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Essay on the treatment of sexuality and desire in "Wuthering Heights" (Brontë) and "Tess of the D’Urbervilles" (Hardy)

Dissertation : Essay on the treatment of sexuality and desire in "Wuthering Heights" (Brontë) and "Tess of the D’Urbervilles" (Hardy). Recherche parmi 297 000+ dissertations

Par   •  24 Mai 2019  •  Dissertation  •  2 904 Mots (12 Pages)  •  1 410 Vues

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 ‘Sex…in [Victorian literature] is not banished but driven underground, to merge in perverted and inhibited forms’. In the light of this quotation, discuss the treatment of sexuality and desire in Victorian literature.

Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles (published in 1891) and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Height (published in 1847), both feature themes of class inequality, gender politics and the danger of desire. Desire and sexuality play a key role in Tess of the D'Urbervilles, especially since it is through the novel's treatment of sexuality that we can better understand the position of the female characters in Victorian literature and society. The obvious observation we can make is that, although the notion of maiden purity through virginity is till present, there is a shift towards a more modern approach to sexuality. Sexual gender roles are challenged in both novels through female main characters defying conventional morality whether they intend to, like Cathy Earnshaw, or whether they are victim of fate, like Tess Durbeyfield. The evolution from the portrayal of young, poor women in 18th century literature[1] is evident through the characterization of Tess who is shown to have more agency over her desires, even though she is still very much in the position of victim and more the object of affection for the two male protagonists than an actor in her own storyline. In the case of Wuthering Heights we see Cathy, whose emotions and desires are portrayed as savage and destructive as the male characters'. She goes against her role  as the proper young lady from good society and in the novel she marries one man while openly desiring another. Furthermore both novels have displays of sexual violence which are important to analyze in order to understand what they represent for Victorian society. We must look at the different ways sex is represented and talked about in Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Wuthering Heights.

In a first time I will look at the poetic narration of sexuality and desire in Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Wuthering Heights, in a second time I will focus on the morality of sex and finally in a third part I will analyze the notion of perverted sex in the novels.

 The overall narration of sexuality and desire in both those novels is made through rich poetic metaphors. Thomas Hardy uses poetic images to narrate Tess' story. The detailed description of nature and the melancholy which prevails in the character of Angel Clare strikes of romantic poetry. In fact Hardy uses nature as a way to illustrate the characters’ inner turmoil and desires. The relationship between Tess and Angel is full of this romantic imagery right from the beginning. Angel encounters Tess for the first time as she is dancing in a seemingly pagan celebration of nature in the second chapter. When he gets to know her later at the milk house in chapter eighteen, he describe her as a ‘genuine daughter of Nature’.[2] This relationship with nature is also described when Tess is attracted to Angel’s instrument in chapter nineteen, as she is advancing towards him her body is touching different plants and flowers, her senses are called into action (touch, smell and earring) which could be interpreted as a subtle description of desire.

‘She went stealthily as a cat through this profusion of growth, gathering cuckoo-spittle on her skirts, cracking snails that were underfoot, staining her hands with thistle-milk and slugslime, and rubbing off upon her naked arms stickly blight which through snow-white on the apple-tree trunk, made blood-red stain on her skin; thus she drew quite near to Clare, still unobserved of him.’ [3]

Here Hardy uses metaphors to make allusions to sensuality, Tess' catlike step, the growth of nature, which can represent fertility and youth, the mentions of Tess’ bare flesh and the ‘blood red stain on her skin’ which could be symbolic of her ‘stained’ purity. The important scenes of Angel and Tess’ courtship happen against a backdrop of colorful country scenes that could belong in an 19th century impressionist painting. One of the most striking example of this is in chapter twenty three, when Angel Clare has to carry Tess and the other dairy maids across the muddy and flooded path. While carrying her Angel compares Tess to “undulating billow warmed by the sun.”[4] The characters realize the strength of their affection for each other in that moment. Angel's desire for Tess is expressed through his description of her features, especially her lips. Tess' lips represent the sensuality her male suitors see in her, and Angel's sexual desire could be summed up in that moment in chapter twenty four, where both he and Tess are isolated from the other dairy folks in the  green nature, he is overwhelmed by the sight of Tess' lips.

“Clare had studied the curve of those lips so many times that he could reproduce them mentally with ease; and now, as they again confronted him, clothed with colour and life, they sent an aura over his flesh, a cold breeze through his nerves, which wellnigh produced a qualm; and actually produced, by some mysterious physiological process, a prosaic sneeze.”[5]

This passage is a reference to Angel's sexual reaction to Tess' beauty, the “cold breeze” passing through his body and ending in a sneeze could be read as an allusion to Angel orgasming. Once again, romance is described in a seemingly innocent way, but the allusions to flesh, Angel's body and various elements of intimacy reveal that the narration is full of sexual tension. Nature also plays an important role when Tess is raped by Alec D'Urbervilles. The woods where he takes her, in the middle of the night, in chapter six are foreign an foggy, unlighted by the moon.[6] Tess is in total darkness and ignorance of what is happening around her and to her, both figuratively and literally.

In Wuthering Heights, the poetry is darker and more violent. The story between the main characters, Cathy Earnshaw, Heathcliff, Edgar and Isabella Linton, is told through two different narrators, Nelly and Mr Lockwood, neither are objective or reliable, which makes the sexual subtext less accessible.  However, as in Hardy's novel, nature also plays a role in the portrayal of desire in Wuthering Heights. Cathy equals her love for Heathcliff to the earth underneath her because she sees it as eternal and unmovable.[7] The lands surrounding the Earnshaw house are barren moors, as Mr Lockwood  describes it, “the whole hill-back was one billowy, white ocean; the swells and falls not indicating corresponding rises and depressions in the ground.”[8] The strength and danger of this nature can serve as a representation of Heathcliff and Cathy's relationship as their desire for each other is often underlined by violence. In the tenth chapter for example, the reunion between Cathy and Heathcliff is full of passion and longing, despite the presence of Edgar, but also tinted by physical force.

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