From a previous essay:

"Who am I"?: The many faces of women's identity in Victorian Literature.

The portrayal of women in Victorian novels raises questions about the search for their identity, and as a consequence, serves as a vehicle for the projection of the authors' varied opinions on the position of women in that period. In this essay my purpose is to analyze five heroines in Victorian Literature and compare and contrast how each form their respective identies.

I am my beloved: Catherine Linton (Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights)
For Catherine, who she is as an individual depends on how much she is a part of her soulmate, Heathcliff. As long as she was free to be with Heathcliff, she could be herself, but the moment she goes against her nature, i.e. try to "better" her self by marrying Linton, and thereby breaking her relationship with Heathcliff, she loses a part of herself. After her marriage to Linton, Cathy takes on another persona. She is no longer the girl who would roam wild and free in the moors. Instead, she is confined to the suffocating gradure and Victorian sense of propriety in Thruschcross Grange. Cathy even acknowledges to Nelly that she and Heathcliff were one when she says "I am Heathcliff". Hence, in this case, the woman takes the identity of her beloved.

I am his equal: Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre)
For Jane, her identity as an intelligent, independent woman is resolved through ties with Edward Rochester, her imposing employer and master of Thornfield. Although Jane does seek her own independence (and thereby her identity as a single woman), in the end, she finds she does need Rochester to be complete. Firstly, there is the telepathic relationship that she shared with Rochester, which I believe was a strong indicator (from the author) that as long as that supernatural connection was there between Jane and Rochester, they could not be entirely happy without each other. They needed each other to be whole because they were "equals" and complemented each other. Jane needed Rochester during moments of her insecurity (when Rochester was more controlling of her), and by the end of the story Rochester needed Jane when he was (phsycially) found wanting (thus Jane controls Rochester). This kind of relationship is differnet from that of Cathy and Heathcliff in that this is a relationship of equals, where only each will do for the other, but each keeps their own identies. Jane is NOT Rochester in the manner as Cathy affirms she IS Heathcliff.

I am my husband's wife: Dorothea Brooke (George Eliot's Middlemarch)
For Dorothea, finding her place in the world and fulfililng her purpose in life resulted in marrying Casaubon, although there was no passion or love between the two of them. Dorothea, having been brought up in wealth, identifes her purpose in life early on. She wished to make a change in her society and to help people below her. She also had a thirst for knowledge and was intent on learning more about the world around her. Hence, she believed that marriage to Casaubon would help her attain all her goals. To an extent, marriage to Casaubon does give her some liberty to help people around her, such as helping Lydgate. However, it is only after her marriage that she realizes Casaubon's duplicity and weakness of character, along with finding out who she is as a person and what she wants in a marriage. Though she does fall inlove with Will Ladislaw, even after her marriage to him, her powers as woman fulfilling her aims in life remain obscure, as she is only able to excercise them through her husband, a powerful politician.

I am my father's daughter: Margaret Hale (Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South)
Margaret, being the daugther of a cleric, was used to having the influence of her father lead the way she conducted affairs in her own life. Being very close to her father, she was also prone to holding some of her true feelings back, as when she bravely consents to leave Helstone even though her heart was breaking the whole time. In Helstone, Margaret was an important personality and she was able to influence people around her by means of her position. Thus, even when she moves to Milton with her family, she would still have carried that mentality (the fact that she was "superior" to the other workers). Even though her father resigned from the Church of England and only chose, through his own free will, to teach the workers, it gave Margaret an upper hand, in that she knew that while her father had a "choice" to do a noble deed such as educating workers when he could have led a more comfortable life, the workers in Milton did not have such a choice. Thus Margaret also felt that she had to live up to her father's standards of judgement and leadership. While this prompts her to visit workers and to try and change them herself, she also learns a lot from them, which later allows her to overcome class boundaries, such as in reconciling her relationship with John Thornton, a man far below her in terms of social class.

I am Myself: Tess Durbeyfield (Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles)
Tess, in my opinion, is the most radical of all of these heroines in that who she is as a woman is NOT merged with the identity of any man. When Angel compares her to Greek Goddesses like Demeter or Artemis, she immediately retorts, "call me Tess". She wanted Angel to accept her for who she was, despite doubts of her "purity". She stands her ground when the Pastor refuses to baptise Sorrow, and she herself baptises her own child, even though such a practise was foreign. She tells Angel the truth about her past hoping that he would accept and forgive him as she forgave him. She tells Angel that she was Tess and that he should love her for "her very self" as she loved him. She loved Angel but did not think of him as "herself" or her "equal" as the heriones above did.