Mr. Earnshaw and Catherine's father-daughter relationship

Mr. Earnshaw and Catherine's father-daughter relationship is the emotional bedrock of the early Earnshaw household, a bond marked by profound love, generational misunderstanding, and a shared wildness that ultimately proves both sustaining and destructive. It is within this fraught dynamic that Catherine's fierce spirit is forged, her capacity for deep attachment is formed, and the seeds of her later, catastrophic choices are sown.

Identity and Introduction

Mr. Earnshaw, the old master of Wuthering Heights, is a man of stern and grave disposition with his children, yet he possesses a kind heart. Catherine, from her earliest years, is a "wild, wicked slip" with the "bonniest eye, the sweetest smile, and lightest foot in the parish." Her spirits are always at high-water mark, her tongue always going—singing, laughing, and plaguing everybody. She is much too fond of Heathcliff, the foundling her father brought home from Liverpool, and the greatest punishment the household can invent for her is to keep her separate from him. Mr. Earnshaw does not understand jokes from his children, and Catherine, on her part, has no idea why her father should be crosser and less patient in his ailing condition than he was in his prime. His peevish reproofs waken in her a naughty delight to provoke him; she is never so happy as when she is defying him with her bold, saucy look and ready words, turning Joseph's religious curses into ridicule and showing how her pretended insolence has more power over Heathcliff than his father's kindness.

Arc Through the Plot: From Provocation to Grief

The relationship is defined by a cycle of provocation and reconciliation. After behaving as badly as possible all day, Catherine sometimes comes fondling to make it up at night. The old man would then say, "Nay, Cathy, I cannot love thee, thou'rt worse than thy brother. Go, say thy prayers, child, and ask God's pardon." This makes her cry at first, but being repulsed continually hardens her, and she laughs if told to say she is sorry. The climax of their relationship comes on the evening of Mr. Earnshaw's death. Catherine has been sick, which makes her still; she leans against her father's knee, and Heathcliff lies on the floor with his head in her lap. The master, before he falls into a doze, strokes her bonny hair—it pleases him rarely to see her gentle—and says, "Why canst thou not always be a good lass, Cathy?" She turns her face up to his, laughs, and answers, "Why cannot you always be a good man, father?" But as soon as she sees him vexed again, she kisses his hand and says she will sing him to sleep. She begins singing very low, till his fingers drop from hers and his head sinks on his breast. When Catherine discovers her father is dead, she screams out, "Oh, he's dead, Heathcliff! he's dead!" and they both set up a heart-breaking cry. The little souls then comfort each other with better thoughts than Nelly could have hit on, talking of heaven so beautifully that Nelly cannot help wishing they were all there safe together.

Thematic Significance: The Legacy of a Father's Love

Mr. Earnshaw's relationship with Catherine establishes a pattern of intense, conditional love that she will replicate with Heathcliff and Edgar Linton. His favoritism toward Heathcliff breeds bad feeling in the house and makes Hindley bitter, but for Catherine, it creates a world where her will is paramount and her affections are absolute. The old man's death leaves her without a steadying influence, and his final, gentle moments with her become a poignant memory of a lost, simpler time. Later in the novel, the legacy of this father-daughter bond is seen in the next generation. Catherine Linton, her daughter, is described as having a capacity for intense attachments that reminds Nelly of her mother, yet she is soft and mild as a dove, with a gentle voice and pensive expression—a marked contrast to the wild Catherine Earnshaw. The elder Catherine's own declaration that her love for Heathcliff "resembles the eternal rocks beneath" echoes the foundational, unchangeable nature of the bond she first learned with her father. The novel's ultimate resolution, the union of Hareton Earnshaw and the younger Catherine, is seen by Nelly as the crown of all her wishes, a healing of the old wounds that began with Mr. Earnshaw's troubled household. The final image of the novel—the three headstones on the slope, with Heathcliff's still bare—underscores that the peace found by the younger generation is built upon the turbulent, unresolved passions of the old.