Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Enriching The Story: Asexuality And Aromanticism In Literature, Adrienne Whisman

sprinkle: an undergraduate journal of feminist and queer studies

This paper examines the role of asexual and aromantic coding within Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights and Virginia Woolf’s novel To the Lighthouse. Both books utilize relationships and sexuality in order to portray arguments within the book. Brontë portrays Catherine and Heathcliff’s relationship as transcending physicality, both as a way to portray them as soulmates but also to foreshadow events. Woolf utilizes Lily’s disinterest in sex and marriage as a way to contrast her to other women in the novel. Both characterizations can be read as asexual, or in Lily’s case also aromantic. This queer reading allows insight into the …