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Essay on Character Relationships Heathcliff and Cathy
Introduction
The setting and descriptions of Wuthering Heights that Emily Brontë uses throughout her novel, Wuthering Heights, helps to set the mood for describing Heathcliff and Cathy. The cold, muddy, and barren moors separate the two households. Each house stands alone, in the midst of the dreary land, but the atmospheres of the two estates are quite different. This difference helps explain the personalities and bond of Cathy and Heathcliff.
Discussion
Wuthering Heights, which represents Hell, is always in a state of storminess. The Heights and its surroundings depict the coldness, darkness, and evil associated with Hell. This parallels Heathcliff. He symbolizes the cold, dark, and dismal house. The author uses parallel personifications to depict specific parts of the house as analogues to Heathcliff’s face. Brontë describes the windows of the Heights as deeply set in the wall. Similarly, Heathcliff has deep-set dark eyes. Alongside with this association, Brontë’s title of her book holds definite meaning. The very definition of “wuthering” is “to dry up, shrivel, or wilt as from decay”. The inhabitants, especially Heathcliff and Cathy, cause the decay of themselves and bring “storminess” to the house.
Wuthering Heights, however, is always full of activity, sometimes to the point of chaos. Brave Cathy, a child of the storm, tries to tie these two worlds of storm and calm together. Despite the fact that she occupies a position midway between the two worlds, Catherine is a product of the moors. She belongs in a sense to both worlds and is torn between Heathcliff and Linton. Catherine does not “like” Heathcliff, yet loves him with all of the strength of her being. For he, like her, is a child of the storm; this makes a bond between them, and interweaves itself with the very nature of their existence. In a sublime passage, she tells Nelly that she loves Heathcliff.....
