Professional Documents
Culture Documents
By
Jessica Yopp
April 2007
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Gothicizing the Domestic: Subversion of the Patriarchal Home in Jane Eyre and Wuthering
Heights
warning, Jane Eyre stole upon the scene, and the most alarming revolution of modern times has
followed the invasion of Jane Eyre” (554-68). Having held “such an honoured place in the
corpus of English literature for so long,” it is often surprising for modern readers to discover the
“moral outrage” that accompanied the 1847 publication of Charlotte and Emily Brontë’s novels,
Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights (Barker 90). Brimming with coarseness, sexuality, and
passion, the novels of the Brontës “displayed all those qualities which polite Victorians most
feared” (Barker 90). However, these qualities seem not to have been the most shocking to
nineteenth-century critics. Instead, the novels’ “refusal to accept the forms, customs, and
standards of society—in short, [their] rebellious feminism” (Gilbert and Gubar 338) was what
Writing during an era when “women were increasingly confined to the home, and gender
roles were insistently codified” (Heiland 3), the Brontës used their writing to voice their
rebellion. Working in the relatively new and still suspect form of novel writing, the sisters wrote
Sentimental-Domestic novels of the same period. Although also working to evoke emotional
response from the reader, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights separate themselves from the genre
of Sentimental novels in their inclusion of Gothic elements. Having long been identified as a
genre of dissent, “the transgressive acts at the heart of gothic fiction generally focus on
corruption in, or resistance to, the patriarchal structures that shaped…family life, and gender
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roles” (Heiland 5). The Gothic’s focus on the irrational as opposed to Domestic realism also sat
it apart from Sentimental novels. However, “While the fantastic idiom of gothic and the realistic
idiom of domestic fiction might at first glance seem opposed, literary criticism has become
Criticism of Gothic fiction has varied over the years, with most critics in the early
twentieth-century working to find redeeming qualities for the genre. Montague Summers, for
example, writes in The Gothic Quest (1938) that the tradition has to do with “the spiritual as well
as the literary and artistic seeking for beauty” (398). By the 1970s, the advent of feminist literary
criticism changed previous methods of interpreting Gothic fiction. The emergence of studies
such as Ellen Moers’s Literary Women (1976), Elaine Showalter’s A Literature of Their Own:
British Women Novelists from Brontë to Lessing (1977), and Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan
Gubar’s The Madwoman in the Attic (1979), both verified the study of women’s writing as an
important subject, and recognized the role of gender in Gothic fiction. Some critics, like Diane
Long Hoeveler, argue that Gothic novels do not reflect the reality of female experience, but
instead “encode and proffer the dominant ideology,” instructing women on how to become
“professional victims” (2). Other critics, like Michelle A. Massé, profess that the traumas
inflicted on the female characters correspond to a feared reality, where “Both the nightmare
stasis of the protagonists and the all-enveloping power of the antagonists are extensions of…real-
In writing Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, Charlotte and Emily Brontë combined the
hitherto separate genres of Sentimental-Domestic fiction and Gothic fiction. Using the rebellious
nature of the Gothic form, the Brontës were able to critique the concepts of “home” and the
domestic which were present in their novels. At the same time, they did not allow for their
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victims.” Simon Avery argues that “it is at the interface between these two types of writing,”
Domestic and Gothic, “that the most disturbing and innovative effects of the Brontë novels occur
(121). By including conventional Gothic elements such as description of the sublime, double
identity, and Gothic setting, while simultaneously revising and redefining these “claptraps,” the
Brontës presented a new form of novel. This new form of novel-making, combining the reality of
Sentimental-Domestic fiction, the subversion of reality in the Gothic, and the political agenda of
feminism, is what provoked Margaret Oliphant to refer as “the most alarming revolution of
modern times.”
Largely credited as the first Gothic novel, Horace Walpole’s publication of The Castle of
Otranto (1764) remains the paradigmatic source of Gothic conventions, influencing writers up to
the present day. Introducing nearly all the familiar “Gothic trappings” of the tradition, Walpole’s
novel contains supernatural occurrences, ruined castles, stock characters, and emotional
sublimity. However, as Elizabeth MacAndrew notes, “The first work in a conventional genre is
not itself conventional, but an innovative break from the past” (IX). Subtitling his work “A
Gothic Tale,” Walpole consciously labeled his writing using a term still associated at the time
with barbarism and the “Dark Ages.” “Gothic” was usually used in a derogatory manner,
meaning someone or thing that is characteristic of the Middle Ages. To be called “Goth” was to
be termed as “one who behaves like a barbarian, esp. in the destruction or neglect of works of
art” (“Gothic”). During the European Age of Enlightenment, “high art” was considered to be
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classical works, as opposed to Romantic works of literature. The Enlightenment was a rejection
of all things associated with the “Dark Ages,” including irrationality, superstition, and tyranny.
Although retaining some of its association with barbarism and “low art,” “‘Gothic’ had
only recently come to be seen as romantic and interesting, not just ugly and forbidding”
(MacAndrew IX). In general, the appearance of the Gothic genre “can be seen as one symptom
of a widespread shift away from neoclassical ideals of order and reason, toward romantic belief
in emotion and imagination” (Hume 282). Walpole saw his writing as part of this shift away
from Enlightenment principles, stating, “the great resources of fancy have been dammed up, by a
strict adherence to common life” (Walpole 7). Separating itself from rationality and realism, the
Gothic functioned to
and events, occasionally in the realms of the transcendental, ultimately and most
This emphasis on the individual is one of many characteristics shared with literature of the
experience and autonomy, Romantic writers like Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, and Samuel Taylor
Coleridge also placed feeling and emotion over reason and rationality. These characteristics
linked together Gothic and Romantic novels in particular, since Romantic poetry was considered
by its writers to be superior to the “trashy” novels of their contemporaries. Because of their
similarities, the two genres of novels were criticized on the same level, labeled as “sub-literary,”
and below the standard of neoclassical and historical writing (Chew 1196). The point of
separation between the two styles, Robert Hume argues, is in Romanticism’s “faith in the ability
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of man to transcend or transform” the world imaginatively (289). Influenced by the politics of
the French and American revolutions, the Romantics believed in the worth and power of the
individual to change and effect society. Gothic writers, on the other hand, do not see solutions to
the “limitations of the human condition,” and offer no solutions to the paradoxes they present
(Hume 289).
Gothic and Romantic fiction likewise arose from “a recognition of the insufficiency of
reason or religious faith to explain and make comprehensible the complexities of life” (Hume
290). Rejecting Enlightenment values, early Gothic fiction instead strove to find meaning
through the senses. With the primary purpose of Gothic fiction being to induce emotional
responses from the reader, writers used suspense, horror, and supernatural occurrences to inspire
such reactions, relying on the imagination of the reader to live vicariously through the characters.
This emphasis on the imaginative and fantastic caused the novels to be heavily criticized as
escapist and irrelevant, with the opinion that “art that is completely fanciful, and autonomous
creation that does not refer to reality” (Kilgour 7) is harmful to society. Other critics, like
Coleridge, supported the use of the supernatural, suggesting that external reality is secondary to
the importance of internal reality: “how beings like ourselves would feel and act” in the
Gothic literature has also been criticized for being purely sensational, without providing
any meaning or moral implications. Even contemporary critics like Elizabeth Napier argue that
the Gothic is an escapist form, identified by “profound uncertainty about its genuine status and
intent” (40). However, critics like Robert Hume acknowledge that the “uncertainty” of the
Gothic coincides with the “increasing psychological concern with moral ambiguity” (285). The
late eighteenth century “was the first era in which the mind was studied inductively, and the
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changes in world view, especially in ideas about the moral state of man…were given literary
expression” (MacAndrew 5-6). Interest in the internal psyche, the subconscious, and definitions
of morality were explored by Gothic writers, largely through the experiences of the characters.
By subjecting the characters and the reader to terrifying suspense and horrifying circumstances,
the result is “to transport the reader beyond himself into the world of the mind,” so that the
emotions are “themselves the subject matter of the novel” (MacAndrew 26-27).
The Gothic’s emphasis on emotions closely allies it with the Sentimental-Domestic novel
of the same period. Also working to induce emotion from the reader, the Sentimental novel
makes “the reader weep with and for the afflicted characters” in the same way that “Gothic tales
inspire pity and terror” (MacAndrew 26). However, the agenda behind evoking the senses in the
Sentimental novel was different than that of the Gothic. The central characteristic behind
Sentimentalism was “not so much to analyse feelings as to moralize on them so as to teach the
reader certain values that at the time were still regarded as absolute” (Voogd 77). The
concentrated on virtuous role models in a world of evil, in order to provide a didactic message
emphasizing the accepted morals of society. These novels “generally lead the reader to
contemplate the exterior actions of the life around him,” as opposed to early Gothic and
Romantic fiction, which “lead the reader to consider internal mental processes and reactions,” so
that one genre is “social” and the other is “individual” (Hume 288).
Many modern critics, however, acknowledge the aspects of early Gothic novels which
give them greater social meaning. In addition to its conscious break from Enlightenment
principles, the Gothic genre was also radical in its ability to criticize society. Maggie Kilgour
attributes this ability to the genre’s persistent use of imaginative and separate characters and
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settings: “Its escape from the real world has a deeper moral purpose, as distance enables
literature to become an indirect critique of things as they are” (9). Likewise, David Punter
defines the Gothic as “not an escape from the real but a deconstruction and dismemberment of it”
(97). Adding to the Gothic’s rejection of traditional psychological concepts and definitions of art,
the genre’s subversive implications contributed to its reputation as a rebellious form. So much
so, that Kenneth Graham suggests the Gothic “was as rebellious in letters as its contemporary
In her book Literary Women (1976), Ellen Moers was first to give a name to a genre of
writing that had hitherto not been recognized as separate. Moers coins the term “Female Gothic”
to describe “work that women writers have done in the literary mode that, since the eighteenth
century, we have called the Gothic” (90). This group of writers included Ann Radcliffe, who was
the first female to enter into the trend of popular Gothic writing with The Mysteries of Udolpho
in 1794, thirty years after Walpole. Mary Shelley also popularized the Gothic mode in 1818 with
Frankenstein. Although the works of these women seem to contain an emphasis on the morality
and values found in Sentimental fiction, they differ in their inclusion of Gothic elements, which
subvert and reject these values. As suggested by Elizabeth MacAndrew in The Gothic Tradition
in Fiction, “Sentimental novels reflect an ideal…the Gothic represents the distortion of that
ideal” (24). As a “vehicle for female anger” (Kilgour 9), women writers utilized the rebellious
nature of the Gothic mode to give voice to their own disagreement with the world. The genre of
the Female Gothic became an outlet into which writers like the Brontës were able to “critique the
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premises about women and the home” to which other writers “felt obligated to adhere” (Ellis
xii).
The Female Gothic genre is described as such not only because it consisted of women
writers, but also because their work was written for a largely female audience. In the late
eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, a new class of women novel readers had
emerged “whose newly created leisure allowed her to make use of the circulating library and
whose ‘placement’ in the home made her a reader eagerly courted by publishers” (Ellis x).
Because of the private nature of the lives these women led, literature became a window through
which they could view the outside world. In her article “Women’s Lit: Profession and Tradition,”
Ellen Moers describes the relationship women had with literature in this era:
Women through most of the 19th century were barred from the universities,
friendship. The normal literary life was closed to them. Without it, they studied
with a special closeness the works written by their own sex, and relied on a sense
Concerns over the socially subversive influences of reading developed as new classes of readers
emerged in the nineteenth century. Especially in the case of women, the rise in literacy “became
a focal point in debates over authority and self-determination” (Kilgour 6). Female Gothic
writers used the special relationship they shared with their audience and the sense of
rebelliousness already present in the growth of literacy to bring forth a feminist message.
Throughout the history of Gothic literature, each generation of writers modified the
convention to correspond to their own concerns or to explore a particular problem. Besides their
work containing aspects of the supernatural and fantastic in order to thrill and excite, what
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indeed evokes real terror is “when the ghost, the double, or the lurking assassin correspond to
something that is actually feared” in real life (MacAndrew 8). The nightmare that Gothic
literature presents to its audience always relates back symbolically to the problems with which
humanity is currently contending. In actuality, “history, both individual and societal, is the
nightmare from which the protagonist cannot awaken” (Massé 681-682). Female Gothic writers
continued this practice by adapting the Gothic to focus on the problems that women were
combating. As Maggie Kilgour suggests, “The female gothic itself is not a ratification but an
exposé of domesticity and the family…by cloaking familiar images of domesticity in gothic
forms, it enables us to see that the home is a prison, in which the helpless female is at the mercy
of ominous patriarchal authorities” (9). The nightmare portrayed was “created by the individual
in conflict with the values of her society and her prescribed role” (Fleenor 10). It is significant
that many of the women writers in this genre emerged at the same time that the feminist
Woman was in 1792, the same year as Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho. Just as
conventional Gothic literature alluded to tyranny, Female Gothic writers portrayed their
experience of tyranny: patriarchal society. They created an antithesis to the Sentimental Novel,
claiming that the morals and values prescribed to women were not beneficial, but amounted to
oppression. Writers like Radcliffe portrayed a veritable hell in their novels, where female
protagonists are taken, tormented and abused, despite their virtue. This treatment symbolized the
conditions that were present in the actual world, rather than creating an imaginative one meant to
thrill. Indeed, it is reality itself that is questioned and observed in the Female Gothic, left open to
criticism. In this way the women writers “could first accuse the ‘real world’ of falsehood and
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deep disorder. Or, perhaps, they rather asked whether masculine control is not just another
delusion in the nightmare of absurd reality in which we are all involved” (Doody 560).
In the same way that Female Gothic writers chose to adapt the Gothic convention to suit
their purpose, Charlotte and Emily Brontë likewise adapted the style of the Female Gothic to
create what Robert Heilman terms the “New” Gothic. Heilman suggests that the Brontës,
Charlotte especially, not only gave emotion and feeling to her characters, but also made those
emotions realistic. He argues that “sexuality, hate, irrational impulse” and other characteristics
are “grasped, given life, not merely named and pigeon-holed” (166). In this way, the characters
no longer function just as abstract symbols, but as actual people. Their subjective emotions
constitute the symbolic. Christine Alexander agrees with this definition of “New” Gothic and
adds “what impresses us is the terrifying ghostliness of the real world we know, a terror confined
to the human consciousness that apprehends it” (409). This shift of focus from symbolic
characters to symbolic emotions is best seen in the Brontës’ new portrayal of the conventional
Gothic heroine. Heilman cites that the heroine of the “New” Gothic shows,
the heroines are ‘unheroined,’ unsweetened. Into them there has come a new
Through this new characterization and definition of the Gothic heroine, the Brontës make their
first steps toward adapting the Gothic genre in order to make a new statement about and against
patriarchy.
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In traditional Gothic plots, although main female characters do appear, “the narrative is
shaped by the mystery the male presents and not by the drama of the supposed protagonist, the
Gothic heroine” (Massé 679). Heroines of the Gothic are instead passive characters, victims of
circumstance and the corruption surrounding them. Early Gothic heroines were created to be
submissive, morally flawless, and innocent. So innocent, in fact, that they often have no
knowledge of evil, passion, or sexuality. They’re most representative of “Eves before the fall”
(Conger 95). These heroines reflect the ideals of the era in which they were created, to exemplify
the socially acceptable definition of the “good” woman. Their relationship to the Gothic plot was
to serve as the embodiment of the manners and mores of Victorian society. The heroines
eventually fall victim to the advances of the “evil” antagonists, who represent the corruption of
social expectations.
The paradigmatic example of the traditional Gothic heroine is Isabella from Horace
Walpole’s Castle of Otranto (1764). Pursued by the father of her betrothed, she flees in horror
from the castle, without attempting to expose his corrupt desires to the other occupants. What
creates the trademark Gothic terror is the heroine’s discovery of darkness and evil. Michelle
Massé in her article “Gothic Repetition: Husbands, Horrors, and Things That Go Bump in the
familial values, have the same expectations as those around them for what is
normal. Their social contract tenders their passivity and disavowal of public
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power in exchange for the love that will let them reign in the interpersonal and
domestic sphere…What is gives the lie to what they are told should be, and they
Although expecting a content future in her prescribed role as wife and domestic dweller, the
heroine is shocked and terrified by the discovery of “immoral” forces. These forces are usually
embodied in the male antagonists of the story, who attempt to manipulate and subvert the
“proper order” that the heroine is expecting. Massé argues that the characterization of heroines in
Gothic novels and the corruption they face provides a feminist statement against patriarchal
order. She suggests that, “the silence, immobility, and enclosure of the heroines mark their
internalization of repression as well as the power of the repressing force. Indeed, their frequently
only emphasize this point” (688). The Gothic form isn’t creating a fantastic world but is instead
revealing the condition of women in the real world at hand. Instead of being a story about an
individual, it “implicates and indicts the culture that refuses her voice” (Massé 709). Although
Isabella is the protagonist of Walpole’s novel, her character is not the focus of the story.
Alternatively, it is the sexual deviance of Manfred, the fully developed antagonist, that is the
central point of the novel. The submissiveness of the heroines like Isabella represents just how
immobile and victimized real life women were when repressed under the expectations of
patriarchal society. The commentary is that women who are forced to follow these expectations
Other critics, like Syndy McMillen Conger and Elaine Showalter, however, claim that the
prevailing beliefs that such behavior is desirous in women. They argue that this created for the
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authority and instinct to emulate. To counterbalance the virtuous ideal of the heroine was the
femme fatale, the female representative of vice. The femme fatale in Gothic fiction is “dark,
imperious, passion-ridden,” and has “independence of spirit, the emotional vibrancy, the
ingenuity, and the moral fallibility the heroine often lacks” (Conger 95). She may also show her
own sexual initiative and become a competitor for man’s affections, such as the Baroness
Lindenberg in Matthew Gregory Lewis’ The Monk (1796). But, at the cost of having authority
and independence, the femme fatale is labeled as “evil,” the opposite of the heroine, and
becomes the outcast of society. In early Gothic fiction good and evil are starkly different, with
each being an absolute extreme. In this way, the personalities of the female characters were
polarized, with no opportunity for them to have psychological individuality. The female audience
reading this material in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries became divided against
themselves, given two very different examples of how they could act. Syndy McMillen Conger
suggests this is a device upholding patriarchal control over the minds of women:
[The female reader] was quietly being instructed…to choose between two equally
impossible feminine models. Did she yearn only to be virtuous? Then she must
strive for a body ‘light and airy’ and a mind equally so; she must be utterly
compliant, selfless, dependent, and pure. Did she pine instead for an all-
subsuming, passionate love affair? Then she must expect to be soundly punished,
even damned, or become vicious, subject to criminal impulses and madness. (95)
By relating female independence and power to the corruptive forces of the femme fatales, the
message to women was that any subversive behavior would be harmful not only to themselves,
Charlotte and Emily Brontë, again modifying the Gothic tradition to create a “New”
Gothic, redefined the role and character of the heroine in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.
feminine happiness” (Conger 92), the Brontës remodeled the conventional heroine to make a
new statement about the role of women in society. Making their heroines difficult to place in any
category of “good” or “evil,” the Brontës rejected using them solely as symbols. Instead, their
subjective emotions are the main focus of the novels. At the beginning of Wuthering Heights the
reader is first introduced to the Catherine, who is beautiful, but also sullen and rude to
Lockwood. Lockwood, representing the expectations that sentimental society held, attempts to
ascertain to whom she is married, and tries to classify her as the “ministering angel” of
Wuthering Heights (13). His phrases “parody the sentimentality of fictions that keep women in
their ‘place’ by defining them as beneficent fairies or amiable ladies” (Gilbert and Gubar 261).
Later the reader is introduced to Catherine Earnshaw, not as a woman of marriageable age, but as
a child. This detail is important because it allows the audience to see how she develops and
changes over time, instead of being a static character that has already entered into womanhood.
As a child, Catherine is both naughty and loving, independent and loyal. These opposing
characteristics continue into adulthood, with her ability to be cruel and manipulative and yet still
be pursued and loved, unlike the femme fatale. Emily Brontë creates in Catherine a character that
cannot be placed in categories of good and evil, but is instead a complex character that
introducing her heroine as a child, Charlotte shows that young Jane, like Catherine, shows sparks
of independence. Suppressed by the tyrannical treatment of Mrs. Reed and her children, she
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breaks into fits of “rage,” which are her instinctual reactions to being denied freedom. It’s in this
rage where she finds the most freedom, as in her confrontation with Mrs. Reed. After
condemning her for unjust treatment, Jane notes, “my soul began to expand, to exult, with the
strangest sense of freedom, of triumph, I ever felt. It seemed as if an invisible bond had burst,
and that I had struggled out into unhoped-for liberty” (48). Jane’s hunger for freedom parallels
that of the femme fatale, but Brontë is showing that heroines can also pursue independence, and
take an active role in their stories. Likewise, Brontë is demonstrating that the desire for
What separates Catherine and Jane most from their predecessors, though, is their
introspection. In traditional Gothic fiction, the heroine was placed in a conflict, and the situation
was always external. In her passivity she was a character of consequence, affected by her
surroundings, not by anything within herself. Charlotte and Emily Brontë’s new heroines, on the
other hand, must face the conflicts that reside in their own minds. This further subverts the
previous definition of the Gothic heroine, as well as the definition of femininity. Because the
heroines have the ability to have internal conflicts, it “increases the psychological complexity of
the Gothic heroine, [and] broadens immeasurably the bounds within which femininity may
move” (Conger 100). However, though facing internal conflicts, these conflicts arise from the
heroines’ struggle against the external world. The similarity that Catherine and Jane share with
earlier Gothic heroines is that the terror they are subjected to is a form of knowledge or
discovery. Thrust into the adult reality of Thrushcross Grange and Lowood school, the girls learn
that their youthful independence is not tolerated or valued. Female characters in early Gothic
novels discovered in their adulthood the knowledge of evil and immorality. Catherine and Jane
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discover in their adolescence the terror of a world where they have no power or control:
patriarchal society.
The conflict from which both Catherine and Jane suffer originates within their own
minds, as a struggle between what they naturally desire, and what they feel is expected or
required of them as women. This creates a self-divided personality; a trope long used in the
Gothic tradition. However, in traditional Gothic fiction it is the lead male character who suffers
from the split personality. In his case it is the discovery of evil within his own mind that causes
the duality. Charlotte and Emily Brontë adapt this trope, allowing for the psychological
complexity usually allocated to the male characters to apply to their heroines. The duality
imposed upon them is caused by an external force, which Jane and Catherine are responding to
In Wuthering Heights, Catherine does not resemble the traditional Gothic heroine because
she is first presented as a child. Because of this the audience is able to see Catherine as she is
before the influence of outside forces. She displays her true personality and desires, as when her
father asks her what she desires him to bring back for her on his trip to Liverpool. Catherine
requests that he bring her a whip, symbolic of the “powerless younger daughter’s yearning for
power” (Gilbert and Gubar 264). She gets her whip, figuratively, in the form of Heathcliff.
Named after a son who died in childhood, Heathcliff becomes representative of the power that
young Catherine longs for, but is denied because of her gender. Hindley, not Catherine, will
inherit Wuthering Heights after their parents’ death, but as an adopted second son Heathcliff is
doing “her bidding in anything” (43) and Nelly observes that “the greatest punishment we could
invent for her was to keep her separate from him” (42). Catherine’s childhood is unplagued by
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duality, and she fulfills her desire to be mischievous and unyoked despite her father’s plea, “Why
canst thou not always be a good lass, Cathy?” (43). Wuthering Heights becomes a haven for
Catherine, where she is able, through Heathcliff, to resist the patriarchal control of her father and
of the religion that Joseph urges on her. According to Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar,
Heathcliff’s presence gives the girl a fullness of being that goes beyond power in
double for her, a complementary addition to her being who fleshes out all her
lacks…Thus in her union with him she becomes…a perfect androgyne. (265)
Forming a complete and thus androgynous being, Catherine and Heathcliff are able to escape the
In contrast, Catherine and Heathcliff’s separation is inevitable with the emergence of her
sexuality, “with all the terrors which attend that phenomenon in a puritanical and patriarchal
society” (Gilbert and Gubar 270). The heroine’s initiation into discovering her sexual identity is
symbolically violent and forced, with her being held captive at Thrushcross Grange by the
Lintons. Attacked by their bulldog, Skulker, Catherine is prevented from escaping with
Heathcliff away from the Grange. The way in which the dog is described is phallic, having a
“huge, purple tongue hanging half a foot out of this mouth, and…pendant lips” (49). Likewise,
the bleeding she suffers as result of the attack has sexual connotations. She and Heathcliff are
then separated, and Catherine is taken inside the house while Heathcliff is locked outside of it.
As a representative of her power and control, this symbolic sexual initiation has denied Catherine
Having lost one portion of her soul, Catherine must now create another “self,” one that is
not natural, but nonetheless socially acceptable. Returning to Wuthering Heights, Catherine has
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put on the manners and garments of a “dignified person,” and Hindley exclaims, “I should
scarcely have known you.” The Lintons advise Catherine that she must “not grow wild again”
and should learn to rule herself at the Heights as she had at Thrushcross Grange (53). Gilbert and
Gubar explain that upon entering into sexual identity in a patriarchal world,
She must learn to repress her own impulses, must girdle her own energies with the
iron stays of ‘reason’… And just as her entrance into the world of Thrushcross
Grange was forced and violent, so this process by which she is obliged to
education. (274)
This education is one which is upon all ladies of society, designed to repress the desires of the
original self. When Catherine is forced to learn this lesson, it causes a fragmentation of her
personality, doubling her identity. Nelly recognizes this, stating that she had “adopt[ed] a double
character without exactly intending to deceive anyone” (67). At the same time, Heathcliff,
representing the rebellious part of herself, is the one who is imprisoned and starved, while
Catherine represses her need to mourn his absence and hides under the dinner table to conceal
her emotion.
Catherine’s conversation with Nelly following Edgar’s proposal confirms the notion that
Heathcliff is an integral part of her being. She confides in Nelly her doubts about the marriage,
revealing that she is now truly fragmented. Catherine confesses that the obstacle to marriage is,
“Here! And here!...striking one hand on her forehead, and the other on her breast” (79-80).
Unable to decipher in which “place the soul lives” (80), her crisis is a psychological one, as an
attempt to discover her true “self.” She is forced to choose between two modes of identity: one
formed almost entirely by her id, the “instinctive impulses of the individual,” and the other
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regulated by the super-ego, the “aspect of the psyche which has internalized parental and social
prohibitions” (OED). This new level of psychological complexity is not only revolutionary in its
development of female character, but it also manages to predate the theories of Sigmund Freud
by nearly a century. What Gothic literature had previously explored only in terms of masculinity,
Brontë updates and adapts, by indicting the super-ego as the force oppressing women in society.
Her commentary is that, much like Catherine, women are divided between two modes of
personality: the freedom-desiring id, or original self, and the super-ego, ruled by the expectations
of a patriarchal society.
Catherine’s eventual decision to marry Edgar Linton, Gilbert and Gubar argue, was not
actually a choice, but instead a product of her forced education. She is not given any meaningful
choices, as she herself perceives that marrying Heathcliff would turn them both into beggars, and
there are no other men of status in the area. In this way her actions can no longer be labeled as
good or evil, since “social and biological forces have fiercely combined against her” (Gilbert and
Gubar 277). Once married to Edgar, Catherine is separated from her childhood counterpart,
denying her the source of her power and freedom. It is not until Heathcliff returns that she is
confronted again by the knowledge of her fragmented self. Catherine’s split personality is most
specifically shown in a scene prior to her death, when she has shut herself in her bedroom and
refused food for several days. Unable to recognize herself in the bedroom mirror, she enquires of
Nelly, “Don’t you see that face?” Nelly tries to convince her it is her own reflection, exclaiming,
“That is the glass—the mirror, Mrs Linton; and you see yourself in it,” but despite her efforts, “a
succession of shudders convulsed her frame, and she would keep straining her gaze towards the
glass” (123-124). Catherine is overcome by horror in her inability to recognize her own person,
because the reflection is no longer an image of her true self, but of the role she has been forced to
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occupy. The fragmentation of her self “has now gone so far beyond the psychic split betokened
by her division from Heathcliff that body and image (or body and soul) have separated” (Gilbert
and Gubar 282-283). In general, mirrors work as a literary devices which raise “questions about
the objects they reflect,” as well as showing “the disparity between reality and appearance”
(Weidhorn 850). This detail reflects both on Catherine’s dilemma, and the emphasis of internal
psychology on which Gothic literature relies. By using a mirror, Brontë is not only suggesting
her heroine’s fragmented identity, but also that regardless of the external façade humanity adopts
to remain socially acceptable, raw, internal emotion still exists, deep inside the mind. Used
throughout Gothic literature, this theme emphasizes that “what has been divided struggles
mightily for reunion, a reunion that often results in death” (Henningfield 145). Appropriately,
Catherine is unable to live once Heathcliff returns, because their reunion can never be complete.
With this knowledge, she refuses to eat and makes herself sick, not out of perversity, but because
“she cannot, and will not, live divided” (MacAndrew 184). Brontë’s argument is that in a male-
controlled society, women are unable to sustain elements of both the id and super-ego without
freedom, and original self—is what determines her demise, as she tells him, “You and Edgar
have broken my heart, Heathcliff!...I shall not pity you, not I. You have killed me” (160).
Likewise suggesting the fragmentation of a character, Gothic writers also use the
identity of the main character, representing a different side of the character’s personality. In
Gothic literature it is most often used to show the character’s dark side. A famous example
would be the doubling of Dr Jekyll in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and
representing the side of her that desires freedom and autonomy. However, she is also doubled by
her surviving daughter, Catherine Linton II. Catherine turns out to be her mother’s opposite: a
child of culture, dutiful to her father, a product of the refined education that forms women into
the same mold used for the traditional Gothic heroine. Although she has the eyes of her mother,
Catherine II can only contain fragments of the original Catherine. Therefore, she represents the
final product of the eldest Catherine’s cultivation at Thrushcross Grange: a woman containing
Charlotte Brontë, in writing Jane Eyre, likewise decided that her Gothic heroine should
suffer from a crisis of identity. Brontë presents young Jane Eyre as an orphan tyrannized by her
aunt, Mrs. Reed, and her children, Eliza, John, and Georgiana. Continually tormented by John
Reed, she describes him as a “tyrant” and “slave-driver.” In this way Jane is placed in the
racialized position of slave, associating her early on with Bertha, whose mother was a Creole
living in Jamaica. By using the analogy to slavery, Brontë is associating enslavement based upon
race to the oppression of women, based upon gender. It is significant that the abusive character
of John Reed is assumed to be the future patriarch of Gateshead, as he reminds Jane, “all the
house belongs to me, or will do in a few years” (23). Until that point, Mrs. Reed assumes charge
of the household and bestows her love and care only on her own children, the proper patriarchal
line of descent. Enraged by the abuse she is subjected to by this “proper” family, Jane’s anger is
her instinctual reaction to her entrapment at Gateshead. Young Jane is consistently referred to in
animalistic language, such as “rat” and “toad,” to emphasize that her actions are instinctual and
natural. Likewise, this also highlights the idea of the subconscious, since after her fight with John
Reed she submits, “I was a trifle beside myself; or rather out of myself” (24).
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In addition, when Jane retaliates against Mrs. Reed’s verbal abuses, she admits that “it
something spoke out of me over which I had no control” (39). Jane is confronted with this
instinctual, angry side of herself when she faces a mirror in the red-room and observes,
All looked colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in reality: and the
strange little figure there gazing at me, with a white face and arms specking the
gloom, and glittering eyes of fear moving where all else was still, had the effect of
a real spirit: I thought it like one of the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp. (26)
Contemplating the injustices of her life at Gateshead, she imagines “some strange expedient to
achieve escape from insupportable oppression—as running away, or, if that could not be
effected, never eating or drinking more, and letting myself die” (27). Her thoughts echo the death
of Catherine, who starved herself into sickness. However, Jane is also confronted with a third
alternative in the red-room: escape through madness. Feeling that she saw a “vision from another
world,” she observes that, “My heart beat thick, my head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, which
I deemed the rushing of wings: something seemed near me; I was oppressed, suffocated:
endurance broke down” (29). Jane’s show of madness is the ultimate expression of her anger
towards injustice. This madness succeeds in granting her escape from Gateshead, by giving her
the opportunity to go to school. However, Lowood school only presents another form of
Jane’s initial introduction to Lowood is through its representative and owner, Mr.
Brocklehurst. Upon meeting him, she describes his appearance in phallic terms, observing him as
“a black pillar…the straight, narrow, sable-clad shape standing erect on the rug: the grim face at
the top was like a carved mask, placed above the shaft by way of capital” (42). Brocklehurst, as
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another symbol of patriarchy, is rich and influential, and appropriately the master of a school
which teaches young girls conformity and submission. At this cold new home Jane is forced to
learn how to suppress the anger and rage inherent in her behavior at Gateshead, just as all women
are expected to hide any emotions subversive to society. Original nature is to be covered up, as
Brocklehurst explains when he is told that one of the girls’ hair is naturally curly, contrary to his
dress code: “Naturally! Yes, but we are not to conform to nature” (73). At Lowood, Jane is
exposed to two models of femininity in the characters of Miss Temple and Helen Burns. As the
“angel of the house,” Miss Temple is the paradigmatic example of ladylike virtues. Besides
being benevolent and kind, Miss Temple also conceals the anger she undoubtedly feels due to the
unjust treatment of her students. Gilbert and Gubar note that “it is clear enough that she has
repressed her own share of madness and rage, that there is a potential monster beneath her
angelic exterior” (345). Although angered by Brocklehurst’s sermon justifying the near-
starvation of the students, Jane observes that Miss Temple “gazed straight before her, and her
face…appeared to be assuming also the coldness and fixity of [marble]; especially her mouth
closed as if it would have required a sculptor’s chisel to open it” (73). Jane also notices this
resentment in her classmates, who, when ordered to face the wall, she notes “the looks and
grimaces with which they commented on this maneuver: it was a pity Mr. Brocklehurst could not
see them too; he would perhaps have felt that, whatever he might do with the outside of the cup
and platter, the inside was further beyond his interference than he imagined” (73).
when being sent to stand in the middle of the room as a form of punishment, Jane notes, “I
expected she would show signs of great distress and shame; but to my surprise she neither wept
nor blushed: composed, though grave, she stood, the central mark of all eyes (62). Helen
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explains to Jane that “it is weak and silly to say you cannot bear what it is your fate to be
required to bear” (65). However, as is suggested by her last name, Burns, she also carries a
concealed resentment inside her that is contrary to the cold and icy atmosphere of Lowood. Like
Jane, Helen also dreams of an escape into freedom, but she finds it though her spirituality. Helen
accepts the injustices placed upon her in this life in expectation of heavenly justice in the
We are, and must be, one and all, burdened with faults in this world: but the time
will soon come when, I trust, we shall put them off in putting off our own
corruptible bodies; when debasement and sin will fall from us with this cumbrous
frame of flesh, and only the spark of the spirit will remain,--the impalpable
Helen is attributing the need to conceal this “spark of the spirit” to the existence of our bodies.
For women, this idea means the flesh determines the inescapable duty they must uphold, to
silently suffer the injustices of this life. Jane, however, finds Helen’s reasoning hard to follow,
and admits, “I was no Helen Burns” (75). When Miss Temple leaves Lowood eight years after
Jane’s first arrival there, Jane notes while pacing her chamber, “I was left in my natural element;
and beginning to feel the stirring of old emotions.” While looking out the window, she still
desires freedom, and submits, “for liberty I uttered a prayer” (92-93). Jane’s way of dealing with
the unjust world “is still the Promethean way of fiery rebellion, not Miss Temple’s way of
ladylike repression, not Helen Burn’s way of saintly renunciation. What she has learned from her
tow mothers is, at least superficially, to compromise” (Gilbert and Gubar 347). Jane’s
compromise, then, is to change her prayer for liberty instead to a plea: “Grant me at least a new
servitude!” (93).
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Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar suggest that in leaving Lowood and coming to
Thornfield, Jane is continuing a pilgrimage for independence and equality that she had started
after leaving Gateshead (358). Initially, it appears Jane has found equality in the form of Mr.
Rochester. Their relationship is one of spiritual and mental equality, as their conversations do not
consist of the usual niceties of Victorian language. On the part of Rochester, Jane commends his
coarse speech directed towards her, claiming “I should never mistake informality for insolence:
one I rather like, the other nothing free-born would submit to, even for a salary” (140). Likewise,
Rochester admires Jane for her plain speech, commenting that her answers are “frank and
sincere; one does not often see such a manner: no, on the contrary, affectation, or coldness, or
stupid, coarse-minded misapprehension of one’s meaning are the usual rewards of candour”
(140-141). He continues, “But I don’t mean to flatter you: if you are cast in a different mould to
the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it” (141). Jane’s frankness is due to her resistance
to the formalities of society that go against human nature. Rochester and Jane’s equality is based
on their spiritual and mental equality. However, the subjects of their conversations also
demonstrate this detail. When he relates his sexual relationship with Celine to Jane, it
“emphasizes, at least superficially, not his superiority to Jane but his sense of equality with her”
(Gilbert 352). Jane also comments that “the ease of his manner freed me from painful restraint:
the friendly frankness…with which he treated me, drew me to him. I felt at times, as if he were
Recognition of their equal bond reaches its climax when it is threatened by Blanche
Ingram, the foil of Jane. Playing the potential role of femme fatale, it is significant that Brontë
wrote the sociable “lily-flower” of the drawing room as the antagonist. Her cruel speech against
governesses, instead of being declared coarse as Jane’s speech, attracts “not only the admiration,
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but the amazement of her auditors” (182). In addition, her opinions on marriage emphasize
gender inequality, stating “Whenever I marry…I am resolved my husband shall not be a rival,
but a foil to me. I will suffer no competitor near the throne” (182). However, Jane’s speech
I have as much soul as you,--and full as much heart!...I am not talking to you now
my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave,
Rochester also accepts this as the true grounds of their relationship, and tells Jane “My bride is
here…because my equal is here, and my likeness” (253). Gilbert and Gubar comment on this
scene, suggesting, “The energy informing both speeches is, significantly, not so much sexual as
spiritual; the impropriety of its formulation is…not moral but political, for Charlotte Brontë
appears here to have imagined a world in which the prince and Cinderella are democratically
equal” (354). Their reference to Cinderella creates a parallel between the two female
protagonists, since both are relatively poor orphans who capture the attentions of two rich men.
However, in Brontë’s text, as the spiritual counterpart of Jane, Rochester’s role as the financially
and intellectually superior “Master” is negated. Since his wealth and experience was the product
placing Jane and Rochester outside of the roles and expectations of society, Brontë shows that
equality is possible for “the prince and Cinderella” in a world not delineated by patriarchal
standards.
Despite these avowals of equality, an impediment to the relationship still exists. After
their engagement, Rochester immediately begins to treat her as inferior, calling her “angel” and
Yopp 29
“girl-bride.” He attempts to decorate her with jewels and fine dresses, displaying his patriarchal
power as the financial superior. Jane’s annoyance and anger is aroused by this new treatment, as
she reveals, “I thought his smile was such as a sultan might…bestow on a slave his gold and
gems had enriched: I crushed his hand, which was ever hunting mine, vigorously, and thrust it
back to him red with the passionate pressure” (267). Rochester responds by telling her “it is your
time now, little tyrant, but it will be mine presently: and when once I have fairly seized you, to
have and to hold, I’ll just—figuratively speaking—attach you to a chain like this” (269). His
treatment causes her to show symptoms of fragmentation, as she begins to doubt the success of
the marriage, and on the day before the wedding she ponders her new name as well as her new
dress and appearance as something unfamiliar and foreign. Amid this confusion, Jane is visited
during the night by the haunting form of Bertha, who tears her wedding veil, the extravagant
accessory that Rochester “cheated” Jane into accepting. The veil not only represents their
upcoming wedding, but also, as she teases Rochester, a device to “masque your plebeian bride in
the attributes of a peeress” (278). Jane had resented the veil, the symbol of his aristocratic
prowess and control over her, so Bertha acted for her, tearing the veil in two pieces.
Bertha’s other appearances in the novel also suggest that she has been acting in
correlation with Jane’s emotions. After Rochester reveals his sexual deviances to Jane it is that
night that Bertha tries to burn him in his bed. Likewise, after tricking Jane with his gypsy
disguise, Bertha tries to kill her brother, Mason. Bertha acts as a double, or doppelgänger, for
Jane while at Thornfield, as the “angry aspect of the orphan child, the ferocious secret self Jane
has been trying to repress ever since her days at Gateshead” (Gilbert and Gubar 16). The “mad
woman” in the attic of Thornfield is the personified rage that Jane still retains, as she feels she
remains unequal with Rochester, and therefore unequal in the world. This rage is the same that
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she felt at Gateshead, as shown through the similar wording and imagery that Brontë uses to
connect Bertha and young Jane. Both characters are compared with wild animals, beginning with
Jane being referred to as a “bad animal” and “mad cat” early in the novel (22,24). Likewise,
when she observes Bertha in the attic of Thornfield, the description is animalistic: “whether beast
or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell: it groveled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched
and growled like some strange wild animal…a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane,
hid its head and face” (289-90). Reinforcing this connection, Jane admits that she has only
become “insensible from terror” twice: the episode in the red-room at Gateshead and when
Bertha tears her veil, glaring at her with a “fiery eye” (281). Because of the existence of Bertha,
the marriage cannot be completed, both literally and figuratively, since the rage inherent in Jane
still exists. Realizing that the rage will not quell until her pilgrimage towards independence has
been completed, Jane once again escapes through madness. Bertha acts on the resentments held
by Jane, burning and destroying Thornfield, “the symbol of Rochester’s mastery and of her own
servitude,” as well as destroying herself, “as if she were an agent of Jane’s desire as well as her
Forming a counterpart to the female characters in Gothic fiction are the male characters,
both protagonists and antagonists. In early Gothic novels such as Horace Walpole’s Castle of
Otranto, the male characters were divided in two categories, good and evil, in a way similar to
the female characters. However, authors questioned the definition of “evil”through the male
antagonist, who struggles psychologically, usually adopting a split personality. Overcome with
corruption in his own mind, the stereotypical “male monster” pursues the female victim,
attempting to illegitimately claim her as his own, disrupting proper social order. For example, in
Yopp 31
Walpole’s novel, Manfred pursues Isabella despite the fact that he is married, and she is
betrothed to his son. In his frantic pursuit for her, he resorts to murdering those in his way, which
leads to the accidental murder of his own daughter, Matilda. Manfred’s crimes against his family
and his corruption of royal lineage make him the “monster” of the story. On the other hand, the
male hero, although “granted some degree of imperfection and self-awareness,” represents the
ultimate triumph of order and patriarchy, marrying the heroine and creating an “advantageous
marriage and the restoration of tranquility” (Conger 92, 103). These characteristics are seen in
Theodore, who, as the proper heir of Otranto, marries Isabella and continues the “proper” royal
line. However, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, again revising the Gothic convention, created a new
identity for male characters in the Gothic. In the same way that the Brontës reformed the
traditional heroine into becoming a more complex and ambiguous being, they also made their
heroes into complicated characters, showing characteristics of both the male monster and the
faultless hero.
but instead as a social outcast. Orphaned, poor, and without a surname, he is separated from the
source of patriarchal power: inheritance and derivation. The dirty “gipsy brat” evokes the image
of the noble savage, a literary character popular during the eighteenth and nineteenth century.
The noble savage “refers to a person possessing natural or primitive virtues…who is free from
the restraints and falsification of civilization” (Labat 918). The noble savage motif was also
popularized by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who in his 1762 novel Emile gave instruction on how to
train a natural man to live in society. In the opening line of Emile, Rousseau condemns this
society, stating, “Everything is good in leaving the hands of the Creator of Things; everything
degenerates in the hands of man” (37). Despite being referred to as “devil” and “demon,”
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Heathcliff’s values are aligned with that of the noble savage, while contrasted with those of
Hindley Earnshaw, who abuses the “sullen, patient child” (38). Heathcliff represents “nature’s
innocent child as opposed to the corrupted and scheming man of the Old World,” represented by
the tyrannical Hindley. Brontë used the noble savage motif “chiefly as a weapon…to castigate
society’s faults” (Labat 922-24). As with the racialized language used to describe Bertha in Jane
Eyre, the role of the noble savage likewise has racial implications. Heathcliff, the “dark…black-
haired child” (36), is described as the “gipsy brat” (37), implicating that he is of a different
ethnicity than the Earnshaws and Lintons. Supporting this idea is Nelly’s assertion to Heathcliff
that “Who knows, but your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen”
(58). By identifying him as a member of a different race or ethnicity, Brontë is reaffirming him
as the “other” in the story, separate from the corruption of a male-dominated society.
Acting as the foil to Heathcliff is Edgar Linton, who represents the ultimate power of
patriarchy. Despite being described as effeminate and “a soft thing” (73), Edgar is a patriarch
because his power comes from “books, wills, testaments, leases, titles, rent-rolls, documents,
languages, all the paraphernalia by which patriarchal culture is transmitted from one generation
to the next” (Gilbert 281). In this way, the male who seems most characteristic of being the hero
is actually the villain, since it from him and Thrushcross Grange that Catherine attempts to
escape. Edgar represents the education that commands women to learn their “place” in society,
and is the ultimate cause of Catherine’s fragmented personality. He plays the Gothic villain who
pursues the heroine, as Edgar “possessed the power to depart [from Catherine] as much as a cat
possesses the power to leave a mouse half killed or a bird half eaten” (73).
Upon his separation from Catherine, Heathcliff the hero proclaims that he has been
denied part of himself: “Oh God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live
Yopp 33
without my soul!” (169). But as Gilbert and Gubar suggest, “to be merely a body…is to be a sort
of monster, a fleshly thing, an object of pure animal materiality” (293). Playing as much a victim
of society and tyranny as the heroine, Heathcliff is actually “female” in his monstrosity since
without the patriarchal advantages of Edgar he is equally powerless. Seeking revenge against the
system that took away his soul, he presents a new definition of the “male monster,” as one who
perverts order as an act of rebellion, not evil. In order to subvert this order, Heathcliff finds he
must first take on the characteristics of a patriarch, and he returns after a long absence with
enough wealth to appropriate Wuthering Heights from Hindley. He then proceeds to set up an
exaggerated reenaction of Catherine’s abduction from him by seducing and stealing away
Isabella from Edgar. Isabella becomes representative of the traditional Gothic heroine, trapped
inside the prison of Wuthering Heights as Catherine was trapped inside Thrushcross Grange.
Heathcliff continues to pervert proper order by creating his own illegitimate line, made up of his
son Linton, Hareton Earnshaw, and the young Catherine Linton. By stealing Catherine and
Linton, he creates an ironic version of patriarchy, over which he reigns as the cruel patriarch.
Mocking the injustices of social order, he puts his own selfish son, Linton, ahead of the more
one is gold put to the use of paving stones; and the other is tin polished to ape a
service of silver—Mine has nothing valuable about it; yet I shall have the merit of
making it go as far as such poor stuff can go. His had first-rate qualities, and they
He recognizes this as the same treatment he was subjected to as a boy, labeled as a servant
despite his good nature, while the abusive Hindley and Edgar were privileged. Also reenacting
the injustices beheld on Catherine, he seduces, tricks, and entraps Isabella and Catherine Linton,
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both literally inside Wuthering Heights, and metaphorically through marriage. Paralleling
Catherine’s first visit to Thrushcross Grange, Heathcliff lures Edgar’s daughter to the Heights
using Linton, finally forcing the marriage to his son upon her. In Heathcliff’s own marriage, his
harsh treatment of Isabella causes her to tell Nelly, “I assure you, a tiger, or a venomous serpent
could not rouse terror in me equal to that which he wakens” (144). This new order constructed by
Heathcliff is both his interpretation on how male-controlled society works, and that of the author,
Charlotte Brontë, in writing Jane Eyre, also chose to create a new kind of Gothic hero to
accompany her non-traditional heroine. Brontë used the motif of the Byronic hero to create
Edward Rochester, who is likewise moody, cynical, and introspective. In addition, Rochester
serves as a figure of attraction and repulsion, “beautiful but damned” (Winnifrith 4). Byronic in
his self-consciousness, his lack of pride denies “his status as [a traditional] hero” (Thorslev 187).
The first appearance of Rochester is infused with Romanticized imagery, including a powerful
description by Jane comparing his horse to a Gytrash. These images suggest male power and
dominance; however, she quickly realizes he is human when he and his horse fall on the ice. Jane
remains firm in her offers to help him, and he concedes, admitting “necessity compels me to
make you useful” (122). This action dually humbles Rochester into needing the help of a woman,
while it empowers Jane, who notes, “My help had been needed and claimed; I had given it; I was
pleased to have done something; trivial, transitory though the deed was, it was yet an active
thing, and I was weary of an existence all passive” (122). So, although the status of their
relationship is that of master and servant, they also begin somewhat as equals, with a more
After this encounter Rochester continues to treat Jane as an equal, relating to her his
weaknesses and faults, as well as using her in times of need, such as when Mason is stabbed by
Bertha. At the first appearance of Jane Eyre, critics viewed Brontë’s new hero negatively,
claiming that Rochester’s treatment of the heroine was full of trickery and deceit. In 1857
disadvantage. They invariably fall victims to the man of strong intellect, and
generally muscular frame, who lures them on with affected indifference and
undisguisedly selfish, and we must say we grudge them their easily won victories
over the inexperienced placid little girls they lay siege to. (350)
Men saw Rochester as a tyrant taking advantage of the heroine through his rough treatment,
however Elaine Showalter argues that this wasn’t the author’s intention. She observes that
Brontë’s hero “flattered the heroine’s spirit by treating her as an equal rather than as a sensitive,
In this way, Rochester may appear monstrous, but he “is not a real monster, and Brontë
did not intend him to remain unredeemed, despite his physical (and, intermittently, moral)
‘monstrousness’” (Demoor 175). Instead, the true role of male monster is cast on John Reed,
Brocklehurst, and St John Rivers. Physically, John Reed and Brocklehurst meet the description
of a monstrous human being. Jane’s account of John describes him as “large and stout for his
age, with a dingy and unwholesome skin; thick lineaments in a spacious visage, heavy limbs and
large extremities. He gorged himself habitiually at table, which made him bilious, and gave him
a dim and bleared eye and flabby cheeks” (22). Brocklehurst’s appearance is also macabre, as
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young Jane exclaims, “what a great nose! And what a mouth! And what large prominent teeth!”
(43). Their treatment of the heroine is likewise monstrous, as John Reed bullies young Jane so
that she reveals “There were moments when I was bewildered by the terror he inspired; because I
had no appeal whatever against either his menaces or his inflictions” (22). She likewise remains
powerless against the abuses that Brocklehurst’s school, Lowood, inflicts on her, starving her
St John Rivers, on the other hand, provides a different view of the “male monster.”
Marysa Demoor, in her essay “Male Monsters or Monstrous Males in Victorian Women’s
Fiction,” suggests that St John is instead a “monstrous male,” who while displaying “the cruelty
and wickedness which are prerequisites of a monstrous nature…is in fact potentially more
dangerous than the male monster if only because his genuine nature is hidden behind a
handsome, sometimes even an angelic, countenance” (176). Jane describes John Rivers’
appearance as “harmonious,” with a Greek face, blue eyes and fair hair (338-9). She eventually
falls under his “freezing spell” (389), nearly consenting to marry him and go with him as
missionary to India. However, St John represents patriarchy, and the marriage he offers is
loveless. Jane realizes, “He prizes me as a soldier would a good weapon; and that is all” (395).
She sees that “a marriage to him would be cold, like ice, and she would be forced to continually
hide the flames that still burn inside her” (Gilbert 361). Claiming that “such a martyrdom would
be monstrous,” she tells St John, “I am ready to go to India, if I may go free” (395). In traditional
Gothic fiction, marriage to the patriarch restores order and saves the heroine from the male
monster. However, Brontë is proposing that the real monsters are the patriarchs themselves, who
Although Rochester is the foil of St John Rivers, Brocklehurst, and John Reed, his status
as Gothic hero remains ambiguous. Brontë suggests that good and evil are relative and uncertain,
rather than objective and direct. After Jane and Rochester are engaged, he begins to treat her as
inferior, making it necessary for her to once again escape and continue her pilgrimage for
independence. Rochester’s new treatment of Jane is due to the fact that although he considers her
a spiritual equal, he has yet to consider her equal sexually and socially. Rochester remains
financially superior, as well as more traveled and experienced, because of advantages given to
him through his gender. Both Jane and Rochester are unable to accommodate this inequality,
with Rochester flaunting his financial superiority by buying her dresses and jewels, and telling
her “all the ground I have wandered over shall be re-trodden by you: wherever I stamped my
hoof, your slyph’s foot shall step also” (258). However, the inequality between them is not
simply one-sided, for Rochester also proves to be inferior to Jane. In an earlier conversation he
asks her whether she agrees that he “has the right to be masterful” (140) because of his age and
experience. She replies, “I don’t think, sir, you have a right to command me, merely because you
are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have—your claim to
superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience” (140). Rochester
then admits, “I have made an indifferent, not to say a bad use of both advantages” (140). Later,
he reveals that his guilt is from marrying Bertha Mason for money and status, not equality. This
marriage is similar to the one he almost entered into with Blanche, which Jane claimed, “to wed
one inferior to you—to one with whom you have no sympathy—whom I do not believe you truly
love…I would scorn such a union: therefore I am better than you” (252). Rochester nevertheless
I am not a villain: you are not to suppose that—not to attribute to me any such bad
dissipations with which the rich and worthless try to put on life (141).
This statement shows that Charlotte Brontë’s new Gothic hero is susceptible to the same forces
that the heroine struggles against. Just as the heroine is not able to express her true nature, the
hero’s attitude and actions are also determined by the forces surrounding him. Rochester’s
“proper” marriage to Bertha results in punishment and separation from the true desire of his
heart: Jane. In this way, both Heathcliff and Rochester are victims of patriarchal society,
connecting them with the heroines who likewise suffer oppression under that order. Because of
this phenomenon, both novels serve as Humanist texts in addition to being Feminist. Charlotte
and Emily Brontë’s commentary is that any order which attempts to establish rigid gender roles
Adding to the psychological interpretation of the texts is the use of Gothic setting. In
Gothic novels, one of the most important devices an author uses to evoke emotion is setting. By
portraying places such as castles, locked rooms, labyrinths, ruins, and vast landscapes, the
authors are able to elicit strong reactions from their readers, who live vicariously through the
characters. In this way, “the setting itself provides as much suspense as does the plot or the
characters” (“Gothic Literature” 137). The emotion that most Gothic writers attempt to invoke in
their writing is horror and terror due to confinement. Through depicting “prison cells, monastic
cells, shackles, locked rooms, or dark tunnels, the space of the Gothic novel is claustrophobic
Yopp 39
and confining, tapping into a primal human fear” (“Gothic Literature” 137). In writing Jane Eyre
and Wuthering Heights, Charlotte and Emily Brontë adopted this convention and adapted it to
make the fear of claustrophobia parallel to the confinement and imprisonment of women in
society.
In Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë created two manors in which her heroine would live,
paralleling the split-personality that she herself would eventually adopt. The first, Wuthering
Heights, is one in which Lockwood, as a civilized man of society, considers hellish. As first
introduced to the reader, the Heights is described as being in disarray and disorder, with
Lockwood finding himself overrun by a “half-dozen four-footed fiends” (7). The furniture, he
finds, looks as it should belong to a “homely, northern farmer,” although the manor is owned by
a gentleman, who he suspects must have an aversion to “showy displays” (5). The anatomy of he
house “lay bare to an enquiring eye” (5), suggesting the absence of locked rooms or enclosed
spaces. Lockwood’s repulsion for the Heights is furthered by his inability to find a social order
inside the house, for he cannot discern the relationships between its inhabitants. Likewise, he is
confused over the behavior of Catherine, who instead of acting as a “ministering angel” (13) is
rude to her guest, and refuses his offer of help when she has trouble reaching a canister.
ascendant self-willed female who radiates what…most people consider ‘diabolical’ energy…the
life energy of fierce, raw, uncultivated being” (Gilbert 266). For the eldest Catherine, however,
Wuthering Heights is her version of heaven. With Heathcliff making her a whole being, for her
the Heights “in its stripped functional rawness is essentially anti-hierarchical and egalitarian”
(274).
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Thrushcross Grange, on the other hand, “reproduces the hierarchical chain of being that
Western culture traditionally proposes as heaven’s decree” (Gilbert 274). Representing the ideal
house commonly portrayed in domestic and sentimental novels, Thrushcross Grange is the
opposite of Wuthering Heights, its interior “carpeted with crimson” and decorated with
“crimson-covered chairs and tables, and a pure white ceiling bordered by gold, a shower of
glass-drops hanging in silver chains from the centre, and shimmering with little soft tapers” (48).
However, this “heaven” actually reveals itself to be a portrait of the “imperfect world of
bourgeois society,” as Heathcliff and Catherine mock and despise the quarreling children inside
of its walls (Ellis 218). After her separation from Heathcliff and marriage to Edgar, the Grange
becomes her version of hell, as it becomes a prison from which she cannot escape. At the climax
of her illness Catherine is enclosed inside her bedroom at Thrushcross Grange, representing her
imprisonment inside the marriage she was forced into. Feeling her “blood rush into a hell of
tumult,” she longs to escape the room to return to Wuthering Heights, and demands that Nelly
open the window. Nelly replies, “I won’t give you your death of cold,” wherein Catherine
retorts, “You won’t give me a chance of life, you mean” (125-6). The prediction of death
death resulting both from her fragmented self and the realized terror of confined imprisonment
(Ellis 218).
In Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë introduces the young heroine as already imprisoned,
trapped inside the confines of Gateshead. She first presents Jane as viewing the outside world
through a window, which is cold and wintry. Taking refuge behind scarlet draperies, the world
inside Gateshead is “claustrophobic, fiery, like ten-year-old Jane’s own mind” (Gilbert 339).
Later, as punishment for defending herself against the tyrannical abuse of John Reed, she is
Yopp 41
enclosed in the red-room, the death chamber of the patriarch Mr. Reed. Containing an easy chair
“like a pale throne” and a wardrobe holding a miniature of the deceased Mr. Reed, the room
represents the confining element of patriarchy: “No jail was ever more secure” Jane observes.
The room becomes Gothically haunting, “for the spirit of a society in which Jane has no clear
place sharpens the angles of the furniture, enlarges the shadows, strengthens the locks on the
door” (Gilbert 340). The red imagery present in the room suggests Jane’s aversion and rage
against the injustices placed against her by this society. Occupied by a bed “hung with curtains
of deep-red damask,” a table “covered with a crimson cloth,” red carpet, and the walls “a soft
fawn colour, with a blush of pink in it,” the warm red colors suggest fire and warmth. This
imagery is contrasted with the frigidness of the outside world observed by Jane in the opening of
the novel. Reading “Bewick’s ‘History of British Birds,’” she is fascinated by the description of
the “death-white realms” of the Arctic, “that reservoir of frost and snow, where firm fields of ice,
the accumulation of centuries of winters…the multiplied rigors of extreme cold” (21). To Jane,
this cold world is representative of what lies beyond the entrapment of Gateshead, and the anger
she feels at this repression. Being confined to the red-room, she is confronted by her rebellious
thoughts, and she admits “my head grew hot…I was oppressed, suffocated” (29). Through this
Upon her arrival at Thornfield, Jane has now been taught how to repress and conceal the
rebellion she holds inside, and the setting of her new residence reflects this aspect of herself. Not
just a gloomy mansion, the architecture of the house becomes metaphorical, paralleling the mind
of the heroine. Jane finds she frequents the third floor of the mansion, to pace the corridor and
“allow my mind’s eye to dwell.” She explains, “the restlessness was in my nature, it agitated me
to pain sometimes” (116). Unsatisfied with the tranquility and confinement of the mansion,
Yopp 42
Jane’s “mind’s eye” dwells far enough to reveal the spirit of rebellion is still present inside her,
Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel;
they need exercise 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
more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex. (116-
117)
After this speech, Jane admits to hearing the laughter of Grace Poole, who she mistakes to be the
“madwoman,” whenever she visits this area of the mansion. She admits, “When thus alone, I not
unfrequently heard Grace Poole’s laugh: the same peal, the same low, slow ha! ha! Which, when
first heard, had thrilled me” (117). This feminist spirit, however, is confined to the third floor of
Thornfield, as is Bertha Mason, the personification of Jane’s rage. The locked room that holds
Bertha is symbolic of the patriarchal education that represses and holds part of Jane’s mind,
In both Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, the homes containing locked rooms and
confining spaces are reminiscent of the Gothic tradition’s preoccupation with the failed home.
Having lost its “prelapsarian purity,” the failed home locks in the “innocent” females, as result of
the villain’s disruption of proper societal order (Ellis ix). On the pages of the Brontës’ novels,
however, this lost “purity” finds itself in the houses that uphold this order, such as Thrushcross
Grange and Gateshead. Their criticism is that the patriarchal homes are the true “sites of terror,”
disrupting nature and the “prelapsarian,” or original, state of things. Instead, they argue it is in
nature, the Garden of Eden, where both the heroines and heroes are able to live in equality and
Yopp 43
peace. Adopting another convention of the Gothic, the Brontës show this idea through their
emotional experience combining terror and delight” (Ljungquist 1243). Influencing the Gothic
writers’ view of the sublime was Edmund Burke’s work, A Philosophical Enquiry into the
Origin of our Idea of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757). He suggested that the feeling of
sublimity comes from a sense of powerlessness, caused by viewing something large and massive,
or being in a setting that is vast and open. In Gothic novels, the structures most often used to
invoke a feeling of sublimity are ruins. The landscape in Gothic fiction is filled “with broken
pillars and buildings which, isolated in time and space, have lost any relation to the world around
them. These structures lack any mediation with the public realm” (Milbank 9). Lacking the
confining walls of Gothic mansions and dungeons, the decaying and dilapidated ruins of castles
are the products of history, showing the traumas of a corrupt past. At the same time, ruins also
present a sense of timelessness, since it is eternal nature that slowly tears away at the structures.
In this way, “the Romantic sublime cancels out history, and becomes the act of the conquering
consciousness subliming all it sees” (Milbank 146). In Jane Eyre, when Jane returns to
The lawn, the grounds were trodden and waste: the portal yawned void. The front
was…but a shell-like wall, very high and very fragile looking, perforated with
there was the silence of death about it: the solitude of a lonesome wild. (414)
The remains of Thornfield, whose architecture had symbolized the oppression of Jane’s mind, no
longer carry the history of a patriarchal society. Having stood as the symbol of inequality
Yopp 44
between Jane and Rochester, the destroyed mansion now suggests that they are again equal.
Likewise, since the prison holding the confined rage of the heroine, symbolized by Bertha, is
now opened, the rage itself disappears, as Rochester’s “mad” wife had destroyed herself in the
The Gothic also focuses on nature itself as inspiring sublimity. As “a product of wild,
irregular, and uncontrollable nature” (“Gothic Literature” 141), the natural sublime “operates
most effectively away from the social markers of city life, away too from the view of the country
vista as this or that lord’s possession” (Milbank 145). “Edenic in its innocence,” (Milbank 146)
sublime nature represents ultimate timelessness: a “prelapsarian” return to original nature. This is
the sublime present in Wuthering Heights, as shown through the moors lying between the houses
of Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. In this natural setting, “the young Catherine and
Heathcliff overcome the social divisions between them in a landscape disassociated from human
traces, providing for them a shared myth of power” (Milbank 146). Through the sublime, Brontë
creates a world that isn’t subjected to gender or sphere classification, allowing equal amounts of
power to both Catherine and Heathcliff. Also, Burke suggests in his Enquiry that the key to the
vastness of nature is in its unity. He writes that “every thing great by its quantity must
necessarily be, one, simple and entire” (139). So it is only in this vast nature that Catherine is
able to remain undivided from Heathcliff, her “other self.” This natural world, representing unity
and freedom, is the one Catherine claims to be her true heaven. In the Gothic treatment of natural
sublimity, “the vast and empty spaces of the earth acquired a sacred character, a sense of nature’s
immensity ceased to be a mere metaphor for an incomprehensible spiritual realm and became an
actual part of human experience” (Ljungquist 1245). This transcendentalist notion is likewise
reflected in Catherine’s character, since for her, nature “is not an emblematic reminder of God’s
Yopp 45
providence…but rather is itself divine” (Conger 97). Recalling a dream she had of visiting
heaven, Catherine tells Nelly, “heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with
weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out, into the
middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy” (81). For
Catherine, the patriarchal Christian view of heaven is hierarchical and hellish, whereas the
freedom presented by nature is heavenly. Therefore, when she is nearing death at Thrushcross
Grange she tells Edgar, “they can’t keep me from my narrow home out yonder—My resting
place where I’m bound before Spring is over! There it is, not among the Lintons, mind, under the
chapel-roof; but in the open air with a head-stone” (127). Appropriately, Nelly reveals to
Lockwood that the ghosts of Heathcliff and Catherine are rumored to haunt the hillsides between
Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, united once again in the natural heaven of their
youth.
Conclusion
The endings of Gothic novels have long been criticized as ambiguous, unsatisfactory, and
inconclusive. The closing of early Gothic novels were characterized by the marriage of the
heroine to the hero, allowing her to escape the corrupt pursuit of the antagonists. Michelle A.
Massé writes, “Our repression-based analyses thus construct a critical fiction that reassures that
most of the heroine’s fears are not ‘real,’ while those that are will be erased by the transition
from unjust to just authority, by the move from father’s house to husband’s” (680). The novels of
Anne Radcliffe are especially known for endings that attempt to explain away the supernatural
present in the story, persuading audiences that what was feared can be accounted for and
rationalized. Many critics have condemned such inconclusive endings, claiming that they do not
Yopp 46
provide answers for the questions they pose. Elizabeth Napier points out that the Gothic genre is
marked by “profound uncertainty about its genuine status and intent” (40), which “lacks the guts
to confront its own moral and aesthetic implications” (Kilgour 10). Coleridge makes a similar
argument in regard to reading novels in general, writing “it excites mere feeling without at the
reaction” (195-6).
Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights seem in danger of repeating the Gothic’s tradition of
ambiguous endings. At the conclusion of Jane Eyre, Jane has returned to a blinded Mr.
Rochester, whose disability and loss of wealth now makes him dependent on her. Paralleling the
plots of early Gothic novels, Jane and Rochester are married. This marriage, on the other hand, is
one of equality, with the patriarchal differences that had stood between them now erased. Their
new manor, Ferndean, reflects the natural freedom associated with their relationship, residing in
nature away from societal expectations. Gilbert and Gubar, however, suggest that “the physical
isolation of the lovers suggests their spiritual isolation in a world where such egalitarian
marriages as theirs are rare, if not impossible” (369). They add that such seclusion suggests
Brontë herself
that the matured Jane and Rochester could really live in it. (369-70)
Allison Milbank likewise argues that the ending reflects an incomplete and fragmentary
existence, citing the novel’s last words, “Amen; even so, come, Lord Jesus!” (441), as showing
Likewise, the conclusion of Wuthering Heights signifies that the story is unfinished,
suggesting through repetition that its events are cyclical. The death of Heathcliff and the union of
Cathy and Hareton, Helene Moglen asserts, “brings with it the resolution of conflict…Hareton,
the social outcast…is educated and assimilated into the world of Thrushcross Grange. Morality
controls instinct as Cathy’s flowers replace the wild undergrowth of the heath, and the female
dream is realized” (403). Moglen also attests that “The movement of the novel…is cohesive and
linear, not cyclical” (405). However, I would argue that because Cathy II is once again Catherine
Earnshaw, and a male with patriarchal control, Hareton Earnshaw, has once again established
control over Wuthering Heights, the ending of the novel cycles back to the situation at its
beginning. When Lockwood first arrives at the Heights, he notices carved above the threshold
“the date ‘1500,’ and the name ‘Hareton Earnshaw’” (4). The date symbolizes the end of the
Medieval period, and the title is that of the first patriarch of Wuthering Heights. Although the
young Hareton Earnshaw was unable to read the carved name at first, “Joesph had instilled into
him a pride of name, and of his lineage” (197). Despite his connections to Heathcliff, Hareton
still remains the “proper heir” of the Heights, based upon the patriarchal system of name and
lineage. Likewise, young Catherine has begun to teach him to read, instilling in him the required
knowledge for a patriarch. Because control of the manor has returned to the Earnshaws, the end
of the novel sets up the possibility for the same events to be repeated. Repetition of events and
characters happen in the interior of the story, so it is feasible that the same could occur outside
the frame of the text. Massé suggests that repetition occurs both in individual narratives of the
Gothic, and within the entire genre, marking “a persistent and active attempt by authors, their
characters, and readers to rework the feminine social contract” (682). In addition, Brontë
indicates that the “order” of “Cathy’s flowers” accompanying the Earnshaw marriage is not final,
Yopp 48
writing that Nelly perceives “decay had made progress” at Wuthering Heights, and that “many a
window showed black gaps deprived of glass; and slates jutted off, here and there, beyond the
right line of the roof, to gradually be worked off in coming autumn storms” (337).
Some critics, like Robert D. Hume, suggest that because of the inconclusive endings of
Gothic fiction, it is secondary to Romantic writing, which uses imagination as the “vehicle of
escape from the limitations of the human condition” (289). He writes that, “The Gothic writers,
though possessed by the same discontent with the everyday world, have no faith in the ability of
man to transcend or transform it” (289). On the other hand, I believe that Gothic writers,
including Charlotte and Emily Brontë, make their arguments most vividly through their inability
to rely solely on imagination. Because “their explorations lie strictly within the realm of this
world” (Hume 289), their conclusions cannot lie outside of what is real. As Massé points out, the
heroine of the Gothic “will always reawaken to the still-present actuality of her trauma because
the gender expectations that deny her identity are woven into the very fabric of her culture,
which perpetuates her trauma while denying its existence” (684). The Brontë’s hybrid of
Sentimental-Domestic fiction and Gothic fiction emphasizes the horror of female oppression that
is in existence in the actual world. By not annihilating the existence of this trauma in the
conclusion of their novels, they’re further emphasizing that in reality the trauma still stands.
There is no solution in the final pages of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, because no solution
is present in actuality. Instead, Charlotte and Emily Brontë are pointing out that freedom from
oppression cannot be achieved for either the characters in their stories or their readers until the
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