Loss Of And Return To Natural Self

In her representative work Wuthering Heights, English writer EmilyBronte depicts the heroine Catherine’s “double character”, which presentsCatherine’s life predicament in facing her self and the external world. In thelight of Zhuang Zi’s aesthetics, this thesis interprets Catherine’s life coursewith the clue of Catherine’s natural self, Catherine’s loss of natural self andCatherine’s return to her natural self.Zhuang Zi advocates that a man spiritually gets beyond externalconstraints and obsession and maintain his natural, original and true self so asto get rid of life predicaments and achieve his ultimate spiritual happiness andfreedom. Catherine is wild in nature and behavior and cherishes a spiritualattachment to the wilderness of nature; meanwhile, she has a natural sense ofself on and attachment to her playmate. Such a nature and love express hernatural self as well as her pursuit of spiritual happiness and freedom. However,in order to gain worldly fame and wealth, Catherine submits to worldlycourtesies and betrays her wild nature; what’s more, she turns to a pretendedlove based on fame and wealth and betrays her true love, developing a “doublecharacter”. Catherine’s vanity for worldly fame and wealth indicates herspiritual obsession with external things, and her “double character” caused byher obsession is a spiritual predicament, which traps her in the dilemma andpain of struggling between her natural self and pretended self. At the lastmoment of her life, Catherine denies her pretended self and longs to get rid ofworldly constraints to regain her natural happiness; meanwhile, she dreams toreturn to the wilderness of nature, finds her “resting-place” and dies intranquility, which means at last, in her spirit, she gets beyond externalconstraints and obsession, returns to her natural self, gets rid of predicamentsand achieves her ultimate happiness and freedom. Hereby, the thesis points outthat Catherine’s loss reflects men’s common predicament of losing their self toexternal things, and her return furthers proves that men’s spiritual happinessand freedom are their “resting-places”.