Trapped in the Body of Society

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Recommended: Feminism in emily bronte's wuthering heights

Born in the beautiful, wet and green country of England in 1818, Emily Jane Brontë would grow up and write one of the literary world’s most acclaimed work of literature. Before she wrote Wuthering Heights in 1847, Emily Brontë came from a very creative household as both of her sisters, Charlotte and Anne Brontë, were also writers with whom Emily would enjoy spending time with writing prose and poetry. Because the Brontë sisters lived a strongly patriarchal society where the ideal Victorian woman only dealt with domestic matters and left everything else to men, they wrote their novels and poems under the male pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Emily Brontë, like her sisters, wrote under a male pen name because she wanted to limit the bias readers might have on her novel and she did not want readers to reject her book only because a woman wrote it. Since Emily Brontë lived a strong patriarchal society, her novel also portrays a society very similar to the one she lives in because throughout her life she has lived in and been constantly affected by a world dominated by men. While Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights portrays a headstrong young woman with the potential for heroism in Catherine Earnshaw, the novel proves that destruction and chaos emerge when patriarchal society tries to tame women and bring them out of their natural, free state.

At Wuthering Heights, Catherine finds herself in her freest state unaware of the patriarchal society she lives in. Living in a male dominated home after her mother had passed away, Catherine Earnshaw lives most of her childhood unaware of her duties assigned to her by society. Society’s use for a woman “was to bear a large family and maintain a smooth family atmosphere where a...

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... Wuthering Heights. Fourth ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2003. Print.

Eagleton, Terry. "Wuthering Heights Depicts a Marxist Struggle." Class Conflict in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. Ed. Dedria Bryfonski. Farmington Hills: Christine Nasso, 2011. 75-77. Print. Social Issues in Literature.

Gilbert, Sandra M. "Emily Brontë's Bible of Hell." Wuthering Heights. Ed. Richard J. Dunn. N.p.: n.p., n.d. 379-94. Print.

Gold, Linda. "Catherine Earnshaw: Mother and Daughter." Literature Resource Center. N.p., 2006. Web. 12 Feb. 2014.

Hagan, John. "Control of Sympathy in Wuthering Heights." The Brontës. Ed. Ian Gregor. N.p.: n.p., n.d. 59-75. Print.

Marsh, Nicholas, ed. Emily Brontë: Wuthering Heights. New York: St Martin's, 1999. Print.

Zhao, Juan. "Female Consciousness in Wuthering Heights." Literature Resource Center. N.p., 31 Oct. 2011. Web. 12 Feb. 2014.

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