20 Avoiding Bias with Emily Brontë - Philosophy and Literature - Female Empowerment - Bluestocking Society - Women's intellectual history
The Female Stoic | Literature and Philosophy for Bluestockings.
Welcome to the Female Stoic podcast.
My name is Stephanie Poppins and I am an advocate for literary empowerment.
That means I believe the example set by the literary masters can broaden life perspective, create increased self-awareness, and empower us to overcome the obstacles we encounter here in the 21st century.
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Or you may like my classic audiobooks and original stories available on my website, newworldbooks.uk.
Happy listening.
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Today on the Female Stoic podcast, we are talking about avoiding bias as a stoic, understanding the importance of objectivity when interacting with each other's and also ourselves.
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And today's novel is Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.
So let's have a look at this novel.
As you know, my novel is available as audiobook and it's been recently digitally remastered.
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So we are focusing on Nellie Dean, who is the main narrator of Wuthering Heights of the story.
And rather than the omniscient narration of Shirley by Charlotte Bronte, someone who knows the characters, someone who knows the story, that's telling us the story.
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And rather than the epistolary narration in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, that means the narration of a story through letters or journals.
This is a complex dual narrative structure, so you have two people narrating who are both quite unreliable.
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And This is why I struggle with Wuthering Heights.
If we have an omniscient narration, what happens is we come to trust in the person that's speaking, the third person narrative, the person that's speaking, we come to trust they know everything that's happened.
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They can relate it in a objective way.
If we have a first person narrative, we can trust that they are relating in their words exactly their experience of what happened to them.
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If we have an epistolary narrative, we can have faith in the value of the letter or the journal as being a sentimental and authentic account.
But in Wuthering Heights, we have this dual narrative structure.
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We have both Mr. Lockwood and we have Nelly Dean, and they are both narrating and they both have an agenda.
So they're both often unreliable.
And again, I think This is why I struggle with a book at times.
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As a Stoic, it is nice to have some flat line.
Some base level of understanding and security upon which to build the drama.
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And for me, Wuthering Heights does not have this.
So let's discuss that.
Why is Nelly Dean an unreliable narrator?
So if you don't know the story, again look out for my tracks.
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Heathcliff was a poor orphan who was adopted and raised as one of the Earnshaw family, alongside Cathy the daughter and Hindley the son.
But this led to misfortune, hatred and tragedy.
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So, Hindley Earnshaw, the natural son, is jealous of Heathcliff and his resentment turns to hatred.
Once his parents die, he descends into alcoholism and gambling, which leads to the ruin of his family's wealth.
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Catherine Earnshaw E.
In other words, Cathy has a deep and passionate love for Heathcliff.
However, she marries Edgar Linton for social status, which leads to a lifetime of regret for both herself and Heathcliff.
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Hindley has a son, Hareton Heathcliff, and when Hindley dies, Heathcliff takes over Wuthering Heights and he keeps Hareton on as an uneducated servant despite Hareton's rightful claim to the estate.
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The novel concludes with the hope of a brighter future for Hareton as he begins to learn and then educate himself and fall in love with Cathy's daughter, Catherine Linton.
There's a lot of drama, chaos, rejection, humiliation, and angst in this novel.
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It represents the decline of the family set up, the decline of fortune, and the decline of peace due to the destructive and revenge fueled feud driven by Heathcliff himself.
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But all of this is related to us by Nellie Dean and Nellie Dean herself.
Although she is characterised as a compassionate and loyal servant, through her deep emotional involvement with the characters, she is unreliable.
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She is biased.
To go back to our theme of the day, she is a caretaker figure to the younger generation, but she intervenes continually with her strong opinions, especially her eventual dislike for Heathcliff, and these preferences influence her storytelling.
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So ultimately, she's a complex character who is both a participant in the story and a biased interpreter.
So there's a push and a pull here.
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She, in one way, represents responsibility and sensibility.
She's often the only source of stability in the story, the only source of guidance amidst the destructive and neglectful parents and characters.
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She tries to act as a voice of reason, but she exaggerates events for dramatic effect.
She presents her own interpretations as fact, and some critics have argued that her interventions make situations worse.
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So to go back to the theme of today, dealing with bias as a stoic, we can take pointers from this.
She has a romantic disposition, She has an emotional involvement in the story.
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She uses drama and emotion in her narration sometimes in an attempt to influence our perception of events and characters.
She has obviously having a lifelong service to both the Earnshaw and the Linton families.
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She has a deep loyalty to them, but she allows that to drive her prejudice and this shapes how she tells the story.
Obviously set up by Emily Bronte herself.
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So a significant character of the story is actually shaping the way we see the story in a bias way.
And for me, I felt I wanted to know more about Heathcliff.
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I felt, I know we needed to understand much more of his reasoning and him as obviously a very deep, intense character.
And the same with Cathy.
And I almost felt robbed because Cathy dies quite early on and the intense relationship between the two is then cut short.
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Even though of course, Heathcliff carries a torch for Cathy throughout the whole novel.
So we are relying on an A biased opinion to inform us of and give us an account, be it a narrative of events.
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It it felt as though for me there is not enough of the story of what I wanted to hear and too much of the story I had no interest in whatsoever.
So yes, I struggle with this book.
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The first moments are powerful and intense and that for me is why this book is a classic.
But this dual narrative and there are so many voices, too many voices speaking, making a lot of noise and not really telling me anything at all, which is quite representative of life today.
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And what do they say?
The loudest voice has the least to say often, so Nelly Dean is recounting events from memory.
She has a staggering precision of what has been said, even though there's a quite a significant distance between the event and the narration of it, especially when it comes to Heathcliff's monologues.
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But we must remember she doesn't like the man, and at one point in the story he reveals a plan to Nelly that he has, who conveniently both hears the plan and remembers everything he says to recite it to Lockwood.
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Almost the kind of behaviour we would expect from a cartoon character.
The villain being Heathcliff, the sidekick being Nelly, rubbing her hands and enjoying the drama, the tragedy and the misery.
As a stoic I find it hard to reconcile with that and Nelly throughout the story seems to drop in and out of love with every character. 1 moment she's in love with a little girl, Cathy, the original Cathy, and the same with Heathcliff.
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Her actions reflect this.
She says to Cathy.
But trouble me with no more secrets.
I'll not promise to keep them.
Which then is saying, actually, you have faith in me.
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But now I've got I, I will give you no promise that I will keep that faith.
It's a rigid stance.
It's potentially spiteful, and very much so given the intimate nature of the secrets that Catherine shares.
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There's one analysis that mentions Nelly trying to coax him into leaving.
This is Heathcliff by kicking him out into the corridor on his first night at the Heights as a child.
Many readers consider that being spirited.
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So again, she's not a stable narrator.
She's not a stable voice in any way.
Is there any stability in this book?
No, there is not.
So if you look at Emily's sisters with Charlotte, she has.
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Her protagonist is stable.
Jane Eyre is stable.
Her life is considerably volatile but her inner virtuous stable.
The same with Helen Graham in Anne Bronte's Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
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Wuthering Heights is a gothic melting pot and for me, quite messy, and that's what it's intended to be after.
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After Catherine's death, Nelly says to Heathcliff, If I were you, I'd go stretch myself over her grave and die like a faithful dog.
The world is surely not worth living in now, is it?
Little bit harsh, potentially spiteful in his time of grief, even though he's been a very difficult character himself.
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What am I saying here?
I'm saying that we as the reader are called upon to rely upon the voice, this almost omnipresent voice of Nellie Dean in the novel, and yet we can't be sure she's going to tell us the truth.
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She's quite hypocritical.
I don't think we were meant to doubt that Heathcliff did any of the things she said he did, but there's an odd dialogue.
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We're brought into question the truthfulness of her account, and we never hear from Heathcliff, very rarely about the motives behind his actions.
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So here Emily is subverting the conventional, trustworthy narrative type, which only adds to the chaos and adds confusion.
Again, it's good to have a voice you can rely on in a narrative.
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And going back to the theme of today, we are talking about stoic buyers and looking at how we can be that one voice, that stable voice, that secure presence as Stoics.
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So many accounts again in the novel are given at a time and always through the filter of a character's opinions and biases.
It is undeniable that Heathcliff is a dark character, but how dark his intention really is, it's difficult to decipher through a biased person's account.
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Through Mr. Lockwood's accounts, we see bitter and A hardness.
But again, I felt there was so much more to the character that I would have liked to have been explored.
So what lessons can we take from this?
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The message I'm giving today is to stand back, to try and maintain objectivity.
To remain unbiased as a Stoic involves cultivating a clarity of perception, managing our emotional responses and using reason to focus on facts and the common good, minimising the impact of our personal bias and external opinions on one's inner peace and actions.
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So in our daily experience, we're often submerged in the chaos of external situations, chaos that is many times created by other people.
And it's important to understand that bias often stems from a desire to control or change external realities.
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So for example, we have two children arguing if we favour one.
If we favour one child's voice over another, we are negating the value of a voice which is both relevant and of equal value, whether we agree with that voice or not.
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So it doesn't mean that by standing back and allowing both voices, both opinions, we stand by one or another.
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Actually, to the contrary, what we're doing is we are trying to listen and gain an objective account of what happened.
Then if we go on to relate that to someone else, we can see it for what it actually is.
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We can relate it true as we can get it to an account of what actually happened.
So the message here is to be highly aware of our initial impressions and judgements about events, because events themselves are neutral.
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If we look at Heathcliff and Cathy, their relationship in the beginning of the novel was between them.
Nelly was an onlooker.
She could see different pushes and pulls, different reactions between the two, but it was her job as a neutral narrator to say right, well, I understand that this is 6 of 1 and half a dozen of the other.
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And if it isn't to stand back and be unbiased about that in Wuthering Heights, it is her judgements we are hearing from and they can create and exacerbate emotional turmoil and bias.
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So if we make judgements, if we come to situations already having made a judgement of that situation, we are exacerbating the emotional turmoil because we then go on to repeat that and it just grows, the bias grows.
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So obviously Wuthering Heights is a narrative, but as with all narratives, it's an observation of human behaviour.
And This is why we read, as I always say, it is literary empowerment.
So what should we do as Stoics when we are called to relate the particulars of an occurrence or intervene in something that's happening?
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Well, you know my favorite phrase.
The power is in the pause.
We need to practice stepping back, pausing and asking ourselves, is this a fact or is it my opinion or bias?
Use reason, use logic and apply it to our thoughts and actions.
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Emotions can cloud our judgment.
They can introduce bias.
So we're striving to be sound, balance and objective.
We want to seek the evidence, we want to understand the interconnected nature of situations, and we want to maintain an objective viewpoint.
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Why?
For two reasons. 1 So that we can be true to our virtue, which is to be a stable, secure source of information both for ourselves and others.
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And two, to protect our inner peace.
Because obviously if we are bias, that is calling upon an emotional reaction to something.
And we understand that there are very many triggers every single day, especially in social media and in the news and on the advertising that we hear.
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And it is our job at Stoics, when we are put in that situation to step back, turn off the news, restrict the exposure we have, and understand these are triggers.
They're calling us to bias.
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That's essentially what they're doing.
And an unbiased person seeks to understand different viewpoints.
They are open to changing their opinion based on new information.
They don't come to conversations or situations with a rigid viewpoint.
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They are willing to learn and adapt.
So we're trying to avoid becoming so firmly rooted in a position that we alienate ourselves from an an evolving understanding.
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And what I found in Wuthering Heights was to go back to Nelly Dean.
She became at times very, very rooted in her opinions of each character.
And because they were ever changing and because her stance was so rigid, and then it would change to another rigid stance.
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Of course, as a character, she is unreliable.
And again, if we are in the position where we are narrating, retelling, recounting events and we want to be taken seriously, we have to avoid the bias.
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And we're focusing on our virtue in the common good.
We're focusing on the Stoic principles, wisdom, courage, justice, temperance, otherwise known as self-discipline.
And if we are acting for the common good, we will naturally move beyond personal bias.
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We are encouraging fair treatment and ethical behaviour.
This is not about eliminating our emotion, but not letting them control our opinions.
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So understanding that they are very powerful emotions, but they're fleeting, they're chaotic, and we are seeking A homeostasis.
And this calm mind helps us make better, less biased, more informed decisions.
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And as women, we are called to make unbiased decisions, be the voice of reason, often in a familial setting.
So we're looking at logical thinking, decision making grounded in reason rather than emotion, which is difficult to do, and it involves self reflection, which leads nicely into the journal task for today.
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In order to regularly assess our actions and decisions, adopting the daily use of journaling or reflection helps us identify ingrained biases and emotional triggers.
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And we all have ingrained biases.
We are all practising.
We don't have the answers any of us, but we have a guideline, a structure that we can use to work within, to support us in our actions and decisions.
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And part that one element of this is daily journaling or affection.
It was a significant tool the Stoic philosophers used.
It allows for continuous improvement and alignment without inner virtue.
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So our Stoic journaling task today.
I've got my journal here and I've done this this morning in our journals.
We will consider a moment when we related or gave account of something we had witnessed.
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Maybe it was something that happened at home within the family and then we related it to another family member.
What did we say?
What did we do and how did we say it and what effect then did this have on those around us?
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So we have all acted in a bias way.
Bias is an emotional response and something we are all guilty of.
And the Journal Reflective Task this week is calling us to consider that moment when we related or gave an account of something we witnessed and how we did it.
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So we're reflecting on our actions and seeing what we can learn from them.
And of course this, if it was a biased reaction, affected both us and the people around us.
And once we have done that, we look at how we could have come to this from a more rational point of view.
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So the journal task is to account for what happened and then make conclusions from that.
So we're seeking to strike a balance between rationality and irrationally behaving.
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We are not seeking to eliminate emotions.
We know they're going to happen, but we are seeking to understand when they do happen.
Register them so that they don't happen as often.
Try our best to be more objective when relating information, when relating events, so that we can prevent those negative feelings that may lead to harmful impulsive behaviour of ourselves and others around us, Seneca said.
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Keep learning how to live as long as you live and that's the message for today.
We must continually strive towards the protection of our inner peace and understand sometimes we will be bias and to try and do that a little less.
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Hey Stephanie here, thank you for listening to the Female Stoic podcast.
It is an honour and I just want to say I really appreciate you being here.
It's amazing the power of women in literature and the stoic messages they have to share.
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See you next time.