Social Convention and Transgressive Love

Love in the set texts is never a purely private matter — it is always shaped, constrained, and sometimes destroyed by social convention. Class barriers, sexual morality, religious norms, racial prejudice, and the expectations of family and community determine what kinds of love are permissible and what kinds are punished. This lesson examines how the set texts represent love that transgresses social boundaries and the consequences of that transgression.

---

Class and Love

Class is the most pervasive social barrier to love in the set texts. Every relationship exists within a class structure that determines who may love whom and on what terms.

Key Examples

Text	Class Dynamic	Consequence
Jane Eyre	Jane is a governess — socially inferior to Rochester; Rochester is her employer	Their love crosses a class boundary, and Rochester's attempts to dress Jane in expensive clothes reveal his desire to elevate her to his own status — a generosity that Jane resists because it threatens her independence
Wuthering Heights	Heathcliff is a foundling raised alongside Catherine but never accepted as a social equal	Catherine's choice of Edgar Linton over Heathcliff is explicitly a class choice: "It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now" (Chapter 9)
Tess	Tess is a working-class woman; Angel Clare is the son of a clergyman; Alec d'Urberville has money but dubious ancestry	Class determines Tess's vulnerability — she has no economic or social resources to protect herself from Alec's predation or Angel's rejection
The Go-Between	Marian Maudsley is an aristocrat; Ted Burgess is a tenant farmer	Their love is transgressive because it crosses a class boundary that the Edwardian social order treats as absolute; Leo, the child messenger, is destroyed by witnessing the transgression
The Great Gatsby	Gatsby is nouveau riche; Daisy is old money; the distinction is absolute	Gatsby's wealth cannot bridge the class gap — "old money" and "new money" are different social worlds, and Daisy ultimately retreats to the security of her own class

"It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him." (Wuthering Heights, Chapter 9)

Catherine's speech is one of the most painful moments in the set texts. She loves Heathcliff absolutely — "I am Heathcliff" — but she cannot marry him because the class structure of her world makes the marriage unthinkable. The tragedy is that Catherine recognises the social construction of her choice but cannot escape it.

AO5 — Critical Interpretations: Terry Eagleton reads Wuthering Heights as a narrative about class conflict, arguing that Heathcliff and Catherine's love represents a pre-social, natural bond that is destroyed by the class system's demand for property and respectability. Marxist criticism more broadly reads the love plots of nineteenth-century fiction as negotiations of class position — marriage is the mechanism by which social status is maintained or disrupted.

---

Forbidden Love and Adultery

Several set texts present love that is forbidden by marriage or social convention:

Adultery and Its Consequences