The Spatial Limitation Of Identity:a Feminist Reading Of Wuthering Heights And The Mill On The Floss

Recently, interdisciplinary researches have been carried out in the field of space, place, and cultural geography. Cultural geography, feminist theories and gender studies focus on the relationships among body, gender, and identity. From the feminist vantage point, this research will dive deep into Wuthering Heights and The Mill on the Floss, and explore the role of the Victorian home on the formation of feminine gender identities. These two novels display the importance of home to women, which will arouse readers’attention to and contemplation of home. Most noticeably as a social unit, the home, as a homestead, is also marked by its geophysical nature. The first chapter will give a brief review of the development of cultural geography and feminist geography, and then expound the process how the domestic space intercepts with and influences the production of the feminine identity. The domestic space is gendered and it embodies gender codes that can influence women’s development of gender identities. The limitation of women’s mobility, in terms of identity and of space, is a crucial instrument of subordination in some cultural contexts. Combining with the spatial theory, the second and third chapters will try to demonstrate how the domestic space shapes Catherine’s and Maggie’s gender identities. According to the domestic ideology of the Victorian middle class, they have to fit into the mold of the-angle-in-the-house. Home for them is both a sanctuary and a prison. They cannot fulfill their gender roles in the domestic space, while at the same time they cannot break their connections with home, either. This project aims at re-affirming Emily Bronte’s and George Eliot’s contribution to feminist thinking, their efforts in demonstrating Victorian women’s dilemma in relation to home and the domestic space.