Feminist Criticism and Wuthering Heights

I found the feminist criticism infinitely easier to relate to than the other critiques we have so far read, but I have always been a sucker for those championing the female point of view. Especially in older novels, I feel that examining the relationship between the female author and her cultural surroundings is a crucial element in understanding what she has written (this is perhaps most fully displayed in Charlotte Bronte's "Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell", which gave me a much deeper understanding of the choice to publish the work under a somewhat androgynous pseudonym).

One thing that I found most interesting was Lyn Pykett's comment on page 473: "Like so many women in Victorian fiction, Catherine dies in childbirth and is thus not required to negotiate that other profoundly ideological version of womanhood-'the mother'." Indeed, even in such an arguably feminine novel, the role of females as the mother figure is profoundly deemphasized.  Most of the mother's die with little effect on the child, as in the case of young Cathy, who never knows her mother, and Linton, whose major personality traits are primarily defined by his interaction with Heathcliff, his father. Although Isabella raises him by herself for a time, all this interaction occurs outside of Wuthering Heights, so that very little information of this period is provided in the novel. Even earlier on, Mrs. Earnshaw and Frances die with barely a page devoted to either death. The women in this novel seem more defined by their choices of marriage partners, and once that choice is made, it seems that they become passive: they are more affected then by the choices made by the males in the novel.

I find this omission puzzling. It seems that, in the world of Wuthering Heights, the most important role of a woman is to marry well, rather than to serve thereafter as the woman of the house. I have to wonder if this notable blank spot in the writing had to do with Emily's own life. As discussed in the biographical portions of the novel, and in class, Emily seems to have been much more influenced by her father than her mother. She herself never had to face the challenges of motherhood. I realize that it may be a stretch to project this much of Emily's life onto her writing, but her lack of experience in the field and the correlating lack of description of women as mother figures seems too strong to ignore.

Wuthering Heights and Marxist Criticism

I enjoyed reading the Marxist criticism of Wuthering Heights. I find the effects of societal pressures in the novel fascinating. However, the phrase in the critical essay that had the biggest impression on me while I was reading had little to due with that issue. I loved the description of Catherine's marriage to Edgar as an arrangement in which "Catherine trades her authentic selfhood for social privilege" and compares it to "spiritual suicide and murder." this description, although perhaps melodramatic, I feel is very intriguing. In a way, this symbolic suicide leads to the deaths of many more characters, as well as the near death of the hereditary lines of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. Does anyone else feel that this is a revealing description?

Wuthering Heights

I have traditionally been dubious about frame novels, and "Wuthering Heights", while initially promising, has, in the end, reinforced my distaste for them. I feel that the ending of the novel is severely minimized by the inclusion of Lockwood. Overall, since the beginning, Lockwood's inclusion had been limited, and there was very little mention of him to interrupt the flow of the primary narrative, but from about page 256, when we are informed about Lockwood's intention to depart from Thrushcross Grange, the story pays him undue attention. It seems to me as though the wrapping up of the main story, including Heathcliff's death and the imminent marriage of the scions of the two houses, young Catherine and Hareton, is told much more in the context of Lockwood's listening.

We are interrupted in our contemplation of Catherine and Hareton by Lockwood's increasing voice, as on page 264 he himself contemplates Catherine's face , "...and I bit my lip, in spite, at having thrown away the chance I might have had, of doing something  besides staring at its smiting beauty." As a reader, I found this in particular to derail my attention towards the focus of the romance and instead begin to consider what Lockwood might have changed about the story by being more of an active participant. Part of the power the novel had held for me to this point was the isolation of its characters, in the fact that its events plowed forward, unceasing, with no one else being able to interfere with what took place. This comment, delivered as somewhat of a cast off phrase, reminded me that, despite Heathcliff's seemingly omnipotent role as the manipulator of events, he might not hold so firm a control over things. It forced me to remember that at almost any point, the intervention of another party could have drastically changed the way the plot unfolded. I feel that here, Lockwood robs the story of an essential quality of predestination, a sense that things were uncontrollable, and the perception of Heathcliff as a grand force of nature.

Lockwood is even given the important task of ending the novel, in his contemplation of the three graves, two conjoined. His final comment, somewhat derisive, is here: "I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath, and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass, and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleeprs in that quiet earth." To this point, part of the romance of the relationship between the first Catherine and Heathcliff had been the clues given from every side, including Lockwood, that something so simple as death could not separate the lovers. Lockwood's nightmare at the beginning, and Heathcliff's subsequent reaction to it, might in fact be the strongest evidence to support that. While Lockwood does mention the rumors of the mysterious couple wandering the moors together, presumably Catherine and Heatcliff, I feel that his commentary towards the end, though understandable as an outsider to the events, prevents me as a reader from fully investing in these beliefs, and in the end, provides a weak start to a novel with a strong beginning.