GREAT LITERARY LADY: Catherine Earnshaw
The passionate outsider, Heathcliff is often considered the elemental driving force in Emily Brontë’s novel – because of his desire to take revenge against those who have ruined his life. But his beloved Catherine is just as integral to this most uncanny of thwarted love affairs. Dying halfway through the book, her presence continues to haunt ‘her’ Heathcliff in one of the greatest love stories in world literature.
Heathcliff is brought back from the distant port of Liverpool by Catherine’s father, Mr Earnshaw, as a strange child speaking gibberish. But young Catherine becomes his soulmate, almost a twin. She ignores his unknown, humble origins and his racial difference, which obsesses the others.
Catherine can be egotistical, petulant and unkind, but she is as much a free-spirit as she is a great beauty – most at home just wandering the moors with Heathcliff . But when he overhears her telling Nelly the housekeeper that she cannot marry him because it would degrade her, he is utterly devastated and runs away to find his fortune. This he does, only to return after three years to discover that Catherine has married Edgar Linton, a safe but insipid member of the gentry. But, for Heathcliff , their love endures even after her death: ‘Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you – haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad!’
For once, Catherine does as she is told.
Heathcliff is brought back from the distant port of Liverpool by Catherine’s father, Mr Earnshaw, as a strange child speaking gibberish. But young Catherine becomes his soulmate, almost a twin. She ignores his unknown, humble origins and his racial difference, which obsesses the others.
Catherine can be egotistical, petulant and unkind, but she is as much a free-spirit as she is a great beauty – most at home just wandering the moors with Heathcliff . But when he overhears her telling Nelly the housekeeper that she cannot marry him because it would degrade her, he is utterly devastated and runs away to find his fortune. This he does, only to return after three years to discover that Catherine has married Edgar Linton, a safe but insipid member of the gentry. But, for Heathcliff , their love endures even after her death: ‘Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you – haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad!’
For once, Catherine does as she is told.