When I first started reading these essays I wasn't sure what I would write this blog about. The more I read, the more I found things that I had not realized. On page 468 Lyn Pykett brings up the variations of Catherine on the ledge where Lockwood is sleeping, or at least trying to. On the next page, "Catherine begins her life as Catherine Earnshaw and ends it as Catherine Linton. Catherine Heathcliff remains an unfulfilled possibility, a route not taken, although some would argue that this unoccupied term in fact names Catherine's true identity."(469) This being read made me think about the fact that Catherine even stated that "Heathcliff is 'more myself than I am.'"(86) Even though Catherine was married to Heathcliff, she still saw herself as his.
In connection to Catherine is Cathy. My blog title is not meaning that Cathy is a mirror image of Catherine, as the essay and novel clearly tell us, but that Cathy's life or actions were a mirror image to Catherine's. On page 474 Pykeet points out that Catherine's puberty is reached when she goes to Thrushcross Grange. Becoming more civilized, in some ways, than when she was young at Wuthering Heights. Cathy on the other hand mirrors her mother and goes from the Grange and her civilized life, to Wuthering Heights and a more savage lifestyle.
Another point that I saw was the fact that where Catherine was unable to complete the cycle of Earnshaw to Linton to Heathcliff. Cathy was able to complete this cycle. She started as a Linton then married Linton and became a Heathcliff. After Linton dies Cathy marries Hareton and becomes an Earnshaw. This of course is in a mirrored way to Catherine's life. Where she went from Earnshaw to wanting to be with Heathcliff, but ended up a Linton, Cathy just went through them all in the opposite order.
I hadn't thought about the two Catherines as mirror images (in life choices) of each other, but now that I see it things seem a lot more interesting.
You make a good point about them being opposing mirrored images. The struggle of Catherine is the one of her having to deal with her new "social" self and that of her true self of her past. Her daughter on the other hand has to deal with her past "civil" self to her new true self.
ReplyDeleteI like your comparison between puberty and the discovery of a new estate. With puberty and adolescence comes rebellion, and each Catherine rebels against their original nature (for better or for worse) once they discover the opposing estate. In this way it's not the estate itself that changes a person but who they were before and the act of discovery itself. Finding the Grange or the Heights becomes findings yourself and I think that's a metaphor I can live with.
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