Welcome back to White Rose of Avalon, my Darlings. This week’s Femme Fatale Friday post is about both of the Catherines from Wuthering Heights, one of my favorite novels of all time! As I have recently been re-reading Wuthering Heights, I just had to write about new insights I am gaining about both of these characters and the novel! It is such a layered and complex novel that it always ends up meaning something new to me each time I read it, leading to many new interpretations and theories about what certain passages mean.
Now, those who have not read the book may be surprised to learn that there are two Catherine’s in Wuthering Heights, as nearly all cinematic adaptations only actually adapt part of the book. The novel is told in the first person by two narrators, Mr. Lockwood, who is renting Thrushcross Grange from Heathcliff, and Ellen ‘Nelly’ Dean, who relays the story of Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff to him. This is a unique format to create a novel, as it is a narrator within a narrator set-up for most of the text, which leads to many questions, as we do not know how reliable either narrator is!
As for the second Catherine, Catherine Linton (who became Catherine Heathcliff after her marriage) is the daughter of Catherine Earnshaw (who became Catherine Linton after her marriage). Is that confusing enough for you? Well, it is supposed to be confusing, with Mr. Lockwood’s introduction to the Catherines being when he finds variations of the name carved into furniture and written in books when he is taken to an unoccupied room at Wuthering Heights (originally the home of the Earnshaw family, which is then owned and lived in by Heathcliff). Lockwood had been forced to stay at his landlord’s home (as Heathcliff also owned Thrushcross Grange) after a bad snowstorm set in when he went there for a visit.
Lockwood becomes very confused himself, obsessing over the name and having a nightmare that bleeds into Catherine’s Ghost coming to the window begging to be let in. Catherine’s Ghost is one of the most powerful aspects of the novel and the film adaptations, as they normally include this part of the story. I have always read and interpreted Catherine’s Ghost to be a literal haunting, even though Lockwood himself seems rather skeptical of this until the end of the book. At the point when this scene takes place, Lockwood has already met the younger Catherine but does not know her name or origins, only knowing that she is the widow of Heathcliff’s son. So, even before Lockwood knows the identity of the younger Catherine, he shows a level of fascination with her. The fascination other people have for both Catherines is a large aspect of the novel, with them being larger-than-life figures in many ways, inciting either admiration and lust or anger and disdain for her behavior. Lockwood himself shows a bit of both of these views, oscillating between intense dislike to admiring and lusting after the younger Catherine. Similarly, Lockwood first calls Catherine’s Ghost (the older Catherine) a Changeling and relates much anger at her appearance at the window, but later shows a great amount of zeal to learn about her from Nelly Dean!
In the case of each Catherine, I tend to love the characters, even for her poor behavior. The older Catherine can certainly be cruel, pinching Nelly harshly and shaking her nephew (which is truly terrible) in front of Edgar Linton, yet he still proposed later that evening, so clearly it did not upset him as much as he pretended it did. The younger Catherine is often antagonizing Joseph (with his obsessive religiosity), being often quite mean-spirited to those living in Wuthering Heights when Lockwood first arrived there. However, it must be said that in the case of the younger Catherine, she is showing her disdain for her father-in-law, Heathcliff, having so much control over her life, which is certainly much more of a sympathetic reason for this behavior!
I wrote an entire post a couple of years ago and made a video (both of which I will link below) about a theory I had come up with that Catherine Earnshaw truly was a Faery Changeling, which I believe even more so now that I am reading the novel again. As I stated earlier, Lockwood himself calls Catherine’s Ghost a Changeling, and that is what set off this theory to begin with. Further support to this magickal view of the character is that the Catherines do not behave as the society of their time would expect or appreciate a young lady to behave, but they are not truly wicked, instead making decisions based on their emotional desires. The older Catherine is stated by Nelly to have adopted a double character, without intending to do so, as she behaved differently in front of Edgar than in front of Heathcliff, not wanting to show her cruelty to Edgar before the incident I mentioned in the previous paragraph. Nelly also described Catherine as ‘a haughty and headstrong creature’ and ‘queen of the countryside’ but with ‘a remarkable constancy to old attachments.’ This shows the very deep complexity of her characterization and also why both she and her daughter can be seen as not belonging to this world. Plus, there are many instances of mentions of black magic, Changelings, goblins, and faeries. Even Catherine becoming a ghost seems to suggest an immeasurable depth of the Otherworldly nature of these women! Some old folklore stories state that witches become faeries when they die, which is very similar to my interpretation that Catherine the Faery Changeling was able to become a Ghost when she died, even if regular humans would not.
Now, I want to get back into my thoughts on the story itself, as Nelly relayed it to Lockwood. Catherine Earnshaw married Edgar Linton in the hopes that she could use his money to help Heathcliff out of his situation of being a servant in her brother’s household. Of course, this was a poor decision based on youthful naivety, as Heathcliff overhears her discussing her engagement with Nelly, he runs off, not knowing her reasoning for getting engaged. It is that poor decision that sets the whole story truly into motion, as Catherine had been caught between Edgar Linton and Heathcliff for years, loving Heathcliff as a childhood playmate and falling very in love with him as they grew up. Yet she also grew close to Edgar after staying in his home (Thrushcross Grange) when she was injured by a dog after a wild run through the Moors with Heathcliff, spending five weeks with the Lintons. Both young men vie to be her suitor, but her heart belongs to Heathcliff, yet her pragmatic intellect had her agreeing to marry Edgar so that she could use his money to help Heathcliff. She explains to Nelly that she knew that marrying Heathcliff would have them living as beggars and destitute, thanks to her brother’s hatred of Heathcliff. All of this is explained in a favorite scene of mine, as she describes her love for Heathcliff so beautifully: “…he’s more myself than I am. Whatever, our souls are made of, his and mine are the same; and Linton’s is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or as frost from fire.” I think this quote is also pivotal in my theory that Catherine is a Changeling, as Heathcliff also becomes a Ghost upon his death, and if he and Catherine have souls made of the same stuff, that means they both have Faery origins, and they are the only two Ghosts Lockwood ever describes seeing on the Moors!
After Heathcliff runs off, Catherine searches the Moors for him all night long, sitting out in the rain calling to him, becoming very ill in the process. After she is healed, Catherine marries Edgar Linton, and Heathcliff is not seen for years, as the marriage takes place three years after Heathcliff disappeared (and Edgar’s parents died). When Heathcliff returned, he had made a large sum of money, which is never explained, only that he is now insanely wealthy. Heathcliff’s newfound wealth allowed him to purchase Wuthering Heights from Catherine’s brother, who had lost most of his own wealth due to his alcoholism and gambling debts. When Heathcliff returns, he and Catherine are reunited and spend much time together, to the chagrin of Edgar Linton. Even more to the chagrin of both Catherine and Edgar is that Heathcliff seeks to marry Edgar’s sister, Isabella, out of spite for Catherine marrying another. This is what leads to the births of both Linton Heathcliff and the younger Catherine. Of course, sadly, the older Catherine died in childbirth, which left her daughter to be raised by Edgar alone.
The younger Catherine is eventually married off to Linton Heathcliff, who is a sickly young man, but this was forced through by Heathcliff, as he wanted Thrushcross Grange in his holdings and to torture Edgar Linton and his memory. Of course, by the time of Lockwood’s arrival, Edgar, Isabella, and Heathcliff’s son are all deceased. The younger Catherine loathes being stuck at Wuthering Heights, and Heathcliff’s preventing her from marrying again (as she is in love with Hareton Earnshaw) as he wants to keep Thrushcross Grange in his control. Yes, I will acknowledge the elephant in the room: both of the younger Catherine’s suitors are her cousins, but that was not uncommon in the era the book was set in or when it was written. In the epilogue, we see that Heathcliff has died and, Catherine and Hareton can be together finally, and Heathcliff and her mother are haunting the Moors together! That is why I view the ending of this novel as a happy one, in a bittersweet way, as even through all the pain and death, love triumphs with the two pairs of lovers meant to be together finally getting to be!
I hope you have enjoyed reading my long and rambling thoughts and analysis of both Catherines and Wuthering Heights during my current read-through of the novel. What is your favorite theory about either Catherine? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!
Note on Image: The image at the top of the post is a beautiful illustration of Catherine by Robert McGinnis from 1926. I found the picture on https://www.pinterest.com/pin/reminds-me-of-catherine-from-wuthering-heights–332492384974751422/.
LINK TO AVALONIAN ROSE FAERY MYSTERIES PATREON: patreon.com/AvalonianRoseFaeryMysteries
Further Reading/Watching
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
- Wuthering Heights (1992) (The Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche version is one of the few that attempts to tell the whole story of the novel.)
- https://whiteroseofavalon.life/2022/03/17/wuthering-heights-a-happy-ending/
- https://whiteroseofavalon.life/2022/09/26/catherine-earnshaw-a-faery-changeling/
- https://youtu.be/I4YokLa0tII?si=VSHjgtYeA-SAK6n2
- https://youtu.be/zta7ugISelQ?si=FeXAzBURf896aFWY