Emily Bronte and D.H Lawrences Exploration of Social Class

Social class plays a very significant part in my core text, ‘Wuthering Heights’ and also my partner text , ‘Sons and Lovers’ because it helps the reader determine a sense of character and plays a massive part in the reader finding the true depth of a character. Social class in both novels is determined by location and the origin of the characters, as in ‘Wuthering Heights’ we see that Heathcliff is considered as abnormal and known as having a lower social class because of the uncertainty of his origin. Also in ‘Sons and Lovers’ we see the battle and life between a refined woman of middle class aspirations to a low class hard working miner and their son who discovers a ne conflict of loyalties after many years of taking after his mother.†¦show more content†¦Social class is very important to the characters in Wuthering Heights because we as readers are shown this when Catherine chooses not to marry Heathcliff because it woul d result in her becoming lower in the social scales which she is ashamed of, so she chooses to marry Edgar Linton, even though she understands that her and Heathcliff are kindred spirits and her love for him is equal as his own is for her and that in her heart she will always be the same, despite her aspirations for better social status, which come as a result of the limits put on her gender in the Victorian era. So in order for her to achieve her dreams to become socially higher and successful, she decides that she has no choice but to sacrifice her relationship with Heathcliff and marry Edgar, because of what he can offer and not who he is. ‘It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff.’ This decision in the novel shows just how important social class was to people in the Victorian era and the difficulties they had to achieve their dreams of being higher and successful in terms of social class. In contrast to ‘Wuthering Heights’ we see the complete opposite in ‘Sons and Lovers’ because we see how Gertrude chooses love over status. ‘She thought him rather wonderful, never having met anyone like him’ In the novel we see that Gertrude marries Walter which results in lowering herself on the