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Analysis Of Emily Bronte 's ' Wuthering Heights ' Essay

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Although certainly unjust and arguably immoral, assigned gender roles have permeated history and its literature for centuries. Authors have penned the injustice of such gender roles throughout their works, although it was simply a part of life to them at the time. One such author is Emily Brontë, a woman who never married. She and her sisters experienced many familial hardships and began writing at a young age, perhaps as a coping mechanism. With this in mind and assessing trials and events in her life, one cannot help but find uncanny parallels between the characters of her novels and the social turmoil she witnessed. At first glance, Brontë’s Wuthering Heights may seem to be the tragedy of two young lovers. However, the reader cannot truly comprehend or explain Catherine’s decision to marry Edgar, as opposed to Heathcliff, without first understanding the period in which Brontë set her novel. The Victorian era, although positive in a scientific sense, was a brutal period for women, a “world of sadism, violence, and wanton cruelty” (Thompson 71). It perpetuated ideals such as specified gender roles, primogeniture, and the belief that women are property, without a societal voice. As a woman, Brontë experienced this discrimination firsthand as she was forced to initially publish her work under a male pseudonym, Ellis Bell, in order for it to have any societal merit. Her characters in Wuthering Heights were thusly affected by this cloud of sexism. The woman in the

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