In Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff and Cathy’s relationship is presented as almost-symbiotic – both of their existence necessary for the other’s; as such, relationships between men and women, in this instance, are presented as balanced and equal, an obvious deference from the traditional Victorian depiction of women as submissive figures. Through the use of the Romantic equivocation of Cathy and Heathcliff’s relationship to natural extremes and the sublime, their relationship is equated to ‘the eternal rocks’, a constant and ‘eternal’ figure – similar to the nature of God. This God-like nature of their relationship is exacerbated by Cathy’s use of absolutes, such as the visceral verb ‘annihilated’, and ‘mighty’: two extremities that mimic the nature of Heathcliff and Cathy’s relationship as greater than the one ‘Self’, represented in Kristeva’s Abjection theory. This theory identifies that abjection, the separation from the ‘Self’, represents a revolt against that which gives us our existence or state of being – as such, the second meeting of Cathy and Heathcliff, the reunion of the ‘Self’, is deeply based in the Gothic, represented in animalistic and violent language – ‘caught her… flung himself… gnashed… mad dog’ – as if coming together again is instinctual. Similarly, Angel and Tess, in Tess of the D’Urbervilles, represent another form of two symbiotic halves of one ‘Self’, although shrouded in less Gothic violence than that of Cathy and Heathcliff. Tess and Angel are presented as philosophical equals, despite their difference in level of formal education. Perhaps this difference makes them more of a symbiotic pair – Tess’s understanding coming from natural introspection, and Angel’s coming from the ‘dogma’ and formal education.. Angel, whose disbelief in Christianity is entirely intellectual, based on his philosophical reading – as such, when Tess reveals her unusually complex religious depth, ‘I do know that our souls can be made to go outside our bodies when we are alive’, Angel sees her as an idolised ‘daughter of Nature’: a very Romantic allusion. Through this conversation, the two are presented as equal on a spiritual, soul level – similar to Brontë’s equivocation of Cathy and Heathcliff’s relationship to God, or at least something above the traditional ‘Self’. As such, Brontë presents relationships between men and women as symbiotic, creating one ‘Self’, but simultaneously more than that.
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