A Marxist Feminist Approach To The Construction Of Women's Social Status In Wuthering Heights

Wuthering Heights, a poetical, mystical and fabulous novel in English literature, enters the list of classics for its enduring research value and wide popularity, and its author, Emily Bronte, is called"son of the wasteland"for her crazy passion for the wasteland and the nature. It receives voluminous comments and interpretations which diverge greatly since it is published.This thesis is intended to criticize Wuthering Heights from a new perspective-Marxist feminist approach. Its main part digs out in depth aspects of the approach applied and penetrated in the novel. The main content of the thesis is in the following: Marxist feminist critics deduct that there are always economic motives behind historical activities from"economic base-political superstructure"pattern. If there's no economic benefit all the spiritual pursuit would vanish gradually. So the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. The labor class struggles with capitalists from time to time for the aim of changing their oppressive class status. Women are in the marginalized position in whatever private society because of the class oppression and patriarchal domination.The thesis is divided into five parts. Introduction initiates the significant position of the novel and its author in English literature. It offers a brief description of the story gist and the Marxist feminist literary criticism. Chapter one analyzes all the main characters whom are under economic and class oppression. Chapter two uncovers women's passive gender identity accumulated from the social ideology and inherent sexual nature, which makes them victims of the patriarchal ideology. Chapter three says about the author's intention of building a modern society in which women could have equal social status with men and both of them are not to be discriminated by the upper society. Conclusion restates the social problems of that age and mirrors the writer's wish of reforming that feudal world.Through the analysis of the true condition of Victorian women's inferior social and marital life, the thesis provides that there are perpetual irreconcilable conflicts between men and women, between the upper class and the lower class. And the writer's persistent pursuit of reconstructing women's social status has far influence on that age as well as the present time.