Emily Brontë’s defense of women as writers in Wuthering heights.

Abstract

The present work demonstrates how Emily Brontë elaborated a defense and validated women as writers and as storytellers in Wuthering Heights. When the novel was published, in 1848, the Victorian Era had already transformed life in England and in the world permanently. Those times posed solid barriers to the women who wanted to create an original narrative, whether as a writer or master of their own life. One of the most significant influences of Victorianism in the life of women was the symbol of the angel in the house: a perfect pure and well-behaved lady who would embrace completely domestic life and abdicate other roles. As a challenge to this scenario, Wuthering Heights features four narrators who deviate from the commonplace of the female gender, and bravely appear as protagonists and authorities. Moreover, it happens inside a novel whose protagonist is a woman who challenged patriarchy and brought its fall inside the social circle she occupied. In this work, I conduct a close reading of the mechanisms Emily Brontë used to create female characters that escaped the norms and told a story in their own words. Additionally, I argue, based on the domestic ideology and criticism that Wuthering Heights received that her own position as a writer in the Victorian society also consisted of a defiance itself. In sum, it must be acknowledged that the masterpiece of Emily Brontë serves as an example of a literary work that has challenged gender standards for decades.