The cultural scene during which the Brontës wrote their most powerful novels was one that harbored deep and irrational misgivings about female creativity and self-assertion. Women were considered to be inferior to men and were defined by their roles in the house as either obedient daughters or servile wives. To both situations, a woman was bound as property. This patriarchal attitude was firmly fixed in Victorian England and constituted the closed society that the Brontë’s looked to challenge. Equally as remarkable, they looked to do so through writing, which was also very much in the male domain. But despite the Brontë’s anachronistic radicalism, they understood that women could only achieve progress if the misogynists at the hand of oppression realized the bearing of their actions. Thus, many of the female characters in Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are juxtaposed for rhetorical effects. And through their dichotomous decisions and contrasting fates, the foils comment on the antithetical aspects of the sexist construct in which they were forced to live.

Although Jane Eyre is the less Gothic of the Brontë novels, its heroine Jane Eyre and the relationships which she chooses to forge reveal a sharp feminist commentary. The bildungsroman of the novel establishes a female orphan who, despite abuse, prevails and becomes steadfastly committed to principle and a trust in God. In this way, Jane achieves pathos in the reader and dignity, the first step, in her search for freedom. Symbolically, her progression towards intellectual and emotional liberation is illustrated by windows in the 2011 film adaptation of the novel. As a student at Lowood, Jane is positioned away from the window. Her back is against an intense beam of light which shines through the glass and illuminates on her figure perched on top of the stool. The focus reveals a disjunction between Jane’s ambition and her opportunities. When Jane becomes governess at Thornfield Hall, she is granted physical freedom. She is not “subordinate or dependent on anyone”; she is able to look out the window. But as Jane describes to Mrs. Fairfax, the view only makes her “long for the power to go past” it and “behold what [she] imagines.” What she wishes for is the “power of men.” Mr. Rochester recognizes her feelings. Despite having a “plain” exterior, he sees that she is not “soulless,” “vain,” or “heartless” but rather full of “spirit.” Rochester’s perspicacity allows him to observe a “restless captive” in a “closed cage,” and he tests Jane’s ability to feel indignant by holding a relationship with her opposite, Lady Blanche Ingram. Ingram professes that a “gentleman’s beauty lies in his power.” She also accepts Rochester’s calling her a “dove” who must “return to the nest.” Jane does not accept “condemnation for any man,” and even after winning Rochester’s heart, escapes at his deceitfulness. Her escape is out of the window she longed to go past at the beginning. Panes burst open and curtains ripped to the floor, Jane leaves Thornfield Hall, and in a great reversal of roles, Rochester calls for her out the window but cannot run through it as she did.

At her escape, Jane is taken in by St. John Rivers. Like Ingram is a foil to Jane, Rivers is a foil to Rochester. Rivers is austere and ascetic. His proposal to Jane is a sacrifice of passion for principle. And although Jane recognizes that following Rivers to India is an opportunity to make a more meaningful contribution to society, she has learned from her relationship with Rochester, that true freedom is found only when both intellectual and emotional independence are granted. A marriage with Rivers only provides one, and this is the reason why it fails. The ultimate success of Jane and Rochester’s relationship comes only after the rectifying of these two forms of independence.

Foils are also used extensively in the Brontë’s Wuthering Heights to forward feminist views, with one such pairing being Catherine Earnshaw and Isabella Linton. Catherine is a daughter of Thrushcross Grange who represents a female longing to break free from the patriarchal construct but ultimately fails and withers under its control. Thus, it is ironic that Catherine is lauded for her spirit and strength of will, at the beginning of the novel, while Isabella is reviled for her weakness and foolishness. Like in Jane Eyre, the bildungsroman establishes a set of circumstances to which the main characters must respond, with the choices that they make towards the end being the distinguishing features. Although Isabella’s does display “girlish infatuation” with Heathcliff, this is understandable: He offers her excitement and passion, things she longed for under the restrictive roof of Thrushcross Grange. But when Isabella is truly driven by dire circumstances and sees the control of the male system manifest itself to the extreme, Isabella daringly flees the two symbolic institutions of the male patriarchy: Thrushcross Grange being an example of patriarchal ideology and Wuthering Heights an example of repressive patriarchy. And ultimately, she does not blame her decisions on anyone. In her letter to Nelly, she only asks for company and understanding.

When Catherine dies after giving birth, she is symbolically denied the opportunity to take on adult responsibility. Her dependency is so complete that even in death she cannot escape it. She is fought over, like an object, between the two forces of the patriarchy. But at her death she gives life to a girl, ultimately named Cathy. If a child is a continuation of a parent’s life, then Catherine Earnshaw ultimately earns her fulfillment at the liberation of Cathy. The Brontë’s peaceful depiction of the grave of the three feuding characters testifies to the success of little Cathy in ending the injustice. While she is “saucy” and impulsive, Cathy relinquishes the grasp of the patriarchy by refusing to submit to marriages for the sake of domineering male figures. Her persistence also allows her to regain her family’s land from Heathcliff, whose inability to grant Catherine the freedom to make unpressured choices ruins both of their lives. The fact that Cathy has no foil or contesting female in her generation solidifies her role and abilities as a redeeming character.

The Brontë’s, by the use of foils and an intricate system of antithetical characters, presented an argument for the intellectual and emotional liberation of females that radically challenged the sexist social construct of Victorian England’s. Not the least remarkable aspect of the Brontë’s story is that these sisters persisted in their writing in spite of daunting rejections in the same system. In these ways, as well as in many others, the Brontë’s were way ahead of their time.