SOURCE: Berry, Laura C. “Acts of Custody and Incarceration in Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.” Novel 48 (1996): 32-55.

In the following essay, Berry incorporates a study of the Infant Custody Bill of 1839 into her analysis of Charlotte and Anne Brontë's novels. Berry argues that the Brontës depict the domestic realm as a place of confinement or imprisonment, and that the issue of child custody illuminates the relationship between individuals and the social and legal structures that contain them.

If perversity were not so often the defining mode in Brontë criticism, it might seem perverse to assert that Wuthering Heights and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall are family plots, in fact, stories about custody. Literary criticism—not to mention, in the case of Wuthering Heights, Hollywood and a fiercely held popular opinion—has insisted on these novels as romantic fictions about the couple. And there...