Jane Austen (1811), Thomas Hardy,

Jane Austen (1811), Thomas Hardy, and Emily Bronte (1847)

Sex and Sensibility

It is well-known that the Victorian era was one in which massive inequalities existed between men and women. Women were not allowed to vote, in many cases their right to own property was tenuous, and their place in society was extremely conscribed. One would expect, then, to see this reflected in the literature of the era which dealt with the lives and relationships of women. This expectation is in fact realized in three of the classics which have survived this era: Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, and Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte. Each of these stories deals with the romance of a strong Victorian heroine struggling to survive in a male dominated world. In each, the astute reader will notice the difference in financial power between men and women, the inconsistencies in sexual mores that exist between the genders, and the difference in status made obvious in their different approaches to marriage.

Yet the three very significantly not only in terms of plot and conclusion, but also in their treatment of gender differences. Generally speaking, Tess of the D'Urbervilles deals in polemics the inequities women face and their serious consequences for the sex, Sense and Sensibility deals with the full spectrum of gender issues while approaching the gendered system as posing problems for both male and female lovers, and Wuthering Heights seeks to transcend gender within love altogether, even though its characters in this sense often fail. It is difficult to say how much of the difference between these three writers is due to differences in the era in which they lived (the various authors were as much as forty years apart in their dates of publication) and how much was due to the differences in artist temperament and personal experience or conviction.

What is certain is that, taken together, the three can provide a poignant vignette of the rights, privileges, and constrictions of sexuality in the Victorian era, as it collided painfully with class upheaval and the redistribution of wealth among the new rich.

The difference in financial power between men and women is a very significant issue in all three novels. In fact, this difference arguably provides the central plot motivator for both Hardy and Austen's stories, and its idealization is a huge part of the social plot prods in Wuthering Heights as well.

In Sense and Sensibility, the financial difference between men and women affects every one of the characters, and is in fact the cause of the family crisis at the novel's beginning. In the opening scenes, the reader discovers that the Dashwood girls have been left impoverished by their father's death. The family's entire estate has been left to their father's son by his first marriage, due to the patriarchal nature of inheritance laws in England, which dictates that an estate goes to the nearest male relative. However, it appears the women are capable of having certain property rights, for a woman may inherit money from her parents and pass it on to her husband and children. In this case, Mr. Dashwood had money from marrying a wealthy woman in his first marriage, but on his death that money as well went to her son and could not be used to support his second wife and daughters. So the Dashwood women were left destitute. In a more equitable system, the finances of the father would support his children according to their needs, or at least in equal measure.

This financial difficulty means that the girls will have to marry into money if they wish to be supported in life. Much of the plot of the story revolves around the ways in which the girls and those who care about them attempt to arrange marriages which will leave the girls financially supported.

It must be said at this point, in regards to Austen's work, that she admirably shows the effect of these financial policies on both men and women. For example, her poor Colonel Brandon looses his first true love when she marries his older brother for the fortune afforded that member of the family. Likewise, Willoughby is made miserable when upon finding himself destitute he decides he must marry a rich woman he does not love merely for the sake of acquiring the fortune that will accrue to him as the rightful owner of all her goods henceforth.

Edwards also looses his first choice in mates and his fortune because of the degree to which convenience and finances become a mediator between the sexes.

In Hardy's novel, likewise, the financial straights of women are central to the novel; if anything, his heroine has a more dire situation at hand, because she is of the lower classes who do not have well-to-do friends and relatives willing to support their family in genteel poverty. Tess, whose father is a tinker, goes to be the servant of the rich and debauched Alec because of her family's need for money after she has accidentally killed their horse. She is later able to support herself and give some money to her family by working as a milk-maid, until she gets married. her marriage is meant to afford her with financial security, so she no longer continues working at the dairy, and yet when her husband abandons her she is once more left to poverty. The pressing poverty of her family force her to eventually sell her very body to Alec to support them. Had Tess been male, it would have been more acceptable and feasible for her to support them with her labor. Tess's poverty and innocence leads inexorably to her destruction, yet the chain of events stretching from financial difficulty to moral failure and destruction would not have been the same had she been male. (Masculine crimes, such as theft or fraud, would not have involved selling her body in the same way, and would not have so strongly come between her and her mate.)

Wuthering Heights has a more muted critique of the financial inequities between men and women. The inequity of the situation is most pronounced in the second half, where young Catherine (who in her own right might be an heiress) comes totally under the financial control of Heathcliffe when she marries his son. When Old Linton dies, the fact that young Linton is both his nephew and his son-in-law ascertains that young Linton will inherit Thrusscross Grange, and the fact that Heathcliffe is young Linton's nearest male relative assures that he, in turn, inherits the manor -- entirely bypassing young Catherine. This ploy is directly dependent on the inequities in the patriarchal system. This financial inequity is also made clear when on old Earnshaw's death Hindley inherits everything and Cathy is made entirely dependent on him. Because she is so dependent on a brother who does not care for her, Cathy is forced to consider marrying into money just to be able to support herself and Heathcliffe.

The examples above clearly show the connection between financial and sexual devaluation of women. The lower economic status of women makes them uniquely dependent on marriage for support, or --in the best case scenario of an independently wealthy woman-- uniquely threatened by a bad match. To survive, a woman must marry well, and if a self-sufficient woman marries poorly she risks loosing all her money to her husband's mismanagement and being left penniless. This situation creates an overwhelming pressure on girls, particularly the less-well-off girls, to marry for wealth rather than for love, and to sacrifice themselves bodily for security. Marriage, in this circumstance, is in some ways a state and church sanctioned form of prostitution. The abusiveness of this, and the way in which it devalues the worth and status of the woman, is evident in the story of Tess. As Tess is leaving her mother's home, Mrs. Dubeyfield exclaims that she has second thoughts about Tess leaving with the lecherous Alec. "Still, if 'twere the doing again, I wouldn't let her go till I had found out whether the gentleman is really a good-hearted young man and choice over her as his kinswoman... Well, as one of the genuine stock, she ought to make her way with 'en, if she plays her trump card aright. And if he don't marry her afore he will after. For that he's all afire wi' love for her any eye can see." (Hardy)

Here Tess' own mother foreshadows that she knows that Tess may be raped, and consoles herself by thinking that at least the fellow is rich and is likely to be willing to marry her afterwards. In a far less barbaric selection, one may notice in Sense and Sensibility the way that Marianne eventually consigns herself to marrying a man twice her age (one can only assume that this is for her own security, as she has not shown in real interest in him prior tot this), and also the way that Willoughby's bride is consigned to a loveless marriage not because she does not have money but because she does -- and he covets it. In each case, marriage for the woman has less freedom than for the man. After all, the woman cannot even properly (as Elinor evidences) express her deep-seated affection or attachment to a man, unless he has first approached her. A woman cannot initiate love, and this in itself debases her freedom of choice. This omnipresent element of Victorian culture is present in Wuthering Heights as well, when one sees that Cathy considers marrying Linton partly because "if Heathcliff and I married, we should be beggars...And he [Linton] will be rich, and I shall like to be the greatest woman of the neighbourhood, and I shall be proud of having such a husband." (Bronte) of course, she also expresses love for him, but the sort of love that is far inferior to her feelings for Heathcliffe.

This issue of inequality in marriage leads naturally to a very serious issue in all of these books, which is the inequality of men and women in the area of sex. It is a fact of nature that men are (generally) able to physically overpower women, and that the male sex organs lend themselves to penetration and dominance in a way that a woman's more internal anatomy does not. However, it is considered by many today (and through-out history) to be a mark of moral rightness that a woman maintain integrity of her body and be allowed equal choice in lovemaking and sexuality. However, two out of these three books deal with some form of rape-like activity against one of the female characters. In Tess of the D'urbervilles, Alec forces himself on the heroine in her sleep, as she "had dreaded him, winced before him..."

In Wuthering Heights, Heathcliffe forces himself violently on his young wife so that she immediately learns to dread him, crying out "a tiger or a venomous serpent could not rouse terror in me equal to that which he wakens," though his actual physical torments of her are left to the imagination, one gathers that he is a sadistic lover and husband.