Nancy Armstrong’s Critique of Wuthering Heights
During the eighteenth-century, literature played a key role in setting cultural norms and gender identity. Novels were able to create a new social class based on psychological characteristics and gender roles rather than ancestry and social standing. The power of novels continued into the nineteenth century as men were characterized by political authority and women were characterized by domesticity. Although many believe that Emily Bronte’s novel, Wuthering Heights, is free of any cultural context, including politics, Nancy Armstrong argues that the novel exhibits popular themes of the time period such as folklore, photography, the desire of men, and the domesticity of women during that era it was published.
The notion that Bronte’s novel was independent of cultural context may have sprang from the composition of the novel itself. Wuthering Heights was set in a secluded region called Yorkshire and its theme was one of love and vengeance. Those elements could make the novel seem isolated and unrelated to any social factors of the time. However, in Armstrong’s essay, Cultural Criticism and Wuthering Heights, she explains that Bronte’s choice for the setting does quite the opposite. Armstrong uses the narrator of the novel, Lockwood, to prove her argument. Lockwood observed the nature of Yorkshire and recorded the customs, tales, and superstitions of the remote area. Those actions share the characteristics of a folklore. This knowledge allows readers to place him into the time period of the nineteenth century because, during that time, a great number of folklorists flocked to remote regions and began gathering stories and superstitions and writing them down. One of the superstitions Lockwood was able to observe, involved one of the main characters, Catherine Earnshaw. Upon Catherine’s death, she seems to become some kind of supernatural being and, at the beginning of the novel, it becomes apparent that she lingers outside the confines of Wuthering Heights. This is just one example of the way that the novel exhibits symbolic practices relevant to the time that it was published.
Another example of symbolic practices relevant to the nineteenth century being used in Wuthering Heights has to do with photography. Armstrong points out that Lockwood could not only be seen as a folklorist but also a photographer. Like folklore, photography was popular during the mid-nineteenth century and it was common for photographers to explore the countryside of far off places in Great Britain to report the customs and landscape of the exotic area. Lockwood took note of the scenery in the moors and recorded details on the landscape of both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange which were the two main settings of the novel.
The similarities between Wuthering Heights and the cultural norms of the nineteenth century don’t end with photography. Bronte’s characters fall into the popular opinion of where men and women stood in society during the time. Armstrong states that the novel displays men as products of their desire while women are subject to a role of domesticity. This can be exemplified through the main character of the novel, Heathcliff. In Armstrong’s essay, Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel, it is made clear that his character transforms from a Gypsy to a polished gentleman who “attributes all [of] his behavior to sexual desire” throughout the course of Wuthering Heights (p. 468). The way that this novel portrays his transformation proves that the power of the middle class may be less based on social differences and more based on social relationships.
In both essays published by Nancy Armstrong, she asks more questions then she answers but her thesis is clear. Novels are always filled with cultural context and they have the power to redefine what the world considers to be normal. Wuthering Heights can be seen as an example of this through its popular themes of the nineteenth century.