Antagonistic Classes of Victorian Society in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights: Female Book Knowledge as Cultural Mediator

Abstract

Abstract This study argues, through a series of close readings, that female book knowledge resists unified interpretation in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847), contradicting the widely-held Victorian assumption according to which discursive freedom is an exclusively male bastion of privilege. It instead concedes that self-instruction in the novel crosses cultural boundaries and perpetuates an ideological hegemony through the book as an agent of reconciliation. Book-knowledge in the novel is not the exclusive preserve of men, but a source of creativity for both ladies and ladies’ maids. Language and narrative technique, the study reveals, serve to unveil contrasts between servant and gentle folk, fashionable and popular manners, enforced and self-propelled reading.