Re-reading Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights: Marriage and the “Traffic in Women”
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This paper addresses Emily Bronte’s novel, Wuthering Heights (1848), in an attempt to redefine the three female protagonists, Catherine Ernshaw (mother), Isabella Linton (aunt), and Cathy Linton (daughter), and their individual struggles to reverse the “traffic in women” paradigm that Gayle Rubin illuminates in her essay on the political economy of gender. The novel’s ending returns to its starting point, but requires a reading that goes beyond the appearance of a “happily-ever-after” ending. Catherine, Isabella, and Cathy each attempt to reject their roles as victims within a patriarchal system and pursue their choice of roles in society through marriage. The problem of ‘who succeeds and why’ entails hardship, both physical and psychological, which in Isabella’s case ends in death, and in Catherine’s case goes well into the afterlife. Yet Cathy ultimately succeeds. Thus the question of ‘what each woman chooses and rejects in marriage and why’ leads the narrative through the nature of gender transactions and to its ultimate resolution.
Abstract
This paper addresses Emily Bronte’s novel, Wuthering Heights (1848), in an attempt to redefine the three female protagonists, Catherine Ernshaw (mother), Isabella Linton (aunt), and Cathy Linton (daughter), and their individual struggles to reverse the “traffic in women” paradigm that Gayle Rubin illuminates in her essay on the political economy of gender. The novel’s ending returns to its starting point, but requires a reading that goes beyond the appearance of a “happily-ever-after” ending. Catherine, Isabella, and Cathy each attempt to reject their roles as victims within a patriarchal system and pursue their choice of roles in society through marriage. The problem of ‘who succeeds and why’ entails hardship, both physical and psychological, which in Isabella’s case ends in death, and in Catherine’s case goes well into the afterlife. Yet Cathy ultimately succeeds. Thus the question of ‘what each woman chooses and rejects in marriage and why’ leads the narrative through the nature of gender transactions and to its ultimate resolution.
참고문헌 (10)
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- McKinstry, Susan Jaret, "Desire’s Dreams: Power and Passion in Wuthering Heights", College Literature, 12(2), pp.141~146 (1985)
- Rubin, Gayle., "Toward an Anthropology of Women", pp.157~210 (1975), Monthly Review P
- Torgerson, Beth, "Reading the Brontë Body: Disease, Desire, and the Constraints of Culture" (2005), Palgrave
- Ward. Ian., "Law and the Brontës" (2012), Palgrave