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Lyn Pykket's Essay Changing The Names: The Two Catherines

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Changing the names and manipulating the paradigm of social constructs
- Assessing Lyn Pykket’s essay Changing the names: The two Catherines
Lyn Pykett is amongst many who have explored the critically acclaimed novel Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë from a feminist perspective. In her essay Changing the names: The two Catherines, Pykett explores the oppressive nature of the patriarchy and construct of femininity through a dissertation of the mirroring and counter-mirroring of the journey of the two Catherines as embodied in their changing surname .
While Pykett’s immediate preoccupation lies with the two Catherines, she additionally comments on how the view of Brontë, as expressed in the novel, contradicts that of contemporary (female) writers. …show more content…

Pykett begins by pointing to the “reformation” of the elder Catherine, following her stay at Thrushcross Grange, which creates the inner conflict she experiences as she adopts what Nelly refers to as a “double character without exactly intending to deceive any one” . This conflict, Pykett argues, arises form Catherine’s contradicting roles between the ideal feminine gentility and her “true”, pre-gendered, self, and is evident in Catherine’s wish to return to childhood and increasing identification with Heathcliff whom she refers to as “more myself than I am” . This suggests that, rather than being true to herself, Catherine is practicing gender normativity in correspondence with contemporary societal expectations, ultimately succumbing to the patriarchy. Hence, the conflict provides evidence for Pykett’s argument that constructs of femininity, and thus gender normativity, is produced rather than derived from a true/universal feminine nature . The argument, while convincing in itself, gains further probative force though the following dissection of younger Catherine’s navigation of feminine

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