This paper argues that both Wuthering Heights (1847) and The Crimson Petal and the White (2002) investigate, expose and condemn the multifaceted inscription of a specific culture on the female body (via the construction of femininity)-the defleshing of female bodies, which in turn makes them docile (at least temporarily). With different degrees of explicitness, the two novels demonstrate how this specific--capitalist, imperialist, patriarchal--culture forces itself onto the bodies of girls/women: the legalized, scientifically justified process whereby female bodies, regardless of class, are defleshed, skinned alive and made to emit signs of subjugation to the patriarchal will--this being their assigned role, without exception, in various male-dominated economies.
