“The Comparative
analysis between Tess of the d’Urbervilles and Wuthering Heights”
The way women are portrayed in Victorian
novels clearly raises questions about the search of their identity. Indeed,
they are all faced with the same issue: their position in society, the way they
react to it and what comes from it. The comparative analysis between Tess of
the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy and Wuthering Heights by Emily
Bronte about the portrayal of a woman in the Victorian era is the topic.
In Tess of the d’Urbervilles, the main character Tess helps to portray
that- men can easily dominate women, exerting a power over them linked
primarily to their maleness. Sometimes this command is purposeful, in the man’s
full knowledge of his exploitation, as when Alec acknowledges how bad he is for
seducing Tess for his own momentary pleasure. Alec’s act of abuse, the most
life-altering event that Tess experiences in the novel, is clearly the most
serious instance of male domination over a female. But there are other, less
blatant examples of women’s passivity toward dominant men. When Angel reveals
that he prefers Tess then Tess’s friend Retty attempts suicide and her friend
Marian becomes an alcoholic, which makes clear that their earlier
schoolgirl-type crushes on Angel seem totally disturbing. This devotion is not
merely fanciful love, but an unhealthy obsession. These girls appear utterly
dominated by a desire for a man who, we are told explicitly, does not even
realize that they are interested in him. This sort of unconscious domination of
males over women is perhaps even more unsettling than Alec’s outward and
self-conscious cruelty. Even Angel’s love for Tess, as pure and gentle as it
seems, dominates her in an unhealthy way. Angel substitutes an idealized
picture of Tess’s country purity for the real-life woman that he continually
refuses to get to know. When Angel calls Tess names like “Daughter of Nature”
and “Artemis,” we feel that he may be denying her true self in favor of a
mental image that he prefers. Thus, her identity and experiences are
suppressed, albeit unknowingly. This pattern of male domination is finally
reversed with Tess’s murder of Alec, in which, for the first time in the novel,
a woman takes active steps against a man. Of course, this act only leads to
even greater suppression of a woman by men, when the crowd of male police officers
arrests Tess at Stonehenge. Nevertheless, for just a moment, the accepted
pattern of submissive women bowing to dominant men is interrupted, and Tess’s
act seems heroic.
In Wuthering Heights,
the two main female characters are portrayed slightly differently, but overall
both depend on a fatherly figure and are at the mercy of Heathcliff. Though the
“old” Catherine (hence referred to as Catherine) and her daughter do struggle
to be free, they do not really succeed, as they are masochistic (Catherine
feels like she has to apologize for her death and like it’s all her fault, as
surely Heathcliff is the most suffering and innocent one ‘sarcasm’) and
vulnerable. They are unable to stand their grounds (and when they try to, as
Isabella did, they end up in a worse place) and are victims of male figures all
around them. They must obey the rules and follow what is socially
acceptable. Catherine is at first
a free spirit but is “tamed” little by little. Her first change in becoming
“socially acceptable” occurs when she spends five weeks at the Linton’s house.
That already gets her into trouble, as it leads Heathcliff to be angry and
aggravates his issues. She is no longer the girl who would run around wild and
free; now, she is confined to suffocating and following the sense of propriety
of the Victorian era. The most important roles of women of that era were that
of a wife and a mother. The “young” Catherine (hence referred to as Cathy)
follows her mother’s footsteps, but is offered what seems to be a second
chance. She is faced with the same types of challenges, but because her journey
was the opposite of her mother and she gets a happier ending not because of her own smartness, but only out of
luck. Even as both girls had a strong personality and should’ve been
able to fight for their own rights, Catherine was alienated enough to give them
up and try to follow her obligations as a dutiful daughter, sister, wife, and
mother. The biggest raggedy of this is that she did not even succeed, and she
had to give her own identity for nothing. Cathy who was also headed to be a
victim because she had no power over the men who controlled her, only managed
to be more successful because they all died one by one. In Wuthering Heights, Emily
Bronte also portrays how men were dominating towards women in that particular era.
Although
womens' power is established but the male dominating issue, identity crisis, obstacles
in society all come from the Victorian era to nowadays. Thomas Hardy and Emily
Bronte both became successful to portray the position of women in society in
that era. And both portray the miserable life of women in that society and
class bear witness at that time. Wuthering Heights is a gothic novel and the writer creates a whole version of women together. On the other hand, the writer of Tess
of the d’Urbervilles creates feminist interpretations. In spite of them,
death was their final destination at the end of the story in both cases.
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