Feminist Perspective on Wuthering Heights

I.

Background on Feminist Criticism:

Feminist critics have various objectives, such as:

-retrieving the overlooked works of women writers in a patriarchal society
-analyzing the male-derived attitudes expressed in literature that have held
women back
-observing the progress of women in a masculine-dominant culture
There have been 3 main strains of feminist criticism, developed since
the 1970s:
-French feminists:
*their focal point is language and the manner through which meaning is
produced
*they base their argumentation on the work of the psychoanalytic
philosopher Jacques Lacan, who states that the child enters the linguistic
realm when he separates from the mother and identifies with the paternal
figure
*they consider the very structure of language to be male-oriented, as it
favors masculinity by associating it with terms and values that are
appreciated in society
*some also draw a distinction between the writings of the two genders and
refer to feminine language as unifying and balanced
*this language is perceived as a threat to the patriarchal society, but it also
represents a new niche for creativity, despite risking political marginalization
*a more controversial topic amongst them is the idea that feminine writing is
an expression of the female body
-American feminists:
*instead of theorizing, they closely observed the patriarchal patterns and
ideologies embedded in the literary tradition, by studying the portrayals of
women characters
*they also coined the term gynocriticism, which refers to the works of
women who produced a literature of their own, placing interest on the
recovery and rediscovery of a body of womens texts, along with their history
and culture
-British feminists:

*they disagree with American feminists, as they consider that emphasizing

the development of women can lead to a mystification of the male
oppression, making it appear as something that offered women special
opportunities
II.

Margaret Homans feminist perspective on Wuthering Heights

-She is an American feminist critic, influenced by French feminists, who

builds her argumentative foundation by making use of psychoanalysis and
also explores the link between feminine creativity and early childhood
development.
-Homans essay begins with a brief introduction to Lacans theory, which
associates language development with the Oedipus complex. According to
Lacan, boys enter language (also called the Law of the Father or the
Symbolic Order) more easily than girls, as they are required to desire and
produce substitutes for the mother.
-To illustrate this, Homan draws a comparison between Lockwood, who is
always on the lookout for a new substitute, whereas the elder Catherine
refuses to enter the patriarchal world of language. However, her daughter, is
the very opposite as she gets married and takes on the name of her
husband, as well as her grandfather, enters the Symbolic order, but learns to
use it to her advantage.
-Homans hypothesis is that Emily Bronte attempted to construct a new
representation of her own gender and to define a new relation to both men
and writing.
*Actual Essay:
-Homan discusses the cultural myth of the death of absence of the mother,
which leads to the development of language.
-Using the example of Aeschyluss Oresteia, Homan explains how the
absence or the death of the mother is necessary for the construction or
development of the patriarchal language and culture.
-In the context in which women are identified with nature and matter, when
the boy child is forced to renounce his intimacy with his mother, he enters
the Law of the Father, or the symbolic order and begins searching for
substitutes, clinging to figurative language
-This shift only occurs for the son, not for the daughter. Thus, women must
persist as the literal, in order to allow for the figurative substitutes of men.

-This begs the question of how language is manifested from the girls
perspective.
According to Homan, women possess both the figurative or symbolic
language, which they share with men, as well as the literal language, which
the son renounces.
-Homan argues that Emily Bronte uses the stories of Catherine Earnshaw and
of her daughter, Cathy Linton to portray her own perspective on this myth,
as well as how it influences the writing process.
-She begins by analyzing the various representations of nature which are
portrayed in the novel, in relationship to language: The narrator, Lockwood,
follows the Lacanian pattern and seeks a series of substitutions (looking for
one woman after another), while never directly representing nature because
of his fear of the literal. Whereas he favors language, especially figurative
language, the young Cathy as well as the old Catherine privilege nature.
-Similarly, Homan argues that young Cathy also deflects from nature, but not
because she feels threatened by it. Rather, she avoids naming nature out of
love for it, as she desires to protect or preserve it from the effects of
symbolization. Homan draws a valid comparison between Lockwood and
Cathy, claiming that, while they both eventually enter the symbolic order,
the first chooses language, whereas the latter opts for nature.
-Homan observes that young Cathy first meets Heathcliff when she is
accidentally locked outside of the park gates, without Nellys protection.
Because she is separated from her mother, she is thus forced to abide to the
Law of the Father. According to Homan, Heathcliff seduces Cathy into the
domain of his law, and, by the end of the novel, the daughter is fully
integrated within the patriarchal law, as a woman engaged and to be
married. In this respect, the daughter negotiates the passage from lawless
childhood to adulthood within the symbolic order far better than her mother
does, as she successfully shapes it to fit her needs.
+The story exposes, not natures destructiveness to human meaning, but
one human childs destructiveness towards nature. The episode in which
Heathcliff kills the birds reveals vividly that he was as sadistic in his relatively
happy childhood as he is as an adult.
+Cathys interdict in shooting extends only to lapwings, while, by
distinguishing shooting as the one form of killing of which she disapproves,
she half admits her attraction to the far more perverse technique Heathcliff
did use. She takes pleasure in the verification of her power over him. Symbol
making here both depends upon reproduces pain and loss, since loss is the
motive and since to use nature for a symbol is to kill it.

+The figure of Nelly, who is without doubt a mother figure in the novel, is
seen differently by the two Cathys.
Catherine sees her as an aged woman, right before her death she
hallucinates a restoration of the mother, wilfully converting Nelly from
servant to the patriarchy into a female outlaw like herself;
Cathy, seventeen years later, will fear the death of Nelly because her
own entry into the symbolic order is effectually doing away with Nellys
maternal presence.
-The difference between the two Cathies is that, while they both initially
privilege nature, the young Cathy becomes incorporated in the patriarchal
system, while her mother refuses to enter the Law of the Father, and thus
manages to preserve the literal and is a reflection of womens language
outside the law.
-The losing of the name is another topic tackled by Homan. According to her:
+Once the identity Catherine has shifted to the baby, the first Catherine losses
her name and becomes simply the mother, adjunct to the primary identity of the
heir, the new Catherine. If motherhood produces regression to childhood, then the
real child who causes her death and the childhood to which she suicidally yearns to
return are the same.

Homan considers that it is not childbirth alone but male interference in

pregnancys rhythms that kills her. And so precisely what she might have
expected to give her power and life deprives her of it, since to be a mother in
the culture in which she lives is to be the excluded term.
-The novel equates giving birth with returning to her own childhood, as Cathy
wishes to be herself and be a child on the moors again, shortly before her
death. She dreams that the last 7 years of her life dissolve (I was a child).
Nelly reports that at the moment of her death, she stretches herself like a
child reviving, and sinking again to sleep. According to Homans
interpretation, she is then released to become the ghostly child that later
haunts Lockwood at the mansion, when he spends the night at Wuthering
Heights. Thus, motherhood produces a regression to childhood.
-Homan also argues that the cruelty with which the novel overlooks or
passes over Cathys death is necessary for the texts self-preservation. Thus,
Bronte uses the elder Cathy as a representative for womens refusal to
conform to the symbolic order as well as their loyalty to the literal. In this
context, by killing her, the text reaffirms the patriarchal power.
-In conclusion, while Emily Bronte explores the imaginative opportunities of
the literal, in the end she succumbs to the power of figuration and represses
nature in favor of symbolization.