In the essay on the Marxist critique of Wuthering Heights, it was really interesting to me how Eagleton uses the laws of inheritance of the time (I.e. Hindley's being in line to inherit everything, and Catherine's expected inheritance of nothing) to show why Catherine and Heathcliff formed such a strong bond in the beginning. He, as an uneducated foreigner and she, as the younger sister of the heir, were both outsiders to the Heights. As a small child, Catherine had no concern as to how she would be provided for in the future, and so formed the attachment that she wanted to form, not one that would benefit her in the long run. It was interesting to me, because we've talked about how Catherine's need for financial security dictated her decision making later in life, but this fact shows that the same lack of future financial security leads to there even being a choice. Had Catherine never formed the close emotional relationship to Heathcliff, then she would have no hesitancy in choosing Linton.

The essay on cultural criticism was a little more confusing. Armstrong seems to suggest, in several places, that Charlotte Bronte attempted to make Wuthering Heights more socially accepted by attempting to prove that her sister was unaffected by the surrounding culture when she wrote it. Emily had "'a secret power and fire' ... that came strictly from within" (430). Describing her sister this way allows for the novel to be read in a sort of cultural vacuum, since there's very little possibility that someone who rarely ventured into the world could make the cultural connections. I think that Armstrong is implying that Charlotte made these claims about Emily in an effort to shield her novel from critics, and that the claims are not actually true.