The Double-Sided Mirror of Power: On the Intervention of Power in Love in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Wuthering Heights
Abstract
Although A Midsummer Night's Dream and Wuthering Heights belong to different stages of literary development, both conduct in-depth explorations of the dialectical relationship between "power and love". Employing Foucault's power theory, Gilbert and Gubar's feminist criticism theory, and combining with Greenblatt's perspective of cultural poetics, this study reveals through a comparative analysis of the two texts that the two works present different paths of power intervening in love relationships and their ultimate impacts. A Midsummer Night's Dream constructs an explicit, reconcilable power paradigm that results in order maintenance, and its influence is temporary and rectifiable. In contrast, the power depicted in Wuthering Heights is characterized by being self-reinforcing, systemically nested, and ultimately deconstructive; it distorts human nature and twists loving relationships into irreconcilable enmity. The former conveys the optimistic sentiment of rational power reconciliation in the Renaissance period, while the latter reflects the negative perception of class and gender issues in its era. Together, they form a dual narrative of the interaction between power and love in literature.
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