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Reading the documents and seeing the illustrations from the time Wuthering Heights was written was both enlightening and frightening at the same time. Trying to imagine myself in England during the early to mid-nineteenth century is difficult, trying to do so without taking my twenty-first century mentality is impossible. I cannot imagine a time when women were treated as property and the suffering of starving people were far from the forefront of society’s conciseness.
When reading some of the documentation concerning women’s rights I was shocked to learn that a married man could draw a will leaving all of his worldly possessions to his mistress while his living widow would be left with nothing even if the man gained his wealth from his wife. Women who were made wealthy through the arts were forced to give those earnings to the husband and were subject to lose them if he should choose to divorce them. Women were seen as property and as such they had the same right as the husband’s furniture which means they had no rights.
I found it appalling that if a husband beat his wife and she forgave one time she could never sue for divorce no matter how bad it would later become. A woman could not divorce to remarry due to infidelity no matter how often the man cheated but the man could divorce the woman after the first transgression.
I was also touched by the illustrations depicting the Irish potato famine. The picture of the woman begging for money so that she could bury her dead child was heart wrenching. The writer said the town’s people told him it was a scene repeated over and over each day from different women in town. The illustration of the starving boy and girl searching the ground looking for potatoes was also moving. We take the ability to get whatever food we desire for granted.
I cannot imagine a time where there is not enough food for everyone and people are starving to death all around me. What would it be like if our street were crowded with starving beggars just looking for a bite to eat or face death? What responsibility would I feel towards those people? Would I be charitable or would I horde whatever food and money I had? I try to think that I would be the better man and share what I had but would I really? I hope I never have to find out.
Reading the "Women's Movement" shocked me as well. I found it unfair that women were not perceived as significant citizens in English society during the nineteenth century. The nineteenth century English women obeyed their husbands, cleaned the house, prepared dinner, and handed over all of their personal belongings and yet, were not seen as people with legal rights.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the notion of a woman who has to live with domestic violence occurrences after she has forgiven her husband one time before is absolutely unbelievable. Now, I understand why people say thinks like, "if they hit you once, they'll hit you again," and people encourage others to leave a spouse after one time of showing signs of abuse.
I really liked your approach to reading these documents - you took a personal view and applied them to your own life. That was very interesting to me because I certainly did not think that way. I really only thought how these things applied to the book. Also, it does not really appall me to read about how women were treated in the past. It only helps me appreciate the world we live in now. I think the world was once truly a man's world so it does not surprise me the laws that women were oppressed by.
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