The Butterfly - Emily Bronte

The Butterfly by Emily J. Brontë: August 11th 1842

 Taken from The Beligian Essays: Charlotee Bronte and Emily Bronte

In one of those moods that everyone falls into sometimes, when the world of the imagination suffers a winter that blights its vegetation; when the light of life seems to go out and existence becomes a barren desert where we wander, exposed to all the tempests that blow under heaven, without hope of rest or shelter - in one of these black humors, I was walking one evening at the edge of a forest. It was summer; the sun was still shining high in the west and the air resounded with the songs of birds. All appeared happy, but for me, it was only an appearance. I sat at the foot of an old oak, among whose branches the nightingale had just begun its vespers. "Poor fool," I said to myself, "is it to guide the bullet to your breast or the child to your brood that you sing so loud and clear? Silence that untimely tune, perch yourself on your nest; tomorrow, perhaps, it will be empty." But why address myself to you alone? AIl creation is equally mad. Behold those flies playing above the brook; the swallows and fish diminish their number every minute. These will become, in their turn, the prey of some tyrant of the air or water; and man for his amusement or his needs will kill their murderers. Nature is an inexplicable problem; it exists on a principle of destruction. Every being must be the tireless instrument of death to others, or itself must cease to live, yet nonetheless we celebrate the day of our birth, and we praise God for having entered such a world.

During my soliloquy I picked a flower at my side; it was fair and freshly opened, but an ugly caterpillar had hidden itself among the petals and already they were shriveling and fading. "Sad image of the earth and its inhabitants!" I exclaimed. "This worm lives only to injure the plant that protects it. Why was it created, and why was man created? He torments, he kills, he devours; he suffers, dies, is devoured - there you have his whole story. It is true that there is a heaven for the saint, but the saint leaves enough misery here below to sadden him even before the throne of God.

I threw the flower to earth. At that moment the universe appeared to me a vast machine constructed only to produce evil. I almost doubted the goodness of God, in not annihilating man on the day he first sinned. "The world should have been destroyed," I said, "crushed as I crush this reptile which has done nothing in its life but render all that it touches as disgusting as itself." I had scarcely removed my foot from the poor insect when, like a censoring angel sent from heaven, there came fluttering through the trees a butterfly with large wings of lustrous gold and purple. It shone but a moment before my eyes; then, rising among the leaves, it vanished into the height of the azure vault. I was mute, but an inner voice said to me, "Let not the creature judge his Creator; here is a symbol of the world to come. As the ugly caterpillar is the origin of the splendid butterfly, so this globe is the embryo of a new heaven and a new earth whose poorest beauty will infinitely exceed your mortal imagination. And when you see the magniiicent result of that which seems so base to you now, how you will scorn your blind presumption, in accusing Omniscience for not having made nature perish in her infancy.

God is the god of justice and mercy; then surely, every grief that he inflicts on his creatures, be they human or animal, rational or irrational, every suffering of our unhappy nature is only a seed of that divine harvest which will be gathered when, Sin having spent its last drop of venom, Death having launched its final shaft, both will perish on the pyre of a universe in flames and leave their ancient victims to an eternal empire of happiness and glory.

 

What view of nature does this essay present?

- Nature is self destruictive; i.e. the nightingale invites death by singing and alerting its environment to its presence. The concept of the caterpillar destroying the flower also portrays how everything seeks the destruction of others.

- Alive, nature is corrupt and only freed by death (the butterfly).

- Earth is 'merely the embryo' from which good will arise. All of nature is in some sort of purgatory, awaiting rebirth through death; spiritual as opposed to bodily.

- When in 'one of those moods' we can see through the glossy exterior to the 'barren desert' that actually lies beneath - suggestive of an illusion, a shadow of the actual world. Almost as if the devil has masqueraded as beauty or hell as heaven.

How does this shape our reading of Wuthering Heights?

- The Heights and its inhabitents epitomise this self-destruction in the way that they cause their own downfall and, not only corrupt, but catalyse the desturction of others at the Grange.

- Cathy is only peaceful and serene when she dies and is freed from the cruel reality of life. Indee dthe young Cathy seems to be the butterfly of the story as her mother is shown to live on through her.

- Heathcliff personifies evil by inflicting on others what he once recieved. While Cathy is freed by death he is cursed by remaining alive and thus seeks the destruction of others...is this cruelty or kindness?

- The next generation show the cycle of destruction. Though one can argue that they are their parents reborn (butterflies), one could state that good can not come until all are dead and so this genberation must then repeat the destruction of the former.
- Young Cathy never celebrates ' the day of [her] birth' as it symbolises death for her father Edgar. Does he then have the right idea? Is it foolish to celebrate being alive in this world of sin when one could be freed by death or lack of existence?