I found Lady Caroline Norton's letter very helpful in putting Wuthering Heights into context. The complete lack of legal rights of women is hard to imagine, despite the fact that many of our rights are so recently obtained. She is not arguing, however, even for so basic a right as the vote, but for women to simply be treated as humans who may own property and have some small say in their day to day lives.
It seems to me that women were in no better a position than slaves, and were in fact slaves, to their husbands. This is how, in Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff is able to maintain such absolute control and manipulate the property. Had the women in this novel had any basic rights, perhaps they would have been able to thwart him. This historical context helps me see why the females in this novel seem to hold such little power and are rather portrayed as being battered about in a storm of men's intentions.
Women really were treated like property and had no power. It is amazing to think that just because I am a male, I could be a completely ethical mess and still dominate a woman just because of my sex. I do think I would rather have been a woman than a slave, if for no other reason than I suppose I could leave if I were being treated too badly. Heathcliff becoming educated could really be considered a covert turning point in the novel. Without that happening, he would have never mastered the laws, and maybe not have ever know that he had ten times the rights any of the women had.
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