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Compare the ways in which the writers of your two chosen texts present women’s experiences of love. You must relate your discussion to relevant contextual factors.
In both Hardy’s bildungsroman ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ and Bronte’s gothic masterpiece ‘Wuthering Heights’, the theme of love is explored. In both novels, the authors explore whether love can transcend societal expectations and conventions, and consider whether love is truly eternal.
In both novels, the authors consider whether love can transcend social conventions and expectations, through their presentation of marriage.
The opposition of passionate and loving relationships versus conventional or mercenary relationships is present in both works. In ‘Tess’, Tess and Angel have a passionate relationship, yet Hardy shows Tess to be ‘physically married’ to Alec due to the rape. Hardy was deeply critical of Victorian society which condemned women for being raped although it was no fault of their own, and this is shown in the novel through the contrast of social versus natural law: ‘She had been made to break a necessary social law, but no law known to the environment in which she fancied herself such an anomaly.’ This emphasises that it is society, not nature, that condemns Tess, and this idea is continued throughout the novel as Hardy uses nature imagery to depict Tess despite her being a ‘maiden no more’.
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The suppression of that which is natural is evident in Angel’s abandoning of Tess, as her natural love is forbidden due to societal expectations. Angel himself becomes a representation of the conservative Victorian views that Hardy was challenging, as he says ‘You were one person, now you are another.
How can forgiveness meet such a grotesque prestidigitation as that?’ Hardy also employs bird imagery as a metaphor for Tess, as she is employed for Mrs D’Urberville to whistle to her caged birds, aligning her with the animals. If Tess is taken to be a bird, it is significant, then, that her early morning courtship with Angel is described using Edenic imagery, creating the image of birds flying freely, whereas near the end of the novel we see the image of birds in a ‘wire cage’ of a machine made by men. Overall, Finally, the discrepancy between the social and natural law can be found in Tess’s execution, when her moral innocence is not recognized by the legal system. Hence, the words at the end of the novel ‘Justice was done’ cannot be interpreted in any other way but as a bitter irony and social criticism on Hardy’s part.
In ‘Wuthering’ the loving and ‘natural’ love is between Catherine and Heathcliff, yet Catherine and Linton join together in conventional and mercenary relationship. Catherine refuses to marry Heathcliff because ‘It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff, now’ and ‘if he and I married, we should be beggars’. As in ‘Tess’, social reality suppresses that which is natural. Due to Heathcliff’s lower class and financial adversities, Catherine would not consider marrying him; Bronte creates an opposition between passionate love and marriage, the former being at odds with a feasible lifestyle. Catherine’s desire to climb up the social ladder leads her to assimilate in her role as Edgar’s wife, a role in which she ultimately suffocates and dies. Her decision to marry Edgar for his greater social status and because she would ‘like to to be the greatest woman of the neighbourhood’ is the decisive catalyst of the tragic events that follow. Just as Hardy does with Tess, Bronte makes it clear that Catherine belongs in nature: as a child she spends her time on the moors. In both novels, the women suffocate in the relationships into which they eventually become part of. In ‘Tess’, Tess must become Alec’s mistress for financial reasons, and in ‘Wuthering’ Catherine stays with Edgar for financial reasons. Therefore, although both authors emphasise the passion and strength of love, love is still not something that can transcend society. In ‘Tess’ this conclusion makes sense as Hardy wrote the novel as a criticism of the patriarchal society he was surrounded by, which placed blame on women for their own exploitation. Indeed, he explored such ideas in other works, such as in his poem ‘The Ruined Maid’. Bronte also criticises a society that forces women to give up love for financial reasons. The inheritance laws of the time excluded women and so they were often forced into a position of having to consider the financial aspects of a relationship rather than freely marrying who they loved.
In both works, the authors also consider whether love is eternal. Bronte certainly presents us with a more optimistic and romantic version of love than Hardy does. In ‘Wuthering’, love is indeed eternal, both in the form of the supernatural, and through the legacy of Cathy and Hareton. At the end of ‘Wuthering’, Lockwood remarks ‘Yet that old man by the kitchen fire affirms he has seen two on ‘em, looking out of his chamber window, on every rainy night’. As mentioned earlier, Bronte presents a version of love that does not transcend societal boundaries. However, after death, Heathcliff and Catherine are reunited and arguably exist within the love between young Cathy and Hareton. Due to the gothic idea of the posthumous reunification of Catherine and Heathcliff, it could be argued that ‘Wuthering’ exists ‘outside’ normal society, or that the supernatural is presented as positive rather than, as is typical in gothic novels, fearsome and morbid. On the other hand, in ‘Tess’ Hardy presents love as finite, through Angel asking Izz Huett to travel with him to Brazil, and the very fact that Liza – Lu probably takes Tess’s place in the relationship with Angel may symbolise as well that no one is really irreplaceable, and that every generation must die to be replaced by a younger one. What is also important here is that in Tess’s death one can see the human powerlessness in struggling with fate and his/her insignificance in the relation with nature. Therefore, once again, love is presented as something that is malleable by external forces.
In both novels, love is also presented as unequal. The male-female relationships embody power imbalances. In ‘Tess’, of course, the biggest example of this is Alec raping Tess, exploiting her position as a working class woman who requires the employment his mother provides. Tess is almost lifeless after the rape: ‘She sat now, like a puppet, replying to his remarks in monosyllables.’ Alec becomes ‘dust and ashes’ to Tess, the lack of colour representing the colourlessness of her life. However, there is also a power imbalance between her and Angel; Angel is not only permitted to claim ‘the woman I have been loving is not you’, but can also afford the luxury of travelling to Brazil to clear his mind. On the other hand, Tess is continually trapped, both by her financial circumstances and her lack of power in the relationship. Similarly, in ‘Wuthering’ we see power imbalances, especially in Heathcliff and Isabella’s relationship. Isabella is subject to domestic abuse under Heathcliff, whose comparison to a ‘mad dog’ and ‘savage beast’ directly contrasts the description of Isabella as a ‘sparrow’s egg’, portraying the extent to which Heathcliff is able to dominate her. Thus, in both novels love is portrayed as unequal and mutual love in relationships does not imply equality.
Love And Relationships in Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Wuthering Heights. (2024, Feb 09). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/love-and-relationships-in-tess-of-the-durbervilles-and-wuthering-heights-essay
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