First, I will try to summarise the Victorian era and novel briefly before responding to question. The coronation of Queen Victoria in 1837 is the inception of Victorian Novel officially in literature simultaneously. The Victorian era is known with high sexual repression, middle-class based lives, class discrimination, artificiality, bigotry, corruption, and people who were smugness, hypocritical, pretentious, narrow minded. As a result of industrialization, the first aim of the people was only to earn much money, and the money was the first criterion even in marriage. In this conservative society, women were under pressure in every area, and in a passive role. That is, women whose role was only cooking, breeding or cleaning were commoditized as a result of the patriarchal thinking. Sexuality was completely ignored, even the legs of piano was being dressed as they remind the woman leg. However, there were positive evolvements such as increasing literacy rate among women in England and correspondingly concern with reading novel. Thus, novelists turned their attention into the lives of middle-class society and tried to reflect their era with its both negative and positive sides.
When it comes to discuss gender roles of these novels, there are some discrepancies and similarities between Catherine and Bathsheba in terms of their attitudes, desires and the way of seeing the life. As it is mentioned above, love, passion or excessive behaviours of women are not appreciated in the Victorian society. However, both Catherine and Bathsheba portray unusual woman characters in the novels unlike to this conservative society’s woman prototype. Both women are portrayed naughty, egoists and self-loving. Catherine is a little bit passionate about love than Bathsheba while Bathsheba was more egoist than Catherine. Compared to Catherine, Bathsheba is less willing to marry with any higher-class man. For instance, Bathsheba refuses Mr. Boldwood’s marriage proposal although he is a gentleman farmer. However, Catherine does not miss the opportunity to change her social class by marrying Edgar Linton as he lives in typically Victorian luxury home and these luxury furniture and ornamented gardens affects her but in Far from Madding Crowd, even Bathsheba’s financial situation changes thanks to legacy of her uncle or the opportunity of marrying with a gentleman she does not change her lifestyle. Bathsheba is more outgoing and portrays masculine behaviours compared to Catherine. Additionally, Bathsheba is keen on her independence than Catherine. In Hardy’s novel, women are no longer confined into house, and they become the protagonists of his novels unlike. As an example, after getting wealthy, Bathsheba was drawing masculine character in the novel, and she does not want to marry unusually like the women in her era. She is willing to rule the farm by her own and even she goes to bazaar being an only woman for the first time in the trade bazaar. Such features attributed to men as ruling the farm or working out or going to bazaar is like a victory for Bathsheba; however, Catherine does not seem a strong character as well as Bathsheba. Catherine does not have any willingness to change her life or showing her strengthen to everybody. She could go and find Heathcliff in the city and could marry him. That is, she loves passionately Heathcliff but does nothing to change their lives, however; Bathsheba goes to city and marry Troy as she loves Troy deeply.
In terms of sexual love, Bathsheba and Troy’s relationship portrays a love depends on sexuality. Troy’s handsomeness and behaviours affect her sexually and evoke her desires. In the era when women’s sexuality was ignored, Bathsheba’s failing of ruling her emotions is something very different for the readers in that era. However, although Catherine loves Heathcliff passionately, she can manage her sexual feelings. It is the reflection of the two novelists’ personalities in principle. As sexuality and women were significant theme of Thomas Hardy and although he wanted to use more sexual elements in his many novels, he had to show less sexual elements in his novels, but Emily Bronte was a conservative writer according to critics. So, there is not any sexual elements in her novel. For instance, Catherine and Heathcliff were used to sleeping in the same bed in their childhood, however, reader cannot perceive any sexual elements from these lines in the novel.
When all these situations are taken into consideration, while Catherine reflects the woman features of Victorian era, Bathsheba reflects more dominancy and masculinity features different from woman in Victorian era.
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