Unjust Treatment Of Women In Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights

Imagine a female who is in line to increase her family 's wealth, yet she can only do so if she marries into a certain affluent family. She chooses not to marry for love, but instead chooses to marry for the security of a higher place in society. This dilemma is very similar to what women in the Victorian era faced. This era was a time in which society was dominated by males and social class rankings. Emily Brontë effectively conveys her feminist way of thinking and explains what women went through during the Victorian era in her novel, Wuthering Heights. Brontë uses the main character, Catherine, to reveal the unjust treatment of women during the Victorian era by portraying the lack of women 's rights, deficiencies in women’s education, and the dependency a woman had on marriage. It is made clear in her novel that Brontë has a feminist point of view when it comes to women 's rights. She is against the society 's norms that were placed upon women during the Victorian era. Andrew Abraham, author of "Emily Brontë 's Gendered Response to Law and Patriarchy", expresses how "Brontë engages in simultaneous rebellion and submission, challenge and adherence, …show more content…
During the Victorian era, women also faced undeserved pressures not only from their peers, but from society. In the novel, Brontë reveals the unjust pressures women faced when choosing a husband. Catherine acknowledges that a "marriage to Edgar Linton is still the means through which [she] becomes the 'greatest woman of the neighborhood '" (Brontë 80). It is evident that Catherine, along with most of the women of the Victorian era, bases her marriage off of social class ranking, rather than true love. Catherine 's views represent the same dependent mentality that women of the Victorian era had, in which a women 's self-worth was defined by her