Cesar Hernandez

Period 2

Wuthering Heights Essay

Was Catherine always free in wuthering heights or was she enslaved there? At
some point in her live she was free but later on in the years she was being controlled by
other characters living in the household. Especially one specific person who returned to
control the heights, but it seems he didn’t have much of a role in dominating Catherine.
The oppression by them made her angry, gloomy and bizarre with no way out of it. Even
her emotions and feelings kept her imprisoned since she didn’t know what to do and was
trapped by them. The period of time where Catherine’s life takes place is in the
eighteenth century. Many of the women who lived like Catherine were controlled by the
men rather than the women. A person that Catherine could relate by this reason is a
woman poet by the name of Sylvia Plath also known as the emo wife by others. In the
novel “Wuthering Heights,” Catherine is not considered free, except that there are some
points in her life that shows that she is free.
The novel Wuthering Heights take place in the mid eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. In this period of time women had no rights that men had, men could
do basically anything they want. Women would just stay at home and take care of both
the family and the household. Women were always oppressed by the men, they had no
formal education, weren’t able to vote, and could not get most opportunities of jobs in
life. At some point in a females life the parents control who they marry and treat the
marriage as a funeral. This applied to many of the women in the middle class and lower
classes, some of the upper class women might have also been affected by this. Families in
the lower classes lived in shoddy tenants such as the house hold wuthering heights. The
upper class lived in small mansions such as Thrushcross Grange.
In the novel Wuthering Heights, the women living in the heights were not free
since some served to maintain the household. There are two tenants in the story
Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. Catherine lives in wuthering heights but also
was taken care of in the household thrushcross grange. At the grange she learned to
become a proper woman and then returned to the heights. She was happy and sort of free
for some time but then a few years passed and Heathcliff had returned to control the
heights. Heathcliff married Isabella and Catherine married Edgar. Catherine loved both
Edgar but also loved Heathcliff as well since she and him played when they were young.
Edgar began to question her if she had feelings for Heathcliff and had left her for some
time. Catherine was becoming depressed during her time there and was also having some
temper tantrums due to an emotional breakdown. It is realized that she has hurt both
Edgar and Heathcliff, but Heathcliff says that she became ill because of her self and what
she is doing which affects many of the characters in the novel. Later on in the story she
dies after giving birth to Cathy, but before that she had said that her spirit will never be at
rest and also Heathcliff curses her so her spirit would never leave him.
 Catherine did have feelings for Heathcliff yet she chose Edgar for the wrong
reason in which it affects her. She remembers her life with Heathcliff when both were
young children playing on the wide open space of the moors. She then beings to realize
that Heathcliff and her were suppose to be together but know she cant change things and
mustn’t let Heathcliff know that she has feelings for him. This quote from “Wuthering
Heights” chapter 9 Catherine tells Nelly about her and Heathcliff being the same. “It
would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him; and
that, not because he’s handsome, Nelly, but because he’s more myself than I am.
Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and [Edgar’s] is as different
as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.” From this quote Nelly can tell what
Catherine feels for both men. Catherine feels guilty, locks herself, has hurt both the men
she loved, and then died; so her emotions had kept her enslaved. Sylvia Plath a woman
poet had problems with her life and was also imprisoned by her emotions but she
expressed them into her poems using similes and metaphors. Her husband Ted Hughes
made her life worse and she realized that he was taking control of her.
Even though Catherine seems that she isn’t free in Wuthering heights people say
that she is free. She did make her own decisions without being controlled most of the
time. For example when she talks to Nelly she says that she will stay with Heathcliff and
be free with him. “It's a rough journey, and a sad heart to travel it; and we must pass by
Gimmerton Kirk to go that journey! We've braved its ghosts often together, and dared
each other to stand among the graves and ask them to come. But, Heathcliff, if I dare you
now, will you venture? If you do, I'll keep you. I'll not lie there by myself: they may bury
me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me, but I won't rest till you are
with me. I never will!” Yet the quote reveals more as if she will be trapped in the heights
with the man she loves. With Sylvia Plath it is another case since she deals with her
emotions and opinion
Catherine is not considered free, except that there are some points in her life that
shows that she is free. She always did seem free in the whole story until her emotions got
the best of her. Her love for another; when she loved another is something that happens to
many people in life. Heathcliff returns to the height to seek revenge on those that have
shunned him yet his presence is his revenge when Catherine was married.