Uprootedness, Resentment, and the Will to Power in Emily Brontë

Abstract

The chapter reflects on Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and brings into the discussion the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, Carl Jung, Simone Weil, and Hannah Arendt. It emphasizes Heathcliff's personality as an expression of the will to power, a theme that has been developed both by Arendt and Nietzsche. It will be argued that the will to power is the outcome of uproodetness, a notion developed and thoroughly examined by Simone Weil. Finally, the present study elaborates on Christopher Lasch and Carl Jung simultaneously and seeks solution to a problem that also characterizes the contemporary Western societies, the liquidation of norms and values (cultural updootedness, in other words), the destruction of the past, of a world within which human beings develop their own sense of personality and identity, a world that, simultaneously, functions as a positive simulator in order to avoid resentment and destruction.