Catherine Linton (younger)

Catherine Linton (younger), called Cathy by her father and known in her later years as Catherine Heathcliff, is the second-generation heroine of Emily Brontë's novel. Born at Thrushcross Grange about twelve o'clock on the night her mother dies, she is a puny, seven-months' child, an unwelcomed infant whose beginning is as friendless as its end is likely to be. She is the living bridge between the two great houses of the story—the Earnshaws of Wuthering Heights and the Lintons of Thrushcross Grange—and her journey from sheltered girlhood through captivity to a hard-won happiness forms the novel's redemptive counterpoint to the destructive passions of the first generation.

Birth and Early Childhood

Catherine enters the world in the most tragic of circumstances. Her mother, Catherine Earnshaw, dies two hours after giving birth, having never recovered sufficient consciousness to miss Heathcliff or know Edgar. The infant is a feeble orphan, and Ellen Dean, the housekeeper who narrates much of the story, mentally abuses old Linton for securing his estate to his own daughter rather than his son, leaving Edgar Linton without an heir. For the first hours of her existence, the child might have wailed out of life and nobody cared a morsel; the neglect is later redeemed, but its beginning is as friendless as its end is likely to be.

Edgar Linton's initial coldness toward the puny successor to his departed wife melts as fast as snow in April. Before the tiny thing can stammer a word or totter a step, it wields a despot's sceptre in his heart. The child is named Catherine, but Edgar never calls her by the name in full, just as he had never called the first Catherine short—probably because Heathcliff had a habit of doing so. The little one is always Cathy, a distinction from the mother and yet a connection with her; his attachment springs from its relation to her, far more than from its being his own.

A Sheltered and Privileged Upbringing

Cathy grows like a larch after the first six months, able to walk and talk in her own way before the heath blossoms a second time over her mother's dust. She is the most winning thing that ever brought sunshine into a desolate house, a real beauty in face, with the Earnshaws' handsome dark eyes, but the Lintons' fair skin and small features, and yellow curling hair. Her spirit is high, though not rough, qualified by a heart sensitive and lively to excess in its affections. That capacity for intense attachments reminds Ellen of her mother, yet she does not resemble her: she can be soft and mild as a dove, with a gentle voice and pensive expression; her anger is never furious, her love never fierce—it is deep and tender.

She has faults to foil her gifts: a propensity to be saucy and a perverse will that indulged children invariably acquire. If a servant chances to vex her, it is always 'I shall tell papa!' Edgar takes her education entirely on himself and makes it an amusement; her curiosity and quick intellect make her an apt scholar, learning rapidly and eagerly and doing honour to his teaching. Till she reaches the age of thirteen she has not once been beyond the range of the park by herself. Mr. Linton takes her a mile or so outside on rare occasions, but trusts her to no one else. Gimmerton is an unsubstantial name in her ears; the chapel is the only building she has approached or entered, except her own home. Wuthering Heights and Mr. Heathcliff do not exist for her: she is a perfect recluse and, apparently, perfectly contented.

First Encounters with the Outside World

Cathy's sheltered world begins to crack when she first encounters Hareton Earnshaw, her cousin, who is a well-made, athletic youth, good-looking in features, stout and healthy, but attired in garments befitting his daily occupations of working on the farm and lounging among the moors after rabbits and game. When she mistakes him for a servant, he is disgusted, and she is horrified to learn he is her rude-bred kindred. Ellen Dean can scarcely refrain from smiling at this antipathy, detecting in his physiognomy a mind owning better qualities than his father ever possessed—good things lost amid a wilderness of weeds, yet evidence of a wealthy soil that might yield luxuriant crops under other and favourable circumstances.

Cathy's introduction to her other cousin, Linton Heathcliff, comes through a secret correspondence. She has been in the habit of writing to Linton, making love in play, and Heathcliff intercepts the letters. When he confronts her on the road, she answers defiantly: 'I sha'n't speak to you, Mr. Heathcliff. Papa says you are a wicked man, and you hate both him and me; and Ellen says the same.' Heathcliff reveals that Linton is in earnest, dying for her, breaking his heart at her fickleness—not figuratively, but actually—and that Hareton has made him a standing jest for six weeks. He threatens to send the letters to her father if she gives him any pertness.

Secret Visits and Growing Entanglement

Despite her father's prohibition, Cathy begins visiting Wuthering Heights in secret. She confesses to Ellen that she has been going every day since Ellen fell ill, except thrice before and twice after she left her room. She gives Michael books and pictures to prepare her pony Minny every evening and to put her back in the stable. She is at the Heights by half-past six and generally stays till half-past eight, then gallops home. It is not to amuse herself that she goes—she is often wretched all the time, happy perhaps once in a week. On her second visit, Linton seems in lively spirits; Zillah, the housekeeper, makes them a clean room and a good fire, brings warm wine and gingerbread, and they laugh and talk merrily, planning where they will go and what they will do in summer.

When she finally meets Linton on the heath, scarcely a quarter of a mile from his own door, he has no horse and lies awaiting her approach, walking so feebly and looking so pale that Ellen immediately exclaims he is not fit for enjoying a ramble. Catherine surveys him with grief and astonishment, changing the ejaculation of joy on her lips to one of alarm. He pants that he is better, trembling and retaining her hand as if he needs its support, his large blue eyes wandering timidly over her, the hollowness round them transforming to haggard wildness the languid expression they once possessed.

Captivity and Forced Marriage

Cathy's defiance reaches its peak when she attempts to escape Wuthering Heights with the key. Heathcliff warns her, 'Now, Catherine Linton, stand off, or I shall knock you down; and, that will make Mrs. Dean mad.' Regardless of the warning, she captures his closed hand and its contents again, exerting her utmost efforts to cause the iron muscles to relax, and finding that her nails make no impression, she applies her teeth pretty sharply. Heathcliff opens his fingers suddenly and resigns the object of dispute, but ere she has well secured it, he seizes her with the liberated hand, pulls her on his knee, and administers with the other a shower of terrific slaps on both sides of the head, each sufficient to have fulfilled his threat had she been able to fall. Ellen rushes on him furiously, crying 'You villain!', but a touch on the chest silences her. The scene is over in two minutes; Catherine, released, puts her two hands to her temples and looks just as if she were not sure whether her ears are off or on, trembling like a reed and leaning against the table perfectly bewildered.

Her captivity culminates in a forced marriage to Linton Heathcliff. After her father's death, the lawyer Mr. Green, who has sold himself to Mr. Heathcliff, takes upon himself to order everything and everybody about the place, giving all the servants but Ellen notice to quit. He would have carried his delegated authority to the point of insisting that Edgar Linton should not be buried beside his wife, but in the chapel with his family; there is the will, however, to hinder that. The funeral is hurried over, and Catherine, now Mrs. Linton Heathcliff, is suffered to stay at the Grange till her father's corpse has quitted it.

Escape and Widowhood

Cathy's anguish at last spurs Linton to incur the risk of liberating her. She hears the men Ellen sent disputing at the door and gathers the sense of Heathcliff's answer, which drives her desperate. Linton, conveyed up to the little parlour soon after Ellen left, is terrified into fetching the key before his father re-ascends. He has the cunning to unlock and re-lock the door without shutting it, and when he should have gone to bed, he begs to sleep with Hareton, and his petition is granted for once. Catherine steals out before break of day. She dares not try the doors lest the dogs should raise an alarm; she visits the empty chambers and examines their windows, and, luckily, lighting on her mother's, she gets easily out of its lattice and on to the ground by means of the fir-tree close by. Her accomplice suffers for his share in the escape, notwithstanding his timid contrivances.

Reconciliation and Redemption

After Linton's death, Cathy's relationship with Hareton Earnshaw begins to transform. The intimacy thus commenced grows rapidly, though it encounters temporary interruptions. Earnshaw is not to be civilized with a wish, and Cathy is no philosopher and no paragon of patience; but both their minds tending to the same point—one loving and desiring to esteem, and the other loving and desiring to be esteemed—they contrive in the end to reach it. Ellen Dean reflects that it was easy enough to win Mrs. Heathcliff's heart, and that the crown of all her wishes will be the union of those two; she will envy no one on their wedding day, for there won't be a happier woman than herself in England.

When Hareton sternly checks his cousin on her offering a revelation of her father-in-law's conduct to his father, saying he wouldn't suffer a word to be uttered in his disparagement—if he were the devil, it didn't signify; he would stand by him—Catherine is waxing cross, but he finds means to make her hold her tongue by asking how she would like him to speak ill of her father. Then she comprehends that Earnshaw takes the master's reputation home to himself and is attached by ties stronger than reason could break—chains forged by habit, which it would be cruel to attempt to loosen. She shows a good heart thenceforth, avoiding both complaints and expressions of antipathy concerning Heathcliff, and confesses to Ellen her sorrow that she had endeavoured to raise a bad spirit between him and Hareton.

When this slight disagreement is over, they are friends again, as busy as possible in their several occupations of pupil and teacher. Ellen comes in to sit with them after her work and feels so soothed and comforted to watch them that she does not notice how time gets on. They both appear in a measure her children: she had long been proud of one, and now she is sure the other would be a source of equal satisfaction. Hareton's honest, warm, and intelligent nature shakes off rapidly the clouds of ignorance and degradation in which it had been bred, and Catherine's sincere commendations act as a spur to his industry. His brightening mind brightens his features and adds spirit and nobility to their aspect. When Heathcliff returns unexpectedly and has a full view of the whole three, the red fire-light glows on their two bonny heads and reveals their faces animated with the eager interest of children; for, though he is twenty-three and she eighteen, each has so much of novelty to feel and learn that neither experiences nor evinces the sentiments of sober disenchanted maturity.

They lift their eyes together to encounter Mr. Heathcliff, and it is remarked that their eyes are precisely similar—they are those of Catherine Earnshaw. The present Catherine has no other likeness to her, except a breadth of forehead and a certain arch of the nostril that makes her appear rather haughty, whether she will or not. With Hareton the resemblance is carried farther; it is singular at all times, then particularly striking because his senses are alert and his mental faculties wakened to unwonted activity. This resemblance disarms Mr. Heathcliff: he walks to the hearth in evident agitation, but it quickly subsides as he looks at the young man, or rather alters its character, for it is there yet. He takes the book from his hand and glances at the open page, then returns it without any observation.

Narrative Role and Significance

Catherine Linton (younger) functions as the novel's second-generation hope, the character through whom the destructive legacy of the first generation is finally overcome. Her story is a distorted or failed Bildungsroman that ultimately succeeds: unlike her mother, who dies trapped between two men and two modes of being, Cathy survives her captivity, her forced marriage, and her widowhood to find genuine love with Hareton. Her journey from the sheltered, privileged world of Thrushcross Grange through the brutal captivity of Wuthering Heights and finally to a reconciled union with Hareton mirrors and corrects the tragedy of her mother. Where Catherine Earnshaw's love for Heathcliff was destructive and impossible, Cathy's love for Hareton is constructive and possible, built on mutual esteem and shared labor rather than on the eternal rocks of an impossible passion. The novel's final hope rests on her: the union of the two houses, the restoration of the Earnshaw line, and the promise that the ancient stock has been restored to its rights.