Something I noticed when reading Darwin’s and particularly Gosse’s piece is just how violently they frame the ideological “war” of the Victorian period. Gosse claims that in the academic landscape of the era, “It was becoming necessary to stand emphatically in one *army* or the other,” ( ¶ 2). He labels Lyell as a “great mover of men” and searching for a “bodyguard of sound and experienced naturalists”, and the reactionaries are described almost as rivals searching for an ideological bullet to fire back ( ¶ 3 – ¶ 4 ). Could this just be creatively constructed language used to make the debate between ideologies sound more dynamic? Perhaps, but it reminds me greatly of what Carlyle’s clothes arguments in Sartor Resartus warned about. To Carlyle, ideology is like a suit; it must repeatedly be changed in order for the society to remain clean and orderly. People cannot just patch up old suits because that would lead to a stagnant society, nor can they forgo suits altogether, as that would lead to the destruction of social order. Informed by the French Revolution, I do not doubt that Carlyle was very afraid that the same type of bloody ideological warfare that broke out in France was capable of repeating itself in Britain. I wonder then how he would react to the type of of scientific debates that Gosse describes. Would he have seen the lively debate as the process of merely replacing the suit, or would he have seen it as possible evidence of the same type of anarchy he worried so strongly about?

While reading Robert Chambers’ Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, I was surprised to see the name of Charles Babbage embedded within the text and was even more surprised to see Chambers quote and employ Babbage’s work in order to support his own ideas of natural creation through transmutation. While grappling with exactly how and why one species developed from another, Chambers invites his readers to consider “an illustration of natural law… brought forward by [Babbage] in his Ninth Bridgewater Treatise” (7) that is exemplified through Babbage’s calculating machine. Babbage’s calculating machine, moved by a weight, displays a sequence of natural numbers “each of which exceeds its immediate antecedent by unity.” (Chambers, 7) Babbage, as reported by Chambers, asks his own readers whether or not they think that the sequence will continue in the same way and if they believe themselves to be acquainted with the law of Babbage’s machine. Babbage claims that many of his readers will respond in the affirmative to his two questions. However, at a certain point, the law of the machine will shift and the numbers will increase by greater unity and follow the series of triangular numbers, a pattern that will, in turn, be replaced by yet another series.

Furthermore, Chambers believed that Babbage’s calculating machine was an excellent model for his own thinking regarding the transmutation of species, as is shown through his concluding remarks. He states that “Mr. Babbage’s illustration powerfully suggests that this ordinary procedure (transmutation) may be subordinate to a higher law which only permits it for a time, and in proper season interrupts and changes it.” (Chambers 7) It is through such logic that Chambers not only models his own thinking regarding the creation of species through transmutation but also accounts for the lack of intuition and accessibility that surrounded the idea of evolution for many individuals at the time.

Additionally, Chambers’ mention of Babbage immediately made me think back to one of Babbage’s most esteemed contemporaries, Ada Lovelace. Much like Chambers, Lovelace also displayed a fondness for and dependency on models. Many letters exist between Lovelace and her tutors wherein Lovelace asks about the existence and availability of certain models through which she might come to better understand corresponding mathematical principles. While Lovelace was mocked in certain biographies for her need for models, her use of models allowed her to reach dazzling and beautiful conclusions regarding mathematical concepts. Perhaps it was Lovelace’s love of models that led her to not only develop the precursors to modern-day computer science but to write about math and science in a poetically spiritual, yet tangible manner, as well. Indeed, Lovelace, by transforming what some may refer to as “unfeeling” subjects into warm and ethereal poetic entities, was arguably able to better the understanding of math and science for many individuals who perhaps once found such topics inaccessible.

Finally, Chambers and Lovelace both demonstrate the importance of models when it comes to producing understanding. Just as Lovelace’s view of math and science was able to at once mystify, explain, and “soften” said subjects for others, Chambers’ use of Babbage’s model is arguably responsible for the popularity and praise that Chambers’ book received within Victorian England. For while his ideas were radical, his use of a model certainly provided readers with a solid base to which they could cling while being confronted with new ideas, thereby “softening” the idea of evolution for many.

In his essay, “Agnosticism and Christianity,” T.H Huxley reiterates the distinction between the good spirits and bad spirits: “The chief of the good spirits, infinitely superior to all the others, and their creator, as well as the creator of the corporeal world and of the bad spirits, is God. His residence is heaven, where he is surrounded by the ordered hosts of good spirits; his angels, or messengers, and the executors of his will throughout the universe.” On the matter of the bad spirits and their chief, Satan, Huxley asserts that the devil “and his company of demons are free to roam through all parts of the universe, except the heaven” (Paragraph 18-19). Huxley’s distinction between the good spirits and bad spirits in this essay reminded me of the multiple incidents throughout Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights where both Catherine E. and Heathcliff fetishise an afterlife of careless wandering together and an omission of God altogether.

In Chapter 12, we see Catherine deliriously looking out her window at what she assumes is Wuthering Heights, and speaks as though she addresses Heathcliff: “We’ve braved its ghosts often together, and dared each other to stand among the graves and ask them to come. But, Heathcliff, if I dare you now, will you venture? If you do, I’ll keep you. I’ll not lie there by myself: they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over, but I won’t rest till you are with me. I never will!” (Paragraph 40). In another instance, directly after Catherine’s death in Chapter 16, Heathcliff cries, “May she wake in torment! . . .And I pray one prayer – I repeat it till my tongue stiffens – Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you – haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad! Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!” (Paragraph 16). 

I am particularly drawn to Emily Brontë’s decision to have both Catherine and Heathcliff, on multiple occasions, talk of life after death as a means in which they will be reunited, and until then, their souls will languish and ache for the other’s company. And I find myself consistently struck by Brontë’s decision to include the little boy with the sheep who claims to see the spirits of Heathcliff and a woman (arguably Catherine), in the final chapter of her novel. This additional narrative adds depth to the novel not only because it offers the reader a glimpse of life after death, but because it is so controversial to Brontë’s own upbringing and religious community.

 In addition to this notion of bad spirits roaming the earth, I am fascinated by Brontë’s narrative ability to challenge the ideas surrounding Heaven. While Huxley is explicit in his understanding that bad souls are free to roam anywhere, except “Heaven”- Bronte challenges this rule because “Heaven” for Catherine E. and Heathcliff is not a reunion with God, but with each other. In Chapter 9, when Catherine confesses to Nelly that she would be miserable in heaven, she elaborates: “I was only going to say that heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy.” There is so much to unpack after reading these two works in consecutive order, but it seems as though Emily Bronte and T.H Huxley had more in common than I anticipated. They both shared the same ability to stray from collective belief systems, challenged established systems that lacked evidence, and considered multiple interpretations concerning religion.

In Darwin’s, On the Origin of Species, I came across a very interesting passage about chance vs. cultivation. Darwin writes about how when looking at different plants and bushes on a bank, we are tempted to attribute their positions to chance. Darwin further claims that this view is false and that when we look at the bank we should rather think of the plant’s struggles and cultivation to get such diversity. He says, “What a struggle must have gone on during long centuries between the several kinds of trees, each annually scattering its seeds by the thousand; what war between insect and insect–between insects, snails, and other animals with birds and beasts of prey–all striving to increase, all feeding on each other…” (6). To say the diversity (and maybe even the beauty) of the plants was just mere chance would be taking away from how these plants cultivated their own destiny and end result. The was much time, a struggle, and effort involved in this process.

This got me to think of the struggles between many of the characters in Wuthering Heights and the question of why Nelly, the narrator, delved so deeply into the actions of the characters when she was telling Lockwood about Heathcliff. To any passerby witnessing the “success” of Heathcliff (i.e. obtaining both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange), it may look like mere chance. People passed away, maybe left Heathcliff the homesteads, yadda yadda. Maybe to Nelly, the story of Catherine and Heathcliff was carefully cultivated by the character’s actions. They were the insects at war in Darwin’s description. It wasn’t just chance that lead to the deaths of Catherine and Heathcliff, it was a struggle. Perhaps Nelly unfolds this narrative so that people (like Lockwood) don’t take a false view on the circumstances and events at Wuthering Heights.

Of course, the most obvious and clear connection between all of the works is the progress of science, and how it conflicts with previously revered religious thought. Father and Son describe the resistance to this form of thought, even among the educated. In many ways, science and religion conflict directly, and one must be the “universal truth”. Perhaps the greatest and most groundbreaking example of this conflict comes in the form of Darwin’s On the Origin Of Species, where core tenets of religion were burned in favor of the new doctrine of scientific progress. The influences of science and religion often do cross, as described in Father and Son. The geography of the Earth conflicts with biblical writings in a concrete and quantifiable sense.

Yet, the existence of science and religion within the same realm is very possible. This is through the rise of another school of thought from this era, agnosticism. While agnosticism denies the concept of faith, it relies upon a strong principle that God cannot be proven or disproven. Areas of science reign supreme when they overlap with areas of faith, yet these discrepancies do not totally write off religion as a whole. The existence of science and religion within the Victorian Era opened up a culture of ambiguity.

Another connection that could be made here is back to many of the supernatural themes within Victorian Literature. Wuthering Heights leaves the supernatural nature of Catherine and Heathcliff to be ambiguous, up to the reader to decide if they truly are supernatural in nature. The reader is given no definitive proof if Catherine’s spirit truly does return, or if it is simply in the mind of the narrator.