{"id":817,"date":"2022-09-23T19:15:32","date_gmt":"2022-09-23T19:15:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/?p=817"},"modified":"2022-10-26T18:18:55","modified_gmt":"2022-10-26T18:18:55","slug":"the-perfect-victorian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/2022\/09\/23\/the-perfect-victorian\/","title":{"rendered":"The Perfect Victorian Man"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am interested in what the ideal male marriage partner is according to Victorians.\u00a0 On page 57, Heathcliff tells Nelly \u201cI wish I had light hair and fair skin, and was dressed, and behaved as well, and had a chance of being as rich as he will be!\u201d in reference to Edgar Linton.\u00a0 Readers know from earlier in the book that Heathcliff has darker skin and hair, and is too poor to dress well.\u00a0 As Catherine shows interest in Edgar, Heathcliff becomes jealous.\u00a0 Rather than character, Heathcliff thinks Edgar\u2019s advantages over him that attract Catherine are appearance and wealth.\u00a0 His beliefs are even supported on page 78 when Catherine admits to Nelly that her reason for wanting to marry Edgar is that \u201che is handsome\u2026And he will be rich,\u201d and Catherine desires to be \u201cthe greatest woman of the neighborhood.\u201d\u00a0 These separate disclosures to Nelly indicate that the standards for a Victorian male partner are that he must be handsome and rich.\u00a0 However, Victorian standards of being handsome include having \u201cfair\u201d skin and \u201clight\u201d hair, hinting that their visions of beauty are inherently racist and biased toward a Eurocentric beauty standard.\u00a0 This conclusion is evidenced by Victorian era pseudosciences like physiognomy, which claimed that one\u2019s outer appearance indicated one\u2019s inner character, and provided excuses to be racist and colorist, deeming those with darker skin \u201cunworthy\u201d and even \u201cuncivilized.\u201d\u00a0 Because Heathcliff has darker skin than Edgar, he is a less desirable marriage partner for Catherine.\u00a0 In addition to racism, Victorians also perpetuate classism.\u00a0 Heathcliff is poor, has unrefined behaviors, and dresses shabbily.\u00a0 In contrast, Edgar is richer and posher.\u00a0 This difference once again makes Edgar a more desirable husband.\u00a0 This instance of classism is clearly not a rare occurrence unique to Catherine because In <\/span>Mary Barton<\/span><\/i>, Mary almost marries Henry Carson for the same reason.\u00a0 Mary and Catherine are justified in wanting to escape a lower class lifestyle, but the people they truly connect with, Jem and Heathcliff, are cruelly cast aside because they seemingly cannot provide the ladies with a lavish future.\u00a0 Emily Bront\u00eb and Elizabeth Gaskell both emphasize that a rich lifestyle is widely yearned for among\u00a0 Victorian people, and that marrying into wealth is a quick way to ensure obtaining one.\u00a0 However, both authors also stress that marrying a man for his money ends poorly compared to marrying for love.\u00a0 Mary is happier with Jem, and Catherine is unable to forget Heathcliff.\u00a0 To Victorians, their strict rules and standards often take precedence over true desires, two of those standards being the racist and classist ones that determine whether a man is worth marrying.\u00a0 Bront\u00eb and Gaskell highlight the consequences of conforming to Victorian expectations and marrying for status over love, as well as reveal that the ideal Victorian male marriage partner can still leave their wife unsatisfied and unhappy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am interested in what the ideal male marriage partner is according to Victorians.\u00a0 On page 57, Heathcliff tells Nelly \u201cI wish I had light hair and fair skin, and was dressed, and behaved as well, and had a chance of being as rich as he will be!\u201d in reference to Edgar Linton.\u00a0 Readers know … Continue reading The Perfect Victorian Man<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4747,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[344620],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall-2022"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4747"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/19thcennovel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}