Captive Bodies: Victorian Construction of Femininity in Wuthering Heights and the Crimson Petal and the White

• Authors: Danijela Petković
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This paper argues that both Wuthering Heights (1847) and The Crimson Petal and the White (2002) investigate, expose and condemn the multifaceted inscription of a specific culture on the female body (via the construction of femininity)-the defleshing of female bodies, which in turn makes them docile (at least temporarily). With different degrees of explicitness, the two novels demonstrate how this specific--capitalist, imperialist, patriarchal--culture forces itself onto the bodies of girls/women: the legalized, scientifically justified process whereby female bodies, regardless of class, are defleshed, skinned alive and made to emit signs of subjugation to the patriarchal will--this being their assigned role, without exception, in various male-dominated economies.

Keywords

EN

body; capitalism; captivity; disenfranchisement; docility; fashion; femininity; ghosts; power

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Gender Studies
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 11
• Issue: Supplement
• Pages: 74-90

Dates

published

2012-12-01

online

2012-12-28

Contributors

author

Danijela Petković

• Faculty of Philosophy, University of Niš Ćirila i Metodija 2, 18 000 Niš, Serbia

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10320-012-0007-8