‘s Joseph Andrews, Lewis‘s The Monk, Schiller‘s
The Bride of Messina, Goethe‘s Wilhelm Meister‟s Apprenticeship, and others. Indeed, as
Ann Cline Kelly points out ―the focus on hearth and home in the sentimental literature of the period may have derived from transgressive fantasies or horrifying anxieties about endogamous relations.‖53 The theme of incest proved attractive to the Romanticism as an
51

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. ―Essai sur l‘origine des langues,‖ Oeuvres complètes 5:406. Print.

52

Sade, Marquis De. The Marquis De Sade: Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings. Ed.
Richard Seaver and Austryn Wainhouse. New York: Grove, 1990. Print.
53

Kelly, Ann Cline. Jonathan Swift and Popular Culture: Myth, Media, and the Man. New York: Palgrave,
2002. 110. Print.

Foreman 78
―imaginative ideal,‖54 but it was the more normative, ancient subject of father-daughter incest, that recurred in literature of the time. Dracula, as we have seen, follows, though not necessarily conclusively, the older model of father-daughter relations, which complements the Count‘s old order penchants.
What remains unanswered is why does such confusion exist within these novels that collectively span the nineteenth-century? If we turn to Henry Maine, a singular explanation emerges. Maine, as discussed in the chapter on The Mill on the Floss, explicated that the capacity by which the husband acquired the wife‘s property was ―Not as
Husband, but as Father.‖55 Indeed, ―the woman passed in manum viri, that is, in law she became Daughter of her husband.‖56 Incest, it seems, was part of modern jurisprudence as much as it was part of ancient societies, and its appearance in fiction is only an extreme manifestation of reality. Indeed, incest was not an offence in English criminal law in the eighteenth century, ―it was, in fact, not made so until 1908, and ten years of serious lobbying were required to get a prohibition against it on the statute books.‖57At least, in the case of Dracula, the confused father-daughter scenario could be explained as a reaction to, whether conscious or unconscious, to the incest-like matrimonial laws and virtually nonexistent incest regulations of the time.
III.

DOMESTICITY AND SOCIALITY: DRACULA’S VIA VITAE
Bram Stoker was very scrupulous in his description of Dracula, tying his person,

preferences and surrounding to history and folklore. The image of Dracula that emerges is
54

Stelzig, Eugene L.. The Romantic Subject in Autobiography: Rousseau and Goethe. Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia, 2000. 91. Print.
55

Maine, 155.

56

Ibid.

57

Rousseau, G. S., and Roy Porter. Sexual Underworlds of the Enlightenment. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1988. 199. Print.

Foreman 79 one heavily tied to the symbols of the old order, such as real estate. Dracula must reside in, and indeed inhabits, ancient castles and homes. The estates allow him to ―live‖ in the present while literally dwelling in the past. As Dracula himself explains, ―to live in a new house would kill me,‖ for ―a house cannot be made habitable in a day,‖ – it must be a product of centuries.58 Dracula‘s exacting wish for an old house, his necessity and reliance on it, reveals his deep-rooted consanguine principles. An old house can be seen as a genealogical record; it often physically preserves such documentation in forms of family portraits, heirlooms, monograms and other tangible object, but most importantly, it is a testament of the family lineage by virtue of having sustained generations. Dracula‘s castle exactly follows this tradition, as Harker describes in his journal: the table service is of gold, and so beautifully wrought that it must be of immense value. The curtains and upholstery of the chairs and sofas and the hangings of my bed are of the costliest and most beautiful fabrics, and must have been of fabulous value when they were made, for they are centuries old.59 In this museum-like dwelling, Dracula is surrounded by antiquity. Interestingly,
Stoker draws attention specifically to cloth in his description of the castle. Cloth is an antiquated staple of the conspicuous consumption of nobility and the affluent alike. In the
Renaissance, fabric was staggeringly expensive, so much so, that a mere cloak could cost an equivalent of ―three times a schoolmaster‘s annual salary.‖60 Dracula‘s decorative
58

Dracula, 24.

59

Dracula, 19.

60

Womack, Peter. "Actions That a Man Might Play." English Renaissance Drama. Malden, MA: Blackwell,
2006. 261-308. Print.

Foreman 80 preferences, and for that matter, the entire castle is concerned with preserving the symbols of primeval power. Even his tomb is described with an emphasis on rank, as it was a ―great tomb more lordly than all the rest; huge it was, and nobly proportioned.‖61 To Ralphael
Ingelbien Dracula‘s ―dwelling calls to mind the condition of an aristocracy which had already fallen on hard times by the 1890s, when Ascendancy land ownership and income landlords could derive from rents were being reduced by legal reforms.‖62 Yet, despite
Dracula‘s financial woes, his castle is by no means an impoverished residence and with its conspicuously decked quarters represents the strength rather than the decline of aristocracy. The dust functions as a visual marker, not unlike genealogic or family portraits, of the aristocratic lineage that increasingly assumes status with age. Dracula‘s antique residences provide an ancient environment that is at once a testament to kinship and a place where he can exercise the privileges and powers associated with it.
In this context, Franco Moretti‘s judgment of Dracula as lacking an ―aristocrat‘s conspicuous consumption‖63 can be called into question. Although, Dracula does not
―build‖64 stately homes, he not only purchases them, but also resides in an opulently decorated castle. The Count is not indifferent to distingué aesthetics, and he does indeed hunt as aristocrats often do, unlike Moretti surmises, albeit with a different purpose and often for a different game. Dracula is an aristocrat more than ―in a manner of speaking,‖65 but Moretti cannot be more correct in insisting that the lack of servants makes suspect
Dracula‘s aristocratic bearing. I would not go so far as to suggest that servants are
61

Dracula, 370.

62

Ingelbien, 1095.

63

Moretti, 90.

64

Ibid.

65

Ibid.

Foreman 81
―precisely what makes a man ‗noble‘‖66– for in my estimation it is the purpose of the estate to denote nobility – but servants are undeniably a marker of nobility and/or wealth, and as such are curiously absent from Dracula‘s castle. Naturally, no servants can safely work in
Dracula‘s house and thus he himself must perform the ―menial offices‖67 of housework. In this respect, vampirism is conducive of relatively egalitarian relations. Indeed, Mina, in
Dracula‘s own words, was to become as Eve to Adam, his ―companion and…helper,‖68 not his servant. This of course, could be an isolated case, and Renfield‘s subservience standard, but Dracula‘s stopping to ―driving the carriage, cooking the meals, making the beds, and cleaning the castle,‖69 as Moretti summarized, does suggest a sort of individual self-reliance which I will argue in the following sections paints Dracula in a modern light.
Dracula‘s domesticity, according to Raphael Ingelbien, evokes the hospitality of the Ascendancy families.70 In the light of thrice-repeated words of welcome,71 the Count‘s politesse is at once peculiar and emblematic. Other critics have suggested that the reception scene in which Dracula instructs Harker to ―enter freely and of [his]…own will…I am
Dracula; and I bid you welcome, Mr. Harker, to my house,‖72 mirrors the Count‘s own limitation that requires him to be invited by one of the household before he can pass the threshold. While pertinent and powerful, these interpretations miss an important element – the precedence of host-guest relations in antiquity that Dracula‘s hospitality implies.

66

Moretti, 90.

67

Dracula, 28.

68

Ibid, 288.

69

Moretti, 90.

70

Ingelbien, 1095.

71

Dracula, 16.

72

Ibid.

Foreman 82
Hospitality was a much-venerated social obligation in primeval societies and the classical antiquity alike. In ancient Rome, ―the character of a hospes, i.e., a person connected with a Roman by ties of hospitality, was deemed even more sacred, and to have greater claim upon the host, than that of a person connected by blood or affinity.‖73 In fact, if a tessera hospitalis74 (hospitality token) was exchanged during the formation of hospitality between two individuals it would not expire upon their death, but would remain a responsibility with the decedents, as the connection was hereditary.75 Dracula, certainly, is not the ideal host of antiquity, but his contractual like welcome seems to establish some new and perhaps binding ground with Harker. It is easily imagined why inviting Dracula into a home would be so dangerous even if he does not bite, for the invitee and his/her descendents would be bound to the Count more than kin or friend. It is, however, unlikely that Dracula would not attempt to convert a human upon entry, and his actions would therefore mirror the metaphoric connection of the guest-host relationship. Exchanging blood as the token of hospitality, the host would be bound to the Count more than kin.
Interestingly, the novel as a whole is concerned with barring hospitality, so that the human characters will not become Dracula‘s hosts, both in the way of domesticity and sanguinity; they wish to avoid the connection which hospitality and Dracula‘s bite induces.
The principle of revenge, like hospitality, figures prominently in Dracula‘s sociality. As discussed in the chapter on Wuthering Heights, revenge is a primeval custom often codified in primordial law as the ubiquitous ―life…for life, eye for eye, tooth for

73

Smith, William, William Wayte, and G. E. Marindin. "Hospitium." A Dictionary of Greek and Roman
Antiquities. 3d ed. London: J. Murray, 1890. 511-513. Print.
74
75

Smith, 513.

Lashley, Conrad, Paul Lynch, and Alison J. Morrison. Hospitality: A Social Lens. Amsterdam: Elsevier,
2007. Print.

Foreman 83 tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.‖76 Indeed, the Code of Hammurabi (ca. 1700BC) from which the quote originates, is the primitive legalization of vengeance. ―You shall be sorry yet, each one of you!‖ proclaimed Dracula when escaping from the human characters, ―My revenge is just begun! I spread it over centuries, and time is on my side.‖77 The fact that
Dracula, and as previously noted Heathcliff and Mr. Tulliver, succumb to this ancient axiom reinforces their connection with antiquity. Yet, how does the Count (and Heathcliff) retain the link to both the ancient principles of hospitality and revenge, as well as, the modern principles of self-reliance? As Walter Bagehot explains in Physics and Politics, certain principles within the ―cake of custom,‖78 such as in this instance the ancient doctrine of hospitality and revenge, may remain with individuals even while they are pivoted towards progress. Their duality can then be understood as a mark of progress, and not necessarily retrogression.
IV.

DYNASTICISM, PATRIARCHY AND NATIONALITY
The powers of kinship are largely contained within the primeval notion of

patriarchy, and within the vampiric coterie, Dracula is the Pater Familias. Dracula is a
―particularly patriarchal monster, as Richard Coe dubs him, not because he is a ―rapist‖ or
―invented by the male imagination,‖ but rather because of his dominant stance in the family dynamic.79 Undoubtedly, the female vampires are rather reliant on his abilities to procure provisions, and thereby occupy a similar social role as their human counterparts – one that is dependent on males for monetary subsistence. As Maine discussed in Ancient
76

Prince, Dyneley J.. "Review: The Code of Hammurabi." The American Journal of Theology 8.3 (1904):
601-609. Print.
77

Dracula, 307.

78

Bagehot, Walter. Physics and Politics: or, Thoughts on the Application of the Principles of "Natural
Selection" and "Inheritance" to Political Society. New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1873. 27. Print.
79

Coe, 232.

Foreman 84
Law, ―the patriarchal authority of a chieftain is as necessary an ingredient in the notion of the family group as the fact (or assumed fact) of its having sprung from his loins.‖80 In the novel, the sisters belong to Dracula‘s family unit, as wives, daughters or both makes little difference, compared to the fact that they are joined under the dominion of his Potestas.
Interestingly, the very meaning of ―family‖ (c.1400) originally referred to the ―servants of a household…including relatives and servants.‖81 Certainly, the women were little better than servants passing as they did in ownership from the family to the husband. Within this archaic family construct, we also have a rather modern formulation of a nuclear family. If we are to understand Dracula as the patriarch, then the necessary ingredient of his Potestas
– the extended family – is missing. What we have is a unit composed of immediate relatives, the daughters, or wives of Dracula. Although possibly polygamous, and thus in line with a more ancient form of organization, the relationship is still curiously cut off from extended affiliations, even, as far as we know, from other possibly existent vampires.
Notwithstanding the fact that Dracula is a head of an independent family unit, severed from extended family, he is still to a great extent concerned with those very obligations, which the latter would impose. The continuation of the family name, the prideful insistence on heritage and dynastic allegiances are all ingrained in Dracula‘s psyche. Stoker introduces Dracula with an astounding amount of Romanian history, and in particular, dynasties. In fact, Harker speaks of Transylvanian past via national kinships – the Saxons, Wallachs (Dacians), Magyars and Szekelys. In the novel, nationality is often used as kinship was in the past, as a defining form of association. This comes as no surprise, for the ―principles which had governed the drawing of the map of Europe in 1815,

80

Maine, 133.

81

"Family." Online Etymology Dictionary. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Jan. 2011. .

Foreman 85 after the Napoleonic wars, were dynastic,‖82 ―nations resembled family or (in the age of
Darwin) ―racial‖ groups, rooted in shared biological descent.‖83 This is surprisingly similar to Maine‘s description of ancient societies who: regarded themselves as having proceeded from one original stock, and

even

labored

under

an

incapacity

for

comprehending any reason except this for their holding together in political union. The history of political ideas begins, in fact, with the assumption that kinship in blood is the sole possible ground of community in political functions.84 Nationality, in the late nineteenth-century though thought to be based on descent, and hence kinship, has de facto, come to replace kinship as the identifying factor of individuals. In the age of imperialism, nationality was an assumed fact, much like old ideals of
―kinship in blood… [as] the sole possible ground[s] of community in political functions,‖85 described by Maine. Local contiguity, which Maine said to have replaced consanguinity, as the basis of social organization, was in fact the very principle behind the redrawing of the map of Europe. Indeed, local contiguity was introduced under the banner of nationalism and a fiction of dynasticism. Because the ―ethnic map of much of Europe was extremely
82

Gellner, Ernest. "Nationalism." The Blackwell Dictionary of Modern Social Thought. Outhwaite, William
(ed). Blackwell Publishing, 2002. Blackwell Reference Online. 23 September 2010
.
83

Gabaccia, Donna R. "The Multicultural History of Nations." A Companion to Western Historical Thought.
Kramer, Lloyd and Sarah Maza (eds). Blackwell Publishing, 2006. Blackwell Reference Online. 23
September 2010 .
84

Maine, 128-129.

85

Ibid, 129.

Foreman 86 complex… implementing the nationalist principles to respect it would have required that the political map should resemble a jigsaw puzzle.‖86 Consequently, the emergent nations represented an artificial union of the peoples encompassed within their borders. When Dr.
Sewart says in reference to Quincey, ―if America can go on breeding men like that, she will be a power in the world indeed,‖87 he is invoking the very fiction of nationalism as ethnically or biologically united. ―Modern nationalisms‖ according to Michael Moses,
―depend upon the mass appeal of a conception of the nation as transindividual and therefore undying entity,‖ and within Stoker‘s opus the Undead are a metaphoric incarnation of this concept.88 Undeniably, modern nationalism depends as much on the fable of perpetuity as consanguinity, for it functions much like a family corporation, virtually undying and genealogically related.
The discussion of nationalism in the novel‘s literary criticism is largely concerned with Dracula‘s invasion or threat to the rational, modern, order of London. Alternatively, in Michael Moses‘ unique understanding the city allows for ―protection and preservation of his [Dracula‘s] financial and social interests.‖89 The nationalist critical dialogue of the novel, however, misses Dracula‘s aggressive concern with kinship that stretches beyond the threat of creation of the new order of beings. Dracula‘s dependence on Romanian soil is not only a symbol of an aristocrat‘s reliance on the estate, but also the embodiment of the nationalist fiction. ―A synecdoche for the sanctified homeland‖ the soil is, in Michael
Moses‘ opinion, tied to Dracula‘s identity, for as a ―vampire [he] depends as much upon his nightly proximity to the soil of his ancestors as upon the ancient blood coursing
86

Gallner, 1.

87

Dracula, 173.

88

Moses, 102.

89

Ibid, 80.

Foreman 87 through his veins.‖ To add to this enlightening reading I would like to suggest a nationalistic interpretation of Dracula‘s dependence. If he resides in England, he must dwell quite literally in Romania – on or in its soil – in which ―there is hardly a foot… that has not been enriched by the blood of men, patriots, or invaders.‖90 The assemblage of these various people in what Dracula calls a ―whirlpool of European races‖91 – Romania – does not detract from national unity, for while Dracula identifies with one race amidst the maelstrom, the Szekelys, he is still reliant on the fiction that stipulates a racial union, where there is none.
Van Helsing, of course, explains Dracula‘s dependence in supernatural terms, however, it is the metaphoric implications of the demand for native soil that is of interest.
Certainly Lucy presents no need to dwell in Romanian soil; it is enough for her to rest in
―soil [not] barren of holy memories,‖92 as a vampire must, but on the English terra firma.
Dracula, however, is bound to the land in which his ancestors‘ ―graves make sacred the earth where alone [his]… foulness can dwell.‖93 Why can Dracula not inhabit the sacred soil of England? Are vampires bound to their ancestry, and are able to dwell only where their ancestors‘ graves make the earth sacred? If so, vampirism is much like the ancient societies that Maine described, who labored in the propagation of the fictitious ideal of having proceeded from the same original stock. Nationalism, as race, is a fiction Dracula strongly believes and by which he is bound. Certainly, the Count is tied to the larger understanding of ―family‖ as described by Maine, with his life.
V.

THE FAMILY CORPORATION AND STATUS

90

Dracula, 22.

91

Ibid, 29.

92

Ibid, 241.

93

Ibid, 241.

Foreman 88
Dracula‘s understanding of social organization reflects Maine‘s idea of consanguinity as the basis of ancient social relations. ―To a boyar,‖ Dracula explains, ―the pride of his house and name is his own pride, that their glory is his glory, that their fate is his fate.‖94 As the family rather than the individual was the unit from which ancient society was composed, in Maine‘s rationalization, ―the moral elevation and moral debasement of the individual appear to be confounded with, or postponed to, the merits and offences of the group to which the individual belongs,‖95 that is, it is postponed to the family. Indeed,
―if the community sins, its guilt is much more than the sum of the offences committed by its members; the crime is a corporate act and extends in its consequences to many more persons than have shared in its actual perpetration.‖96 In Maine‘s, and for that matter,
Dracula‘s view, the family functions as a corporation, and corporations ―never die.‖ Thus, accordingly, ―primitive law considers the entities with which it deals, i.e. the patriarchal or family groups, as perpetual and inextinguishable.‖97 Consequently when Harker notes that every time Dracula ―spoke of his house he always said ―we,‖ and spoke almost in the plural, like a king speaking,‖98 he distinguishes Dracula‘s perception as being an indistinguishable part of the family corporation.
The kingly tone of Dracula‘s remarks, of course, paints him as an individual concerned with status, as Ralphael Ingelbein aptly notes, but most importantly, his pluralistic sense of himself underlines his kin-oriented identity. Ingelbein understands the

94

Dracula, 29.

95

Maine, 127.

96

Ibid.

97

Ibid, 126.

98

Dracula, 29.

Foreman 89 nominative plural that Dracula employs as ―an elegiac symptom of decline‖99 of the Big
House linage, which Dracula represents, in my estimation, however, the self-reflexive
―we,‖100 is a conscious and celebratory emphasis on kinship. In speaking ―like a king,‖101
Dracula is invoking a corporation of a higher order – that of aristocracy – which like its elemental counterpart – the family – never dies. Interestingly, Dracula himself functions as the inextinguishable family corporation, for like the totemic entity his existence is perpetual. Dracula is thus a family unto himself, with no need for an offspring to continue the corporation, for not only is he immortal, defeating the principal necessity for an heir, but he can also be said to adopt individuals into his ―family‖ via blood transfusions.
Depending on the interpretation adopted, Dracula at once does not need progeny and at the same time can be said to produce a kind of offspring every time he converts a human. As
Michael Moses notes, ―all citizens in the kingdom of the Undead literally owe their existence to their ‗father [Dracula],‘‖102 and indeed, the Count can be understood as the patriarchic chieftain of the family group, but as I have argued, he can also represent the family corporation en masse.
Harker‘s kingly classification of Dracula is one of the many references to his reliance on, and identification with the aristocracy. Indeed, Dracula‘s very name is based on the Renaissance Voivode Vlad III Dracula, Prince of Wallachia, more commonly known as Vlad the Impaler. Not only is his character based on a monarch – epitome of kinship, he himself appears in the book as the Count, tied to an impressive lineage of
Draculas;
99

Ingelbein, 1100.

100

Dracula, 29.

101

Ibid.

102

Moses, 100.

Foreman 90
We Szekelys have the right to be proud, for in our veins flows the blood of many brave races who fought as the lion fights, for lordship…we of the Dracula blood were amongst their leaders… the Szekelys – and Dracula as their heart‘s blood, their brains, and their swords – can boast a record that mushroom growths like the Hapsburgs and the Romanoffs can never reach.103
By comparing the Dracula lineage to the prominent dynasties of Europe, this miles gloriosus is establishing his kin as part of the ancient consanguine system of monarchies.
According to Dracula‘s description, he is not simply a Count, but the leader of one of the greatest, if not the greatest, European dynasties; ―Who was it but one of my own race who as Voivode crossed the Danube and beat the Turk on his own ground. This was a Dracula indeed!‖104 Dracula is very conscious of his ancestral blood, in fact he understands race – a relation by common descent or heredity – as the primary organizational factor of society.
Status as derived from kinship has not given way to contract in Dracula‘s understanding of the world. A clear example of this phenomenon is Dracula‘s colloquy on
―peasants,‖105
we Transylvanian nobles love not to think that our bones may be amongst the common dead,‖ ―what good are peasants without a leader‖ Where ends the war without a brain and heart to conduct it?‖… ―here I am noble;; I am

103

Dracula, 29.

104

Ibid, 30.

105

Ibid.

Foreman 91 boyar; the common people know me, and I am master‖…―I have been so long master that I would be master still – or at least that none other should be master of me.106
His elevated understanding of himself reveals an old-order mentality that is more attached to the aged principles of status than Heathcliff‘s or Maggie‘s. Although the novel is written later in the century and concerns a rather contemporaneous time-period, unlike Eliot‘s and
Bronte‘s asynchronous novels, Dracula seems to be more attached to status. If Renfield is any indication, Dracula is also more directly perceived in an antiquated light than the other main characters. Dracula‘s superior position is reinforced whenever Renfield refers to him as Master; ―I don‘t want to talk to you: you don‘t count now; the Master is at hand.‖107
Indeed, there seems to be an understanding amongst characters that Dracula must be handled in a manner bespeaking his archaic status. As Van Helsing indicates, ―all we have to go upon are traditions and superstitions‖108 in counteracting Dracula, for he is so steeped in ways of the old that he must be dealt with on his own hoary terms. In a similar vein,
Franco Moretti insists that, ―individualism is not the weapon with which Dracula can be beaten,‖ instead ―money and religion‖ must be exploited.109 In the context of Maine‘s work, this hypothesis supports the identification of Dracula with the past, but if it takes, in
Richard Coe‘s words, capital to defeat Dracula, modern principles must be at play as well.
Stoker makes it clear that we are to see Dracula through the lens of status. Yet, can this be understood as something more than a plot device? Why is Dracula identified strongly, but not entirely with antiquity? A viable explanation is perhaps that ―in some
106

Dracula, 24.

107

Ibid, 102.

108

Ibid, 238.

109

Moretti, 93.

Foreman 92 faculties of mind he has been and is, only a child,‖110 that is, he is yet to learn new modes of conduct. Having spent the majority of his vampire life in societies that nurtured status,
Dracula‘s child brain seeks ―recourse in habit.‖ ―He is growing,‖ however, and as Van
Helsing pointed out, ―he is experimenting, and doing it well.‖111 The experimentation extends further than the test of his powers, for it also concerns social interaction. Although,
Dracula has yet to learn how to maneuver effortlessly in this new, modern world, it is nevertheless fascinating how much he does accomplish in the English contractual society.
In Van Helsing‘s own words:
He find out the place of all the world most of promise for him…He study new tongues, He learn new social life; new environment of old ways, the politic, the law, the finance, the science, the habit of a new land and a new people who have come to be since he was…He has done this alone; all alone! from a ruin tomb in a forgotten land (italics mine). 112
The emphasis on the single-handed achievement is paramount, for it reverberates Maine‘s classification of modern society as composed of individuals. Dracula‘s self-reliance, his self-wrought scheme, and impressive navigation in the maze of estate deeds, all points to his individualistic, and therefore, modern tendencies. In England, Dracula‘s social interactions are largely contractual. Deeds and hired labor require contracts, and thus allow
Dracula to engage in social relations different and independent from social hierarchy.
VI.

CONCLUSION

110

Dracula, 302.

111

Ibid, 303.

112

Ibid, 321.

Foreman 93
The temporal classification of Dracula is a polemic subject in scholarly discourse.
Ostensibly outmoded and yet, progressively modern Dracula‘s complexity, as much as his vulnerability, is tied to his duality. Dracula, and for that matter, Maggie and Heathcliff, cannot be condensed into a singular definition, for they reflect multiple ideologies, and categorization would cancel their complexity. Much like Bigger Thomas in Native Son,
Dracula is the product of social anxieties. The concern with changing social relations manifests itself in his monstrosity that is a symbol of both his regression, in the face of modernity, and his progression and duality, in the face of status quo that is still colored by the ways of the past. As a heuristic devise, he allows for modernization to be understood and anxieties conquered through acceptance of change.

Foreman 94
CONCLUSION
The progress of political, legal, and social reform is a recurrent concern in nineteenth-century fiction. According to Frederic Jameson, a literary genre offers an imaginary solution to the real concerns of a culture. The realism of the nineteenth-century,
Jameson argues, has a historic function, ―the systematic undermining and demystification, the secular ‗decoding,‘ of those preexisting inherited traditional or sacred narrative paradigms that are its initial givens.‖1 The novel‘s role in the bourgeois cultural revolution is, therefore, firstly to demolish the ―givens‖ of Gemeinschaft and secondly, in its place, create a new kind of ―objectivity,‖ that of Gesellschaft, which transforms the reader‘s subjective attitudes.2
The ways in which the novels, and to an extent extra-literary texts like Ancient
Law, stage the transition to modernity follows Jameson‘s thesis. Within the fictional world of the novel, the characters function as devices that channel change in the same way that the genre of realism demystifies the ―givens‖3 of custom. Character interactions in the realist setting offer both a dissolution of the old order and a possibility for progress, for as we have seen they contain an uneasy conflation of modernity and tradition. Their liminal nature allows for a theoretic space in which the old order can be confronted and
―decoded‖4 by the new objectivity, so that later it can be replaced. The characters then have a heuristic purpose, they allow the author and the reader to investigate and come to terms with modernity.

1

Jameson, 138.

2

Ibid.

3

Ibid.

4

Ibid.

Foreman 95
The difference between literary and extra-literary texts in channeling such conceptions is a question of relatability. Literature offers a human element with which the general reader is able to identify on a personal level. Yet, in doing so, the theoretical framework becomes more obscure and the reader has to extrapolate the theory independently. Extra-literary texts, alternatively, strip the theory of emotion and other kinds of intertextual subjectivity, offering instead an objective synthesis of ideology. Both forms of communication are of course necessary, and in dialogue, they complement each other offering a level of understanding that neither is able to render in isolation.
The place of the author in this interaction is not necessarily conscious, however, for in writing a realist work he/she simply reflects the realities of the period. The narrative can later be interpreted as social commentary, or extrapolated for its philosophical underpinnings by critics and readers alike, but the author did not necessarily consciously infuse those social dictums into the text. An author‘s intent can unlock meaning as readily as it can limit and even obstruct interpretation, and thus, while authoritative, it should not be the ultimate arbitrator of meaning. In the same vein, the reader is not always aware of the workings of literature on their own psyche. Perhaps in seeing change actuated in the microcosm of the novel, to perceive it accepted by the characters identified with, real transformations can take root. As the novelists still keep ―vindictive baronets and revengeful earls‖5 who have neither learned nor forgotten, amongst the stock of characters, perhaps through their exemplary ignorance or through the heuristic medium of the novel we can learn to forget and evolve.

5

Pall Mall Gazette.

Foreman 96
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