Do any of the writers studied present challenges to the Dominant views of gender?

The Victorian period saw huge changes; while industrialization changed the face of work and the economy, social structures and previously commonly held views too began to change. The introduction of girls’ schools and colleges meant some began to challenge the commonly held opinion that the “proper sphere of women is not politics or publicity, but private and domestic life”. However, despite opportunities for women to become more educated and the introduction of professions such as nursing, many did not want these women to use their intelligence for fear they would lose the ‘purity and innocence’ being a woman demanded. Both Charlotte and Emily Bronte were faced with this opposition when writing Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights (respectively); George Henry Lewes commented that a “women’s proper sphere of activity is elsewhere [than writing]… My idea of a perfect woman is one who can write but won’t”. Charlotte Bronte admitted “we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice” and so the pseudonyms of Ellis and Currer Bell were used to write their works. Because of the changing times, it is very difficult to pinpoint the ‘dominant view’ on gender; however, it could be argued that the pair are both challenging, if not the dominant view, the accepted norms and conventions of the time.

In both the novels, the key story is that of an equal relationship between couples. Though in Wuthering Heights Catherine (the elder) is dead before the novel begins, she dominates much of the novel through Heathcliff’s undying love for her. In Jane Eyre, our heroine is set on marrying only with an ‘equal’ and for love.

Catherine (the elder) finds her equal in Heathcliff – meeting while still children, the pair are undeniably wild; Catherine in nature and Heathcliff in birth through his exotic appearance and initial situation. Nelly Dean comments on Cathy, “she had ways with her as I never saw a child take up before” and prior to Heathcliff’s arrival, her request for a whip as a gift from her father is particularly interesting. Commonly seen as a symbol for power, the whip represents masculinity contrasting with her brother, Hindley’s, choice of a fiddle for a present. While the gift choices would perhaps have been more apt reversed, so too would their reactions to the loss of the gifts. Hindley is driven to tears while Catherine “showed her humour by grinning and spitting at the stupid little thing [Heathcliff]”, not the usual reaction for a girl with “the bonniest eye, the sweetest smile and the lightest foot in the parish”. Hindley , male and seven years Catherine’ senior, shows a very feminine reaction to the loss of the gift, while Catherine shows a frightening form of male aggression, the grin suggesting she takes pleasure in her punishment to him parallel to young Jane’s more understandable rage in Jane Eyre. Many have argued that this reversal of gender roles while the pair are still children is an attempt by Bronte at showing a flaw in the idea that women and men are different intrinsically by the simple fact they are male and female. The classically beautiful appearance of Catherine enhances this; she is ideally feminine on the outside but a brutish man on the inside. Later on in the novel Catherine comments “I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being”, which some have taken to mean, like in her early life, through this equality, Catherine is made masculine. However, due to her becoming a ‘lady’ after her stay at Thrushcross Grange, many critics such as Gilbert and Gubar in The Madwoman in the Attic read Heathcliff to be ‘female’. They argue that daughters, younger sons and bastard sons cannot be masculine as they hold no power in society. Heathcliff is never referred to as ‘Mr’ or ‘Master’ and Heathcliff acts as both his first name and surname. Like working class women could not be considered ‘feminine’ due to their work in the public sphere, Heathcliff cannot be considered ‘male’ as he holds no status or power in society as a man should. Therefore, considering the violent nature of Heathcliff with the idea that he is ‘feminine’, one could ascertain that Bronte is saying females too can be violent and full of rage, just like Hindley was full of female emotion.

To a lesser extent this is shown by Jane in Jane Eyre; as a girl she is undeniably brave and strong for her age, though through the first person narrator we are able to see underlying fear we can’t see in Catherine. We can feel her sadness and need to be loved though she faces exclusion from the family initially and others throughout her life; “she really must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy little children”. It is through the bad treatment, that many see a comment on the rights of the dominant male gender. Despite being detestable, Master Reed would inherit the family fortune; as John himself says, “I’ll teach you to rummage my book-shelves: for they are mine; all the house belongs to me, or will do in a few years”, while Jane, a naturally loving and good child, would be penniless.  It is because of this early injustice, one can assume, that Jane’s key need becomes the search for equality. Jane is told by Bessie she is “not to think yourself on an equality with the Misses Reed and Master Reed… They will have a great deal of money, and you will have none” which appears to resonate in older Jane as she famously proclaims;

“Women are supposed to be very calm generally; but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.”

While she is strong against those who forsake her, she is equally as soft for those who love her. She gets in to fights against Master Reed but when she is shown love and friendship at Lowood, she cries and embraces a friend through her death. It seems that throughout her life, Jane doesn’t know in to what sphere she belongs; she loves Rochester but does not want to be seen as his wife, so much as his equal and likewise despite her affections for Adele, she never seems to take any real joy in teaching her or other children for that matter. She does not have the maternal instinct many women do though childless herself, this could perhaps be due to Charlotte’s inability to understand the maternal instinct. In spite of this, critics tend to agree that through Jane, Bronte wrote effectively about the treatment of women in her society. The Victorian audience would obviously have been aware of what was expected of the characters in the novels, what their social position meant in terms of their future lifestyle. Jane’s expectations are demonstrated through Miss Temple, the pleasant, young, intelligent teacher from Lowood School. The teacher marries a good clergyman and moves away to his new parish, the exact same proposal set forth to Jane by St John. When Jane turns down this sensible proposal as she does not love the man nor he her, it could be argued that the expectations of both men and women are being challenged by Bronte. It is apparent that St John has deep feelings for Rosamond Oliver, a beautiful, rich and nice natured woman but she is not so much a suitable match for him as Jane, a teacher and un-rich woman is; “I want a wife: the sole helpmeet I can influence efficiently in life, and retain absolutely till death”, something Jane definitely is not after her flee from Thornfield Hall. St John conforms to the expectations set for him while Jane decides to go against them. Rochester too sees his match in Jane, “my bride is here…because my equal is here, and my likeness” deliberately putting the rich and beautiful Lady Blanche Ingram off him for the plainer governess. Looking at the character of Blanche, the reader can see though “moulded like a Diana” she is not a likeable character nor does Rochester love her. She is the typical caricature of a rich, beautiful and talented yet highly unlikable literary character. She follows the convention of her class, to marry for wealth and status and because of that she seems unable to love and be loved in return. Bronte is arguing through this that no love can exist in such situations, a sentiment echoed in the self-conscious Victorian society, “Alas! our age is not a marrying age; and, therefore, I fear it is an unholy one: neither our young men nor our young maidens honestly fall in love and marry now-a-days”.

While Jane appears to be emotionally more sensible than Catherine (the elder) in Wuthering Heights, it is interesting to note that Cathy becomes almost the antithesis of Jane in her decision of marriage.  Choosing Money and well-suited connections over the man she loves, she comments “It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now” spurring Heathcliff to run away before hearing her continue “but because he’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same”. While Cathy was always a healthy, lively child, after conforming to what was expected of her and marrying Linton, she becomes sickly and perishes. It seems it was Cathy’s fate to die; she did what convention asked rather than what she really yearned for. Those who stick to the conventions seem to perish in the walls of Wuthering Heights; Frances, Hindley’s perfect example of a conventional wife, is a sickly woman upon entering the house and dies soon after. Some argue this to be a deliberate attack on the aforementioned marriage ideals of wealth and class. Though Cathy the elder perishes, her spirit remains trapped at Wuthering Heights which some take as a symbol of death in oneself through denying natural wants. It has long been an argument that a woman ceases to have her own personality when she is married, some argue that Bronte could have sympathised with this; the death of the personality therefore represented in the physical deaths of the characters. The ghosts at Wuthering Heights appear only to stop their haunt once the younger Catherine marries Hareton, righting the wrong of her mother and Heathcliff’s separation.

Rather than portray herself as “model of Victorian femininity”, Charlotte Bronte, through her literary work questions firstly the apparent inequality of males and females. Jane comments “women feel just as men feel” and devices such as St John Rivers denial of his love for  to meet what is expected of him gives him the same predicament as a female where she is faced with the power of her husband in the place of God. Gender boundaries are broken down as Jane’s long-wanted equal is found in broad, manly Rochester. Similarly, in Wuthering Heights Emily destroys the normal conventions of gender, a beautiful girl originally has the mind of a man while a rugged looking man has no position in society and therefore becomes female.

Both novels show the life different characters are expected to lead and the effect that following these expectations can have. In short, it appears it appears both authoresses are saying not that all men and women are equal, but some can be. The idea that a woman’s “intellect is not for invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement and decision”, is Challenged by the strong women in both the novels.

Bibliography

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Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. London: Penguin Modern Classics, 1994.

Gilbert Gubar, The Madwoman in the Attic: The woman writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. Yale University: Yale University Press, 2000.

Goodridge, J.F. Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights. London: Edward Arnold Ltd, 1968.

Hardy, Barbara. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte). Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1964.

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Langlard, Elizabeth. ‘Nobody’s Angels: Domestic Ideology and Middle-Class Woman in the Victorian Era’ PLMA No. 1, Vol. 107 (March 1992)

Marsh, Nicholas. Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights. London: Nicholas Marsh, 1999.

Mill, Harriet Taylor, “Enfranchisement of Women” in Westminster Review  (July, 1851)

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