She confides in her housekeeper that she loves Heathcliff, but can’t marry him because it would “degrade” her (71). While Catherine does have some affection for Edgar, she does not marry him out of love, she marries him because he is rich. Her love for Edgar is not natural, it is pretended. When Catherine falls ill, there’s a certain moment that she believe she is being haunted because she does not recognize herself in the mirror. When Nelly manages to convince her that the image in the mirror is her own, Catherine is horrified.
In the novel, Heathcliff loses all the people who cared for him in Mr. Earnshaw and Catherine. Then, he lives a sad and pitiable existence. Heathcliff’s callousness is shown when he tells Nelly that he “takes so little interest in [his] daily life that [he] hardly remembers to eat and drink” (Brontë 108-109). After losing all he cared for in Catherine, Heathcliff is simply finished inside. His entire life was based upon the goal of Catherine and since he failed to achieve that goal, he set out to take revenge on those who he considered had wronged him.
From the very first he showed great courage, steadfastness, and love. But with Mr. Earnshaw 's death Hindley has the power to degrade Heathcliff to the status of a servant. A weak, vindictive character, as cruel as Heathcliff without Heathcliff 's strength, Hindley prepares for his own destruction by his inhumanity to Heathcliff and the other inhabitants of the Heights” (Watson, 90). With the loss of his father, Hindley has a sudden gain of power, in that he must navigate the entire future of Wuthering Heights himself. This opens Hindley up to the stresses and strains of leadership, in which Heathcliff can manipulate the the suffering of Hindley.
Heathcliff gaines wealth and connections and now is in a place of immense power. Hareton comes to live with Heathcliff and immediately serves as a whipping board for Heathcliff. This attitude shown by Heathcliff in the quote “he had the hypocrisy to represent a mourner: and previous to following with Hareton, he lifted the unfortunate child on to the table and muttered, with peculiar gusto, Now, my bonny lad, you are mine! And we 'll see if one tree won 't grow as crooked as another, with the same wind to twist it!" exemplifies the cycle of abuse in Wuthering Heights (Bronte 116).
Readers have learned to expect this behaviour from those with hidden virtue as traditionally, this is how romance novel protagonists are portrayed: dangerous, brooding, etc. however in Heathcliff’s case, he does not reform to be a purely good person, instead his malevolence proves to be a long-lasting trait that persists. Both Heathcliff and Catherine have counterparts in the Linton siblings, their counterparts being the perfect opposite of the other: Edgar is Heathcliff’s counterpart being raised as the perfect gentleman, well mannered and with civilised values but while these traits get Catherine to marry him over Heathcliff, they are ultimately useless and weak. Isabella Linton, Catherine’s counterpart and Edgar Linton’s sister is cultured and much more civilised than Catherine who is wilder and lively, occasionally even cruel. In the first 16 Chapters, we see both characters personality develop: Heathcliff’s fluctuating between romantic and cruel and Catherine slowly going from lively to cold and unable to choose, leading to her health continuously declining until she passes
Edgar’s selflessness can be seen through his mother. Edgar wanted to make his mother happy and conforms to her wishes. She always told him that he should marry a white woman so that as generations went by, the Indian part of their heritage would finally be (taken out). He was heavily
Catherine’s marriage to Edgar Linton is a turning point. Normally, it must be a marriage of happy ending, however, it represents the repression of Heathcliff and makes him an embedded of revenge. He becomes an outcome of everything he has encountered. People which are not abondend by social conventions are always shown as monsters ,as for instance, In Marry Shelley’s Frankenstein, the inability of the monster to unite with his creator makes him a threaten to humanity. Moreover, the protagonists, Heathcliff and Catherine, are happy when they do not follow the conventions of the society ,however, they were oppressed when they follow them.
For this reason, she marries Edgar Linton the antagonist man character of Wuthering Heights who can provide Catherine with wealth and the new life she wants. In this way Heathcliff is major male character of this classic novel, he falls in love Catherine but she is married to the other man. He is embodiment of Byronic hero that has all negative personalities. He is devilish and revengeful lover at the same time he is passionate lover. In brief, it tells us tragic love story by Bronte.
Then he meets the anti-social Cathy who “never opened her mouth. I stared--she stared also”. Lockwood then encounters Heathcliff who is the character that is most like the bleak rough terrain, when he gives orders to Cathy Lockwood said the order was “uttered so savagely that I started. The tone in which the words were said revealed a genuine bad
Lieutenant Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley are the protagonists of Ernest Hemingway’s novel A Farewell to Arms. Although there aren’t any other characters in the majority of the novel, there are a few that make an appearance every so often, like Rinaldi, The Priest, Helen Ferguson and Miss Gage. For the sake of this paper I will only be looking at the minor character Helen Ferguson, who is close friends with Catherine. Helen, who is often referred to as Ferguson or Fergy, is the voice of reason in regards to Henry and Catherine’s relationship. She also foreshadows the tragic end of the novel and seems to have been put into the novel to help the reader get a better understanding of Catherine.