Social Containment in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre

Abstract

This paper is meant to be a contribution to the discussion about the social and economic aspects of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, both published in 1847. They are examined together on the grounds that they actually complement each other and can best be understood in relation to each other, especially in terms of the overall message they impart. The motivation for writing this paper is that most of the criticism written about the two novels, both in the past and the present, usually highlights the rebellious and sometimes ‘revolutionary’ nature of their protagonists, Heathcliff and Jane, and of their overall project. It is an attempt to further qualify statements made by literary critics, such as Arlene Young, asserting that the Brontë’s “attempt to create protagonists … who rebel against accepted social norms.”^[1]

^[1]- Arlene Young, Culture, Class and Gender in the Victorian Novel: Gentlemen, Gents and Working Women, London: Macmillan, 1999, p: 46.