Why I Love Cathy Earnshaw

I should probably preface this post by saying that Wuthering Heights is one of my favourite novels of all time. Perhaps it is the Romantic in me that prompts me to say this: the perdurable quality of nature has always appealed to me, not only because it highlights our fragility as beings that seek to inhabit nature as we individuals physically perish; the primitive traces of the natural world within us that Darwin clung to as being our most prominent traits- the passing on of our DNA, and the advancements we have contributed to culture live on, though our bodies are so ephemeral. This, therefore, leads me onto my fascination with Catherine Earnshaw- why I choose to refer to her with her maiden name Earnshaw rather than her terminal name of Linton is because of just that; its permanency of being the origin of wildness, liberation, and salvation from our arguably anti-feminist heroines who seek nothing more than marriage and the confinement of domestic duties: whilst Cathy encapsulated everything that was the wilderness, embodied by her Gothic surroundings of the heath she lived upon as a child, with her equally as untameable childhood lover Heathcliff, the average upper-middle-class Victorian woman was expected to become the self-sacrificial lamb for both her husband and her society- to uphold the 'spick and span' domiciliary customs within the confinement of four walls of a quintessentially perfect abode, whilst their men would enjoy illicit, underground fantasies within the four walls of a brothel (akin to that of Freud's Madonna-Whore complex)

What interests me, then, is the fact that Catherine did not fit strictly into either of these ideals. An important plot point within Wuthering Heights was that one of her utmost desires was the elevation of her social status, and stability in her life and she found this solace within Edgar Linton. It can be supposed that Linton was her escape from the wilderness, a boring blank slate back into the customs and habits expected of a young lady. Yet this very sacrifice diluted everything that we loved about Catherine: is there a way to truly confine the epitome of disorderliness? Nelly looks upon her initial whims fondly; the family 'had not a minute's security that she wouldn't be in mischief', painting her as an indomitable force who would not abscond from a personality shaped by the rough impetuosity of the countryside. There is no doubt that Cathy certainly benefitted from being born into high society- critics may deem Cathy stuck in the notions of infancy and girlhood, as the narrator, her servant, deems her a 'haughty, headstrong creature' even beyond girlhood- perhaps her privilege blinds her in some ways akin to the upper classes who exercise power over others. Yet for a woman, and the period Brontë was writing in, Catherine is a remarkable metamorphosis between Henry James' New Woman and Caroline Bingley's accomplished young lady, one who is torn between her fantastical youth of indoctrination within the Yorkshire Moors and her concern with being 'the greatest woman in the neighbourhood.'

Take Cathy as a microcosm for the natural world- esoterically, one could argue that she embodies the 'Fallen Woman' so prevalent in 19th-century literature after she falls into an eternal delirium, that, like poison flowing through the roots of a tree, deranged everything around it- with our Byronic hero Heathcliff eventually succumbing to her ghost that has haunted him for almost two decades posthumously, and the saviour, yet feeble-natured Linton also falls prey to illness. William Blake's cultivation of 'A Poison Tree' works particularly well as a metaphor here, as Catherine's temper is inherited by her sole descendant, Cathy Linton. With Catherine never having the 'power to conceal her passion', young Cathy experiences that the 'more hurt she gets, the more venomous she grows.' The tragedy and the imperishable ferocity that consumed one young woman is passed down to another- is that so different from each generation of women who build immutable anger towards the lack of liberation towards women, as they strive for equality?