The Individuality of Women in the Absence of a Maternal Figure in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights

 

Unlike other Victorian novels, women in Bronte's Wuthering Heights are not passive victims but are presented as natural forces to be reckoned with. The complex portrayal of Catherine, split between Heathcliff and Edgar, reflecting the tenacious wind that sweeps over the moors, conflicted between desire and standing in society, provides such a narrative. Her psychological struggle is mirrored in her physical clashes when Edgar cannot physically control her. The absence of a mother figure, such as Bronte, causes Catherine to appear as an uneducated figure in society's perceived norms.
The novel's primary thematic theme is nature vs society. Mothers are frequently byproducts of patriarchal civilization and continue to impose patriarchal civilization norms on their children; thus, Bronte raises an important concern: whether Catherine's tomboyish characteristics are a force of nature that exists in its purest form when never tangled with, and do they hint at the possibility that this force is natural to all women? In the absence of this patriarchal force of society, her natural nature emerges in the most untamed form. Catherine's masculinity and Hindley's femininity represent role reversals that occur in the absence of a civilizational intervening factor. The complexities are further addressed when her traits are called into question regarding her identity and become the decisive factor in her decision to choose between the two lovers. One symbolizes her violent passion, while the other envisions her as the 'angel in the house' metaphor as articulated by Virginia Woolf.