The Match Between Rival Twins in Myth and Literature
represents in his appearance and character the God of Death or King of the Underworld: he is black, wild, surly, and belongs to the lowest possible class. The myth makes his match with the young girl Kathy impossible because he represents the gloomy god of Autumn, and she marries the pleasant and handsome Linton, who clearly represents the God of Spring and Light. Heathcliff, penniless, wanders to faraway lands and acquires great wealth, thus identifies even more with the Roman Pluto, the Underworld God of Riches. When Heathcliff returns, Kathy dies, as if he brought her death with him. But a dead woman usually becomes herself the Goddess of Death, and she takes him also to his grave. Thus they unite, in the way they had always been meant for each other as dwellers of the Underworld, when Kathy is no longer young and pretty. She is, however, all along the story, the one who holds in her hands the rule and motivation of love and power.
Strangely enough, in the same year that Emily’s book Wuthering Heights was published (1847), Charlotte had her Jane Eire published as well – a book, which is clearly based on the same theme. In it, Rochester is the parallel of Heathcliff, the dark and wild man in whom the heroine falls in love, although Rochester is highborn and much more cultured than Heathcliff. His rival in pursuing Jane’s hand is the vicar Rivers, who parallels Linton both in appearance and in his cool and logical nature. Jane Eire, though, differs from Kathy in her much more decisive character. She does not hesitate to choose Rochester, particularly because of his warm heart; she even disregards his later disfigurement, having rejected the highly moralistic Rivers. She is much more the figure of the Great Goddess than the poorly muddled Kathy, though less pretty in her appearance. In both books there is a very strong sense of the woman’s right to choose her lover with no predejuice.
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A variation of that myth appears in ancient Egyptian mythology. Osiris, who was a counterpart of Baal’s as the God of Vegetation and Corn, was brother and lover to the great Nature goddess Isis. He is killed by Seth, who came from the desert and thus representing, like the Canaanite Mot, dry and barren weather; Seth was also supposed to want Isis for himself. But the situation here is more complicated. Having been killed, Osiris becomes God of the Underworld, which Baal never did; but his son Horus replaces him as the protagonist, being a Sun god who kills Seth in revenge for his father. A relatively late interpretation of the myth ascribes to Seth an evil nature, which he did not initially have. The connection between Osiris and his son Horus was expressed by the Egyptians’ custom of identifying the living king, Pharaoh, with Horus, while after his death he would become “Osiris”. It is interesting to note that Osiris, though a god of the Underworld and thus in charge of Death, was never considered evil.
This classical situation is found in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, where the evil brother has murdered the rightful king and married his traitorous wife. Parallel to the Egyptian myth, Hamlet is required to avenge his father’s betrayal and death on the evildoers. Unlike Osiris’s son Horus, Hamlet is unable to do that, preferring to kill himself instead.
II
The idea of the goddess’ being free to give her love to whomever she thinks deserves it – even if it really depends on the change of seasons – gave her in time a bad name as a treacherous person. This idea is well presented in the Mesopotamian myth of Gilgamesh: In a culture where a king attains his rule through a ritualistic marriage to the Goddess, Gimgamesh King of Erekh refuses this marriage to the Great Goddess Ishtar on the ground that she kills her lovers, and he fears for his life with her. The enraged goddess, then, causes the king’s bosom friend Enkidu to sleep with her priestess and then kills him, as is his due according to the myth. The poem definitely expresses a man’s revolt against the existing system in which there is so much power given to the Goddess over his life. Here again there is no identification of Gilgamesh and Enkidu as good and evil; the difference between them is that one is a civilized king and the other as wild as an animal – his character plainly stems from earlier human life, which is much more involved with Nature and the Nature goddess than Gilgamesh is.
There is a new situation here, in which the female of the trio is considered treacherous, without any consideration for the old symbolism, and for the necessities of nature and life connected with nature. It seems that the idea of woman’s treacherous nature has been advanced in mythology with the advance of male power over the female, as is told by the Babylonian myth of the young (upstart) god Mardukh killing the Great Goddess