The themes of power and fantasy are interlinking and well-explored in both Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. It seems a common trope, though, that fantasies are used for sources of optimism that never come to fruition. Fantasy itself, as defined by Rosemary Jackson, has two functions for characters in literature: “it can tell of, manifest or show desire, or it can expel desire, when this desire is a disturbing element which threatens cultural order and continuity”. Interestingly, the fantasies in both instances are products of desire for more power, whether supernatural, social or physical, but in the face of adversity — so much so that most fantasies, whether a main plot point or not, are usually sources of powerlessness. Even those driven by intense desire end up expelling that exact desire. Therefore, it’s easy to see fantasy in two different ways: as a source of the superficial power that they might offer, and then as a source of tragedy when they do not fulfil their optimism.
Firstly, fantasy is shown to be a source of superficial power in Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus. Upon the titular character’s introduction, Marlowe presents a man already at the very top of the social hierarchy (notice Faustus’ title; he is a ‘doctor’ of his studies, the very highest degree one can earn) — Faustus’ authority is used not to maintain a social superiority, but instead to reject it, in order to instead attain a fantasy of magical power. In this sense, fantasy is a source of power for Faustus, offering him an escape from the mundanity of his rigorous academic focus. It’s important that Faustus summons Mephistophilis himself in a bid to control higher supernatural powers by using his own magical forces. Faustus cries, “Mephistophilis, come, And bring glad tidings from great Lucifer…“come Mephistophilis, Veni, veni, Mephistophile!”. This directly translates to Faustus’ greed and his willingness to Lucifer in order to assert a fatal dominance via servantship. Of course, as the devil’s non-human agent, Mephistophilis is of a higher capability in terms of magic than Faustus, but none the less conforms to the doctor’s want as a way of tempting him toward the devil. As James Ross Macdonald writes, “the devil works through spiritual temptation: since his autonomy is wholly bounded by divine permission, his malign attendance provides occasion for human depravity, the main spring of suffering” — Faustus’ real diabolic crime is perhaps not his belief/curiosity for magic and the devil, but instead his use of magic and literal fantasy to fund his greed for more power.
However, as soon as the drama opens, magic is suggested to be Faustus’ tragic downfall (what can be labelled as his hamartia – in greek tragedy, a “tragic error, i.e. a wrong action committed in ignorance of its nature, effect, etc., which is the starting point of a casually connected train of events ending in disaster”. As the chorus prologues the story, they suggest promptly that necromancy, and Faustus’ relentless curiosity towards it, is key to his eventual downfall; “Nothing so sweet as magic is to him, Which he prefers before his chiefest bliss”. Faustus’ ignorance of his ‘chiefest bliss’ — in reference to his worldly knowledge, his doctorate in theology and his academic excellence — and preference to fantasy and magic is set up at the start of the play to be his flaw. His temptation by magic and surrealism as an escape from his mundane is not celebrated, but instead condemned by the heavens, perhaps as a form of greed for power, which immediately inaugurates a sense of impossibility to Faustus’ tragedy. According to Park Honan, “Marlowe leaves us in no doubt that Faustus’ pursuit of magic puts his soul in jeopardy”; the temptation of non-human power leads him directly to the devil, by whom further temptation will be inflicted. Furthermore, Marlowe plays with a division between science and fantasy throughout the play with the recurring use of the latin language, the language of scholars, or witchcraft and spell-casting, whilst also having a strong presence in Christianity. Even in Faustus’ final soliloquy, latin is desperately used as a way of controlling his doom (or, at least, slowing down it’s impossible process), but Faustus’ confusion in using magic renders the latin meaningless. In fact, the latin he uses — “O lente, lente currite, noctis equi!”, translating to “run slowly, slowly, horses of the night” — is not used as an attempt of incantation nor an expression of conformism to the bible, but instead, Faustus is quoting Ovid’s elegy “Amores”, in which a man is asking to slow down his night of passion with a mistress. In this case, Marlowe uses the inevitably imperfect relationship between man and magic to demonstrate an irony in Faustus’ fate; even as he tries to use non-human power to save himself from eternal damnation, he cannot seem to escape the paradoxical humanist qualities that are inherent in his character, and his divided mind between reality and surreality has not been resolved enough for the power to be of full effect.
The conscience of Faustus’ is set to be a conflicted, ill-refined one, demonstrated through two fantastical voices in the play: the good angel and the evil angel. These two characters add a dynamic to the play which almost reflects narration — every decision Faustus’ makes that leans towards one of either God or the devil is commentated by the two angels. For example, as Faustus exclaims, “If heaven was made for man, ’twas made for me: I will renounce this magic and repent”, the good angel responds: “Faustus, repent; yet God will pity thee.” The evil angel, however, argues “God cannot repent thee”, illuminating the dichotomy of Faustus’ mind and conscience. For this reason, it’s hard to understand what Faustus defines as ‘power’. His split mindset makes every fantasy, and every decision a source for both power and powerlessness. Even as he gains traction as a sorcerer as the play develops, he is one step closer to damnation. Christopher Marlowe, again, uses non-human characters to highlight the human psychology, employing the good and evil angels to allegorise the division in Faustus’ mind between religion and atheism — which ultimately lead to an uncertainty of Faustus’ power altogether. Considerably, Faustus is a victim to the restriction of religious tension that existed at the time of the play’s publication. To express any form of fantasy is to reject God’s offer of salvation, manifested by the two characters of the good and bad angels.
Likewise, in Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel Wuthering Heights, the dark and mysterious Heathcliff manages to transcend social class to inherit the Wuthering Heights manor despite his beginnings ion a much lower social order than the other characters in the novel, perhaps using his want and desire for a higher social standing and an acceptance for a relationship with Catherine. Upon his introduction to the novel, he is often labelled as “it” by members of the Earnshaw family, remarked as other, and described by Catherine initially as an “unreclaimed creature”. He is placed entirely outside of social pattern; if at all, he is at the very bottom of the heights’ social agenda, and is denied an education, thus not being able to climb the social ladder in the same way as Doctor Faustus. Heathcliff’s social agenda is a highlighted impossibility according to the realism of Wuthering Heights, but he manages a mobilisation, although this is not outlined as a direct fantasy. Still though, Heathcliff is able to use the fantasy of a functional relationship with Catherine within the walls Wuthering Heights as motivation to weave himself a better place in the family dynamic, ultimately making him powerful in terms of social mobility. Heathcliff and Catherine both ignore the practicality of the odds against them, thus daring to fantasise for more power in order to be together. Heathcliff’s soaring ambition, even in the face of a rigid social class and in the time of social upheaval in which Wuthering Heights is set, is arguably what gives him his ultimate power.
However, much like Doctor Faustus’ fantastical greed, the fantasy of an inter-class relationship cannot be fulfilled. No matter whether Heathcliff manages to transcend his class restriction, and although Catherine and Heathcliff share a deeply passionate love affair, they each are forced to marry different counterparts (Edgar and Isabella, respectively), primarily because of the social construct of the time. Even in their early relationship, they express a want to have a “ramble at liberty”, already restrained by the house’s system under Hindley’s occupation; this is Brontë’s way of alluding to a further restriction rather than the physical, one that is brought on by an incompatibility in class. To take this further, Catherine is able to use Heathcliff as the only way to project herself but in a completely different, looser form; their companionship is actually a way for her to break out of social conformity. As Melissa Fegan writes, “in this sense, investment in Heathcliff is a way of cheating not just death but biology and social constraint”. Heathcliff represents everything a gentile upper class woman of the period should not be interested in — rebellion, enigma, non-conformity Perhaps the biggest tragedy of Wuthering Heights is that the fantasy of the passionate symbiotic union between its central two characters is never brought to realisation, itself powerless. Catherine’s strong and impassioned exclamation that she is Heathcliff, as Daniel Cottam attributes, is a recognition that “the foundation of her identity in the necessary existence of the other… whereas her love for Edgar Linton ‘is like the foliage in the woods,’ subject to time and change, her love for Heathcliff “resembles the eternal rocks beneath’–a source of little visible delight, but necessary”. However, Catherine chooses to accept Edgar’s proposal, because she knows that marrying Heathcliff is going to “degrade her”. In this sense, fantasy is an utmost source of powerlessness; it renders the wants and desires of Heathcliff and Catherine as impossible to attain. They gain no power from their relationship, but instead their desires to be with each other are restrained by the practicality that Catherine finds in same-class marriage. Terry Eagleton writes, “the loving equality between Catherine and Heathcliff stands, then, as a paradigm of human possibilities which reach beyond, and might ideally unlock, the tightly dominative system of the Heights. Yet at the same time Heathcliff’s mere presence fiercely intensifies that system’s harshness”. The very notion of a serious relationship unfolding between the two becomes a fantasy that consumes their reality, eventually unable to materialise.
In conclusion, both pieces of literature are host to fantasies that offer each of the characters in them an escape from their mundane realities and give them a kind of superficial power where they are otherwise somewhat powerless. However, it has been proven that these fantasies never come to fruition; they remain simply fantasies. For this reason, it could be argued that fantasies are almost always the cause of powerlessness, restriction, sometimes cataclysmic results and in the case of Doctor Faustus, literal damnation. Because of the restrictive and rigid systems working against the characters — in Doctor Faustus, the religious, and in Wuthering Heights, the social — their fantasies, however big or small, are impossible to attain.
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