Religion

Analysis of Jabez Branderham's Sermon in Wuthering Heights -

In Lockwood's dream him and Joseph travel to Gimmerton Kirk to hear a Sermon about sin and forgiveness.

This sermon, and how Jabez Branderham and his congregation act, is significant and it reinforces the thought that religion and good behaviour don't necessarily go hand-in-hand. In other words, religion doesn't always make the man. This is important to the novel because it demonstrates that Heathcliff's later behaviour, by comparison, is perhaps more understandable and may not be considered as bad. He has been cast as the villain but has been horribly maltreated and hasn't had the advantages of breeding and education, as has had those who maltreated him, and while he did receive some early religious instruction, he is later treated like a servant and an outcast, is beaten repeatedly, is forced to work out-of-doors, and is denied any further advantages.

The preacher gives an incredibly long sermon and this part of the dream is truly comical. Readers learn how Lockwood squirms and fidgets and stands, each time hoping the sermon is over. Anyone who has sat through a lengthy, boring discourse, will relate to this and it's made even funnier by the fact that it is more like an unending sermon that is comprised of 490 sermons, as the preacher drones on and on.

Mr. Lockwood denounces the preacher as having committed the unpardonable sin. He says that he has endured and forgiven the four hundred and ninety heads of Jabez' discourse but that "The four hundred and ninety-first is too much." Lockwood is aware that the preacher has gone past the seventy times seven or 490 that Jesus set as the marker for how often to forgive sin.

And curiously enough, the preacher feels that he has forgiven Lockwood's obvious distress and his contorted visage at each stage of the sermon, but he feels Lockwood has now committed the unforgivable sin by objecting to anymore sermonising. He deflects the accusation that he is the person who has committed the unforgivable sin, by saying of Lockwood, "Thou art the man."

Each man is unwilling to extend mercy beyond the seventy times seven or the 490 times. Oblivious and spiritually blind, they miss the greater truth about repeated forgiveness that Jesus taught and that Jabez preached about in his sermon.

The theme of religious hypocrisy and violence is underscored in what happens next. After denouncing Jabez Branderham as the sinner of the sin that no Christian need pardon, Mr. Lockwood tells the congregants to drag down the preacher and crush him to atoms. In other words, he tells them to kill Branderham. And how does the preacher respond? Branderham returns like for like when he instructs his flock to turn against Lockwood, "Brethren, execute upon him the judgement written." For two religious men to incite violence and killing is downright shocking. And the congregants are no better. They raise their staves and use them as weapons to strike at Mr. Lockwood and each other, and soon, the whole assembly is in turmoil, each man's hand against his neighbor. A peaceful sermon has turned into a full-out brawl. This dream paints a compelling picture as to how violence can lurk just under the surface, even in those who are supposed to be religiously inclined, and how mercy and forgiveness can be readily forgotten.

Why I did this research and what I gained out of it?

I needed to research the importance and significance of Lockwood's dream as I quite frankly did not understand what was happening in the scene and didn't understand why it was there. Researching what a Sermon is and it's significance in religion made allowed me to grasp the idea of the dream, and then exploring how it links to a play as a whole. The dream explores themes of sin and sin to be committed by character's in the play. Also looking at it from the perspective of the original text by Bronte was really useful of understanding the religious themes and how that connects to the other character's in the play. By this also happening early on in the play, before we meet most of the character's sets up this discussion of religion and what makes you a good person as there are many discussions in the rest of the play about sin, and what makes someone sinful. I also discovered through this research that Nelly is underneath this bracket of religious hypocrisy in the play, as she says Heathcliff lived an 'unchristian' life when she also committed her fair share of sin through lying and manipulating situations. Bronte also depicted hysteria and control that comes with religion and how people used to religion as an excuse for ones actions or method of control. Many poets in the 1700s/1800s also explored how religion was used as a method of control, in particularly William Blake. In Songs of Innocence and experience Blake explores the church merging with crown and using religion to take order and action, particularly in the poem 'Holy Thursday'.