Wuthering Heights is one of the most ultimate love story of all time. The book is written through the creative mind of Emily Bronte. What adds to its charm is its setting in Yorkshire, England during 1801. People assume that a book set at such a time will definitely have anti- feminist themes, but people are pleasantly surprised when they read this book. In all its length, women are presented as strong and equal contributors to society. The females in the romance serve as inspiration for the male characters to grow into better people, while the absence of the female characters has enough impact to cause the downfall of the male characters. The book shows just how important women are in society, as they form the cause and effect of most of the …show more content…
Bronte doesn’t work to hide the flaws of her characters and shows us that nobody is perfect. The Men and women both make mistakes and receive equal punishment. Catherine is a strong female character who questions inequalities and demands gender equality. Catherine is a great example of a feminist in the book as she gains understanding and respect from the male characters. She is able to recognize her imperfections and is admirable in her ability to forgive men. She also plays a huge role in Heathcliff’s life. Heathcliff respects and can identify with Catherine which says a lot about the positive picture of women in the story. Catherine is portrayed as a very powerful character and is the driving force in all of Heathcliff’s actions. The book serves as a great example for how women can bring change and shows reader’s there is a possibility of equality. Through the character, Catherine, Emily Bronte teaches readers that it is okay for women to be who they are. These are all great lessons and examples that can be used today in our fight for gender equality. Women and men must both take responsibility for their actions and should be punished equally. Forgiveness is key to accomplished equality because both men and women contribute to stereotypes. Men are also affected by the inequalities we face today and sometimes women forget this. Women impact the world and need to be better recognized for their contributions in society. They have the right to feel comfortable being themselves without the trepidation of judgement. Even today, women are careful to act in ways that don’t step far out of the norm in fear of social rejection. Wuthering Heights is relevant to people today and is a feminist book that everyone must
Who better would reveal what happens in closed doors of families in 1800’s United Kingdom with great practice of language than one who had the skills and the experience to? As she, according to bio., Emily Bronte, lived from 1818 to 1848, in Yorkshire, United Kingdom, she wrote poems and novels under her and her sisters: Charlotte and Anne Bronte’s pseudonym “Ellis Bell”. In her only published novel, Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte authored the narration of two families: Earnshaws and Linton to cognizance their decisions and their motives at Thrushcross Grange. Through Mr. Lockwood and Nelly Dean’s narration, as well as Catherine Earnshaw’s diary entries, she composed a plot of two falling deeply in love but never marrying. Although the novel
‘’It’s not often you get female characters who don’t fit in a box’’, complained actress Rebecca Hall. Females are considered to be extremely emotional and one dimensional characters in classic literature. They point to classic pieces such as Pride and Prejudice’s character Elizabeth and The Scarlet Pimpernel characters. Though female characters can bring humor, conflict, or romance even though they are critiqued otherwise. In The Scarlet Pimpernel, the Comtesse brings happiness and a loving tone to the story while Marguerite brings the conflict and the troubling romance.
The title of you book is Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. The book was about the love affairs of Heathcliff and his sister Catherine. In this essay I will be taking a deeper look into one of the characters in the book and what they deal with during the novel. That character will is name Isabella. Isabella is married to Heathcliff during her time at Wuthering Heights.
Oftentimes, minor characters help to reveal a theme or contribute to the characterization of the protagonist. In the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, Helen Burns serves as a foil character to the protagonist, Jane Eyre. Throughout the novel, Helen’s docile and pious nature helps to emphasize Jane’s development from a passionate girl to a modest woman. Helen’s theological beliefs also allow her to serve as a foil character to Mr. Brocklehurst, the headmaster of Lowood Institution, and St John Rivers, a zealous missionary, in order to reveal how Christianity is used to control Jane. Compared to the male characters in the novel, Helen’s positive use of religion proves to be more effective in encouraging Jane to adopt Christian values.
Equal treatment of the sexes is a cause many have been fighting for, for decades, and in this case, centuries. Slight rebellious acts of women bending gender norms can be seen as far back as Shakespearean plays, in particular, Twelfth Night and Much Ado About Nothing. Olivia from Twelfth Night, and Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing showcase characteristics of being opinionated, assertive, and strong-willed; qualities that were rarely seen during that time period. Much Ado About Nothing was written around 1598 and Twelfth Night was written around 1601, which was the Elizabethan era. During the Elizabethan era, women were raised to think that they were inferior to men.
Her refusal to submit to her social destiny shocked many Victorian readers when the novel was first released and this refusal to accept the forms, customs, and standards of society made it one of the first rebellious feminism novels of its time (Gilbert and Gubar). This essay will discuss the relationships Jane formed with the men she encountered throughout the novel and will attempt to identify moments of patriarchal oppression within the story. The first act of patriarchal oppression Jane experiences is quiet early on it the novel, during her childhood years spent at Gateshead. It is here where she must endure to live
While mankind has made substantial progress in ridding the world of diseases, mental illnesses are still prominent, and often overlooked. In the novel Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë highlights illnesses caused by tensions in order to construct a world where mental health problems and internal struggles take on a life of their own. In the case of Catherine Earnshaw Linton and Heathcliff Earnshaw, the body follows the mind 's descent into distress, with mental illness inflating strenuous circumstances. On the surface, the fevers and hallucinations are nothing more than a plot point orchestrated to spawn grief.
The feminist theory is based on finding and exposing negative attitudes toward women in literature. Their goal is to reveal the reality of how women get portrayed in literature due to the fact that most literature presents an inaccurate view of women and are most of the time minimized. In the Catcher in the Rye there is a few female characters such as Sunny, the girls at the club, and Sally who are put in situations that show nothing but stereotypes and puts them in a bad spot throughout the novel. J.D Salinger decides to put some of the female characters in situations that can cause those who read this novel to think bad or leave readers with a bad image of women. This bad image on women is due to the fact that he decided to portray some of
Jane Eyre: A Quest for True Happiness Charlotte Bronte’s classic heartfelt novel entitled “Jane Eyre” depicts how an unloved orphan constantly wishes for affection and acceptance throughout her life. Even at an early age in life, she never truly understood what it meant to be “loved” and what it means to “love” others. With this, maturing into a young lady definitely opened her eyes to the realities of life. Moreover, the novel also depicts a patriarchal society where women aren’t respected with dignity and equality. In this coming of age novel, discover how a young woman courageously faced her fears and triumphed with love in the end.
Firstly the obsessive love between Catherine and Heathcliff. Catherine claims that her love for Heathcliff “resembles the eternal rocks beneath –a source of little visible delight, but necessary” (73). She tells her housekeeper “Nelly, I am Heathcliff –he’s always, always in my
This proved when the narrator’s mother always tried to get the narrator to do work that appropriate for a lady instead of outside work, however it was not something that she enjoyed. The narrator also was not considered of real helper to her father because she was a female. This proved when her father introduced the narrator as ‘his new hired hand’ to a salesman, he replied, “I thought it was only a girl” (line 76, paragraph 10).This shows how the society view girl as ‘just a girl’ at that time and it means that their roles are not really significant in the society. As being said by Alexander Pope (1688-1744), “Most women have no character at all.” (Bressler, C.E., 2011).
Wurthering Heights, however, reverses this ideology and casts a servant as a character essential to major decisions in the story, "The reader of Wuthering Heights is made continually aware of the
Feminist literary criticism’s primary argument is that female characters have always been presented from a male’s viewpoint. According to Connell, in most literary works, female characters often play minor roles which emphasize their domestic roles, subservience and physical beauty while males are always the protagonists who are strong, heroic and dominant (qtd. in Woloshyn et al.150). This means that the women are perceived as weak and are supposed to be under the control of men. Gill and Sellers say that feminist literary criticism’s approach involves identifying with female characters in order to challenge any male centred outlook.
Emily Brontë approaches the idea of sickness and death of the characters in her novel Wuthering Heights in a peculiar way. The characters that are ill are usually mentally ill, and their deaths often result from physical ailments derived from mental illness. The drive for revenge and desire for love that reigns among the characters often lands them in stressful situations that cause them to spiral downward into these mental illnesses. Emily Brontë’s emphasis on the motif of sickness and death in Wuthering Height deepens the drama of the plot and constructs more complicated relationships between the characters.
Rebecca West once said, “I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat”; feminism and other social issues are fundamental to literature, with them commonly being a driving force behind both modern and classic works of fiction. Feminism is everywhere, with women still fighting for gender equality in modern day Britain as demonstrated through Emma Watson’s United Nations speech which was broadcasted in September of 2014 where she differentiates feminism from ‘man-hating’. Feminism has developed considerably over time as general attitudes have been swayed through literature, political movements and women’s portrayal of themselves. In 1847, Charlotte Bronte released her novel ‘Jane Eyre’ which was viewed as very radical for its time as Bronte uses Jane to exhibit her resentment towards society. Jane is presented as a morally strong, determined character who, when she falls in love, embraces the notion instead of the label and profits which are associated with it; she states that she “cares for [her]self” and that “more unsustained [she is], the more [she] will respect [her]self” as she is not tempted away from her self-respect.