Student number - 23032386

Cardiff School of English, Communication and Philosophy

Autumn/Spring 2023-24

COURSEWORK SUBMISSION COVER SHEET

Student Number: 23032386

Module Code: SE2140

Module Title: Star-Cross’d Lovers: The Politics of Desire

If applicable, please note your seminar group/tutor and/or the question number you
attempted:

Seminar tutor – Gareth Smith

Question number - 7

Date submitted:

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 Student number - 23032386

‘Love, the poet said, is woman’s whole existence’ (Virginia Woolf)’.

Discuss the relationship between literary form and the gender of desire in Orlando by

Virginia Woolf and Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.

The most creative writers of the nineteenth or twentieth centuries are Virginia Woolf

and Emily Bronte. They defied predictions, challenged convention, and rivalled human vices

against virtues in exquisite forms always for them and always predestined to fit that seeing

through gender and desire. Woolf and Bronte used the literary form to attack, comment on or

question social conventions and their life experiences. These two novels break down the

boundaries between genre, time, and reality in order to provide strange depictions of gender

which question our ideas on sexual desire. The novels use the literary form to

counterbalance those bifurcated and reductive opinions about gender and desire that

dominated their historical environment at once by demonstrating in a range of ways that both

are complicated patterns that frequently elude definition or easy categorization.

Woolf and Bronte both use the literary form to challenge gender roles that were

central in their historical environment, they also take us through such forms as those

described earlier for reflecting or representing new sexual subjectivities which place greater

emphasis on individual experience. However, they have different methods and objectives.

Woolf, by contrast, takes a more light-hearted and satirical attitude. Her tendency to warmth,

and with the use of certain postmodernist techniques designed by the little willingly

subverting norms of her time in both content and form as well all fell faster toward some

fantasy or science fiction style novel that colours life beyond its actuality. In this way, even

Woolf employs an ambiguous and general ending in which the gender of women is shown to

be a constantly changing phenomenon not limited by any single definition or placed in one

fixed category. They depend both on the person and circumstances. But Bronte adopts a

more serious, tragic tone. Realistic in form (linear) is her plot and characters. She indicates

the deficiencies and shortcomings of--and rips up what are slavish expectations inserted by
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society or culture into life, love both real and imagined. She expresses her dissatisfaction

with life's restrictions in anxiety about its conflicts. While being romantic, if not existentialist

the Bronte has a more definitive and settled ending to note that, while love is indeed the

flying dragon of reality or fantasy, it lives beyond both life and death.

Orlando is a work without definition; it was biography, history and fantasy, satire, as

well as romance. In the novel, Orlando is a young nobleman who lives more than 400 years

and becomes a middle-aged female. She runs around in several countries of a variety of

epochs together with these numerous affairs. Burns (1994)1 notes that Woolf based Orlando

on the life and personality of her friend and lover Vita Sackville-West. For Woolf, the fictional

biography of Orlando is both an exploration and celebration of Sackville-West’s androgyny,

bisexuality and creativity--including her own. Woolf, however, also uses the novel to criticize

and satirize an English society in which traditional patriarchal conceptions of gender and lust

prevailed. Most evidently, when Woolf turns Orlando into a woman, she explicitly challenges

convention by portraying the change of sex as no big deal--nothing is changed about his

birth identity or personality. Woolf writes: "Orlando had become a woman – there is no

denying it. But in every other respect, Orlando remained as he had been. The change of

sex, though it altered their future, did nothing whatever to alter their identity" (p.139). Woolf

also argues that Orlando's gender has nothing to do with whether he was born male or

female but is determined entirely by the attitudes towards manhood and womanhood in each

era (Banerjee, 2021)2. Woolf writes: "Different though the sexes are, they intermix. In every

human being, a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the

clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite

of what it is above" (2003, p.188). Woolf says that gender is a reality yet in flux; as required

by the individual or situation, everyone has both male and female characteristics.

1
Burns, C. L., 1994. "Re-dressing feminist identities: tensions between essential and
constructed selves in Virginia Woolf's Orlando." Twentieth-century literature 40.3, p.342-364.
2
Banerjee, A., 2021. The Paradox of Gender in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. Beyond Identities:
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Gender, p.132.
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Additionally, Woolf critiques established gender and sexual-desire formations in Orlando by

refusing to contain the manifestation of desire within one sealed box that is ordered

according to heteronormativity alone. Burns (1994) highlights the relationship between men

and women. However, Orlando enjoys romantic relationships as well as sexual encounters

before his/her sex change. And, of course, without even getting into what he does after the

surgery when every form or type of relationship is taken on except for that one which

includes himself in some such category or other identity. Woolf writes: “Orlando had never

had any inclination to love the one sex more than the other. Both had attractions for him”

(p.191). As Woolf suggests, Orlando's sexual tastes were not a matter of choice or desire.

They developed in response to the circumstances and opportunities that came his way. She

says that she was inclined to love whomever it might be, whether the objects were male or

female. Woolf suggests that Orlando's sexuality is not a question of monogamy or

permanence, but like the wind, he multiplies and varies. Orlando does not commit himself.

Woolf writes: “Orlando was not the kind of person to fall in love with one person only. He

loved many” (p.205). Woolf argues that sexuality is an expansive and complex phenomenon

that cannot be narrowly defined.

Wuthering Heights is more of a combination than an example of gothic and romance,

realism and tragedy. The novel tells the story of the passionate and destructive love between

Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw and its consequences for their families and descendants

across two generations and two houses: Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. The

novel is narrated by two unreliable and biased narrators: Lockwood, a tenant of Heathcliff’s

and Nelly Dean, a servant to both families. It is written from deep inside her mind and heart,

with a combination of Bronte's personal life experience and social history. Embedded in the

novel is also Bronte's rebellious views about gender relations and desire, as well as her

dissatisfaction with deep within society. In Wuthering Heights, Bronte gives us characters

who break the rules of gender and passion, including a persona who crosses boundaries
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marking class or sex. Koegler (2021)3 states this is what makes her 'masterpiece' still hold

our attention. Heathcliff, an orphan of uncertain origin, is adopted and brought up by Mr.

Earnshaw as a son and brother to Catherine and Hindley. Heathcliff is dark, savage, and

violent, considerably more vengeful than we would expect from either the gentleman or hero.

Catherine is the daughter of Mr and Mrs Earnshaw, heiress to Wuthering Heights. She is

lively, headstrong and fiery. Whimsical too. Her appearance does not fit the image of a lady

or heroine. This is why the couple of Catherine and Heathcliff together reject these

conventions and values prevailing in their society or culture. They follow only after instincts

and desires. Bronte writes: “Heathcliff and I are such a suitable pair to divide the desolation

between us. A brute beast and a scoundrel of a woman are all the company we're fit for!"

(p.82). As Bronte states, Heathcliff and Catherine are not as rationalized into the craft of their

gender or birth. They are nipped in a corner, roughly cut out from nature that does not fit.

According to one way in which Bronte subverts the usual ideas of gender and sexuality,

Heathcliff's love for Catherine is something that far transcends life and death by existing

beyond reality. Heathcliff has a deep, intense bond with Catherine, formed in childhood, and

it is not broken even by separation or death. Heathcliff and Catherine say that they are one

soul and are never apart: “I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”

(p.184). Bronte suggests that Heathcliff and Catherine's love is not a question of reason, or

morality but one of passion, soul-mate kind. They are connected by something spiritual

which disregards the laws both Nature and society obey. Bronte also hints that the love of

Heathcliff and Catherine is not one simply of happiness or harmony, but rather suffering and

conflict (Uusitalo Kemi, 2021)4. They are at the mercy of their passion; their madness

consumes them both to destruction- "Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad!

Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!" (p.310). Thus, Bronte is

3
Koegler, C., 2021. "Follow the Hatred: The Production of Negative Feeling in Emily Brontë's
Wuthering Heights." Novel: A Forum on Fiction. Vol. 54. No. 2. Duke University Press.
4
Uusitalo Kemi, J., 2021. "Gender Construction in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre: A
Comparison."
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suggesting that love is a complex and powerful force, able to defy human logic or

willingness.

In conclusion, these two novels employ the literary form to castigate, interrogate and

undermine popularly accepted concepts concerning gender roles as well as traditional

conceptions of desire. They speak from the be-all and end of their personal experience in

creative form, expressing through what they have undergone or imagined by themselves for

a moment, toppling above everyday life. Woolf's novels defy definitions according to genre,

period or realism, and her characters transcend social divisions between sexes, sexualities,

and ethics. Woolf and Bronte do not treat gender or desire as stable notions but complex

phenomena to be adapted according to the individual case on hand, in praise of the rich and

multifaceted complexity that is human nature in celebrating a life in which there are infinite

freedoms to express oneself.

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Bibliography
Banerjee, A., 2021. The Paradox of Gender in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. Beyond Identities:

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Gender, p.132.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mohamed-El-Boujjoufi-2/publication/

356873562_Gender_Language_and_the_Separation_of_Public_and_Private_Space/

links/61b0cd47956f4552d0b36162/Gender-Language-and-the-Separation-of-Public-

and-Private-Space.pdf#page=133

Burns, C. L., 1994. "Re-dressing feminist identities: tensions between essential and

constructed selves in Virginia Woolf's Orlando." Twentieth-century literature 40.3,

p.342-364. https://www.jstor.org/stable/441560

Koegler, C., 2021. "Follow the Hatred: The Production of Negative Feeling in Emily Brontë's

Wuthering Heights." Novel: A Forum on Fiction. Vol. 54. No. 2. Duke University

Press.

Uusitalo Kemi, J., 2021. "Gender Construction in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre: A

Comparison."

https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1532888/FULLTEXT01.pdf