Kai's English Journal

Through the characters Catherine Linton and Cathy Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights the author, Emil Brontë, draws attention to the restrictions on women of Victorian England and the repercussions they had; and also goes on to questions the image society had of women. Women of the 19th Century were restricted largely by the separate social spheres of women and men, women existed mainly in the domestic sphere. This domestic sphere portrayed women as morally superior, while physically weaker, than men, and as such were expected to counterbalance the “moral taint” of the public sphere that the men would labour in all day. In Wuthering Heights Brontë reverses these gender roles with the character Catherine Linton. Brontë presents Catherine as a morally undeveloped and selfish woman, and presents her husband, Edgar Linton, as the one to bring morality into the coupling. By swapping the roles of the genders in this instance Brontë is able to question the social views on men and women, showing that genders of the time period were not so black and white.

On the other hand, it is difficult for the character to sympathise with Catherine Linton. In chapter 9 Catherine states that if she marries Edgar she can ” aid Heathcliff to rise, and place him out of my brother’s [Hindley] reach”. She marries Edgar with the knowledge that she does not truly love him just so as to help Heathcliff. While her intentions for Heathcliff are kind and do show her love for him, her disregard for Edgar’s feelings about this show her inconsiderate and immoral nature. Brontë may be using Catherine as a discouraging example of a woman who defies the social view of women in Victorian England; by killing her later in the story of a self inflicted broken heart Brontë encourages the support of the separate spheres in which the genders of the 19th Century existed in.