CHARACTERS

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  • Created by: jade
  • Created on: 22-05-17 09:55

Catherine Linton

  • Cathy and Catherine are both remarkably similar and strikingly different
    • Bronte's use of doubles
    • Bronte's use of cycles 
  • A kinder, gentler version of her mother, her generosity and kindness toward Hareton and love of simpering Linton demonstrates a compassion and selflessness her mother never had.
    • "That capacity for intense attachments reminded me of her mother: still she did not resemble her: for she could be soft and mild as a dove, and she had a gentle voice and pensive expression: her anger was never furious; her love never fierce: it was deep and tender." -- page 189
  • Union with Hareton -- romantic conclusion -- transcends novel's central conflicts
    • restores traditional novelistic plot of courtship and marriage
    • domestic bliss (note: Cathy has the upperhand)
    • “But I'll not do anything, though you should swear your tongue out, except what I please!"”
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Hareton Earnshaw

  • Transcends brutal mistreatment evolves from an illiterate brute into Cathy's lover
  • Development is reliant on education -- without he is wild and uncultivated -- attempts at self improvement are mocked by Cathy and Linton -- results in union of Cathy and Hareton
    • "Earnshaw blushed crimson when his cousin made this revelation of his private literary accumulations, and stammered an indignant denial of her accusations"
  • Can be seen as a rewriting of Heathcliff -- a surrogate of symbolic Heathcliff
    • "a well-made, athletic youth, good-looking in features, and stout and healthy, but attired in garments befitting his daily occupations of working on the farm and lounging among the moors after rabbits and game”
  • Structural repeat of Heathcliff's own suffering at the hands of Hindley -- does not help that Hareton resembles Catherine more than her own daughter -- Bronte's use of cycles
    • "I'm trying to settle how I shall pay Hindley back. I don't care how long I wait if I can only do it at last."
    • "He appeared to have bent his malevolence on making him a brute."
    • "With a look of Catherine in his eyes and about his mouth"
  • Relationship with Cathy mirrors Heathcliff and Catherine's -- Bronte's use of doubles
    • "He wanted to be presentable" vs "Nelly, make me decent"
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Linton Heathcliff

  • Both physically and mentally weak -- allows for Heathcliff and himself to manipulate
  • His name signifies the unnatural union of Heathcliffs and Lintons -- his sickly nature is evident of its impossibility
    • "Ailing, peevish creature."
  • Along with ill, he is presented as feminine which represents how femininity and weakness are linked in Bronte's society
    • "[Linton] was asleep in a corner, wrapped in a warm, fur-lined cloak, as if it had been winter. A pale, delicate, effeminate boy."
    • "Linton's looks and movements were very languid, and his form extremely slight; but there was a grace in his manner that mitigated these defects, and rendered him not unpleasing."
  • He himself is able to manipulate people -- illness during the 18th century was seen as fashionable -- is able to manipulate Cathy
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Isabella Linton

  • Infatuation with Heathcliff is a direct result of her cultural life -- can only view him as a romantic hero -- she never abandons this fantasy of a Byronic lover despite Heathcliff's lust for revenge which Isabella is only a cipher or vehicle
  • Fails to recognise the degree in which Heathcliff is using her shows love of melodrama
    • "I loved him more than you ever loved Edgar, and he might love me, if you would let him!"
  • Gynocriticism -- brutal realities of Isabella's position as the battered wife
    • "[Heathcliff] seized, and thrust [Isabella] from the room; and returned muttering - "I have no pity! I have no pity! The more the worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails! It is a moral teething; and I grind with greater energy in proportion to the increase of pain."
  • Catherine's foil -- Isabella represents culture and civilisation, both in her refinement and her weakness
    • “She was at that time a charming young lady of eighteen; infantile in manners, though possessed of keen wit, keen feelings, and a keen temper, too, if irritated.”
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Edgar Linton

  • Represents the world of conventional morality to which Heathcliff is the antithesis
  • Has a Victorian masculinity greater than Heathcliff's due to his social class -- Nelly constantly refers to him as "the master" -- Feminist critics Gilbert and Gubar: Edgar's masculinty roots from his social power
  • Artificial in contrast to the elemental descriptions afforded to Heathcliff and Catherine
    • "a doll" / "a spoiled child" / "a soft thing" / "a lamb who threatens like a bull"
  • Lacks spirit -- lacks the vigour that characterise Heathcliff and Catherine -- lacks their ghostliness, his corporeality is easy to read, he is not troubled by internal contradiction, and he remains in his place throughout the novel
  • Heathcliff's foil -- possible to read him as effeminate
    • “He had grown a tall, athletic, well-formed man; beside whom my master seemed quite slender and youth-like.”
  • He is a chance for social elevation for Catherine, who has the upperhand in their relationship
    • "He possessed the power to depart as much as a cat possesses the power to leave a mouse half killed, or a bird half eaten"
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Heathcliff

    • characterized as devilish and cruelly referred to as "it".
    • His language is "gibberish" and his dark otherness provokes the labels "gipsy," "wicked boy," "villain," and "imp of Satan."
  • Mysterious capacity for self invention -- radically outside social patterns and conventions
    • "Heathcliff [...] both for Christian and surname."
  • Encompasses vast philosophical opposites -- evil and heroism // culture and nature // love and death
  • Tyrannised by Hindley as a child results in becoming the antagonist -- corresponds with the ambivalence the upper classes felt toward the lower classes -- had charitable impulses toward lower-class citizens when miserable, but feared them trying to escape by acquiring political, social, cultural, or economic power
  • Byronic hero -- links directly with the gothic -- is a supernatural entity 
    • “A half-civilised ferocity.” -- OXYMORON -- dual personality
    • "He's not a human being."
    • "That forehead [...] was shaded with a heavy cloud; his basilisk eyes were nearly quenched with sleeplessness […] his lips devoid of their ferocious sneer.”
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Cathy Earnshaw

  • First introduction of her is as a ghost -- Heathcliff is tormented by Cathy, as she is as elusive and forbidden to him as she is incomprehensible to Lockwood
  • Starts and ends in an enigma -- has a fractured and fragmented social identity -- tries to combine two irreconcilable lives: passion and social convention
    • "Catherine Earnshaw - Catherine Linton - Catherine Heathcliff."
    • "I am Heathcliff" -- cannot stabalise her identity because Heathcliff is enigmatic too
  • Conflict stems from theme of nature vs culture -- marries Edgar for culture which directly contrasts the narrative insistence of her love of nature
  • Capable of ruthless destruction
    • "She was never so happy as when we were all scolding her at once, and she defying us with her bold, saucy look, and her ready words; turning Joseph's religious curses into ridicule, baiting me."
    • "At fifteen she was the queen of the countryside; she had no peer; and she did turn out a haughty, headstrong creature!"
    • "She stamped her foot, wavered a moment, and then, irresistibly impelled by the naughty spirit within her, slapped me on the cheek: a stinging blow that filled both eyes with water."
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Nelly

  • A peripheral narrative from Nelly -- unreliable -- not entirely impartial -- Pierre Macherey formulates a means of reading the "not said"
    • "You're fit for a prince in disguise. Who knows but your father was Emperor of China, and your mother an Indian queen, each of them able to buy up, with one week's income, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange together?" vs referring to him as "it" in childhood
  • Transcends boundaries of class consistently -- her assumed authority over Catherine as Nelly's mistress -- moves effortlessly between the Heights and the Grange
  • Nelly's narration outranks and dispossesses Lockwoods -- a framed narrative is used however to give Nelly's voice authority from a male -- patriarchy
  • A participant in Heathcliff's childhood humiliations
  • Morality -- Self interest -- Withholds or reveals her knowledge -- seemingly arbitrary yet it invariably influences the novels events
    • "You knew your mistress' nature and you encouraged me to harass her!"
    • "My betrayal of her confidence."
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