Catherine morally ambiguous in Wuthering Heights?

Question

I am supposed to write about a morally ambiguous character in Wuthering Heights and I've picked Catherine. I know she is mostly good and not really evil but she is in a way an unsympathetic character. I'd just like to know if you guys think the way I do and most importantly if you can give me some examples in the text where she is morally ambiguous. Thanks!!!!

Answer 1

I think she is someone whose heart is in the right place, but is misguided...mostly due to immaturity.

The most important thing to understand about Catherine, that a lot of people don't understand...is her age.  Her age is important to helping to understand her frame of mind, and to help understand her history with Heathcliff.

Catherine and Heathcliff meet when she is six years old.  (Heathcliff is about a year older.)

They meet Edgar and Isabella Linton when Catherine is twelve years old.

Catherine and Edgar become engaged when Catherine is fifteen years old.  (This is when Heathcliff runs away.)

Catherine and Edgar marry three years later, when she is eighteen.  Heathcliff returns a few months later.

Catherine dies within the year, at age nineteen.

Catherine and Heathcliff spend their childhoods together, inseparable.  The important thing to understand here is that they were *children*.  Unlike the movies, they were not adults.  They did not have any sort of romantic or sexual relationship with each other. They really are each other's ONLY friends, and are each other's whole world.  Catherine isn't even close to her own family.  She and Hareton don't have a good relationship, and even her father doesn't care for her.  (He says to her in Ch 5 "Nay, Cathy, I cannot love thee, thou'rt worse than thy brother. Go, say thy prayers, child, and ask God's pardon. I doubt thy mother and I must rue that we ever reared thee!')

Unlike a lot of interpretations of her intentions when she married Edgar, is was not due to greed, or a desire for money or status.  (That that's not to say that they didn't have *some* appeal for her.)  She did love Edgar, though that love was not the same sort of feeling she had for Heathcliff.  (Ch 9--"My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I AM Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being.")  She was living in a house, under the rule of her tyrant of a brother. Her only friend and soul mate was abused on a daily basis by him.  Her main motive was to help herself and Heathcliff escape from her brother.  (Ch 9--"Nelly, I see now you think me a selfish wretch; but did it never strike you that if Heathcliff and I married, we should be beggars? whereas, if I marry Linton I can aid Heathcliff to rise, and place him out of my brother's power.")

When she made plans to marry Edgar, she planned to be every bit the faithful and dutiful wife to him.  She did not plan to be unfaithful to him and have Heathcliff as a *lover*.  Why should she?  She and Heathcliff had never been "lovers" before.  In her mind, she imagined that she would be Edgar's wife, and that she and Heathcliff can just go on being exactly as they had *always* been.  Ch9--(about Heathcliff) "He'll be as much to me as he has been all his lifetime. Edgar must shake off his antipathy, and tolerate him, at least. He will, when he learns my true feelings towards him."  In her mind, she and Edgar would marry and be a happy husband and wife, she and Heathcliff would be the same as they had always been, and maybe Edgar and Heathcliff could even become friends and they would all be like one big, happy family.

*This* is where her immaturity shows. (Don't forget, she's fifteen when she makes all these grand plans.)  It's a nice dream, but not very realistic.

Once Catherine and Edgar marry, she is good to him and Isabella.  Nelly's description is a bit deceptive here, because Nelly did not like Catherine at ALL, and was extremely critical of everything that Catherine did or said.  The fact that it is Nelly telling the story skews the perception of the person that Catherine was, because you only get one side of the story, and that's from someone who basically loathed Catherine.  Nelly says at one point, "I've had many a laugh at her perplexities and untold troubles, which she vainly strove to hide from my mockery." Yet Catherine always sort of loves Nelly, and confides her deepest feelings and secrets to her throughout her life, and wants to keep Nelly with her. (She even brings Nelly to Thrushcross Grange with her after her marriage.)  Catherine considers Nelly to be a friend, but Nelly is no friend to Catherine.

Nelly's description of Catherine and Edgar's life together is interdispersed with descriptions of Catherine being good and kind,  (Ch 10--"She seemed almost over-fond of Mr. Linton; and even to his sister she showed plenty of affection." ) with Nelly's criticisms of her motives for being so. And Edgar and Isabella loved and adored HER deeply.  

Catherine pretty much spent the rest of her life trying to fit her husband and Heathcliff together, and just could not understand why they couldn't make peace for her sake.  She felt that SHE had made a tremendous sacrifice.  She felt that she had sacrificed for Heathcliff by marrying Edgar to help save herself and Heathcliff.  She felt that she had sacrificed for Edgar by giving up the chance to marry Heathcliff for him, and by playing the part of the dutiful wife.  She absolutely believed that she was doing each of them a favor.  She actually felt betrayed by THEM because they weren't grateful for it.  (Again, and example of her immaturity.)